BORDEN 2 - R.J. Lewis

Prologue

Borden

I thought we made it clear never to bring another person close to you again. We’ll get her, Mr Borden, and you will never find me. You will only think you have. But I’m smoke. I scatter and disappear. You cannot find me.

“So that’s how we’re going to play,” Borden murmured at the cell phone screen.

He slipped out of the bed and silently moved to the window. He peered through the blinds and scanned the deserted streets. At this point, all feeling associated with that text hadn’t hit him. He was calm and cool, not a single part of him threatened or afraid. This was the only way he could function with fucked up situations like this. The second he let it into his heart, he would be doomed, and with that god awful text threatening the life of Emma, he was working particularly hard not to let it get to him.

Fuck, if he let it get to him, he’d trash the room in a fit.

He stared out for some time, holding his breath, waiting for a sign of something – anything – suspicious. The world was still. The occasional car drove down the street, offering a bit of light before fading away. Sometime after that, a group of men drunkenly walked along the sidewalk, laughing through their slurred speech.

Then…silence again.

The silence was a bitch of a thing and Borden didn’t like it.

He moved away, glancing over his shoulder at Emma’s still frame, before leaving the bedroom. He went to the living room window and looked out again. With his mind firing out crazy possibilities, his gaze lingered on a dark alleyway between two apartment buildings.

Borden scoffed to himself just then. Was it possible somebody was there now? Was the fucker behind the message that stupidly brazen?

The piece of shit didn’t realize how far Borden had come, how hard he had worked and what he lost in the process. He didn’t know that Borden went through hell, tasted the flames, and burned himself inside and out just to be where he was. And now the fucker might be insulting his intelligence. No, he was insulting his intelligence by sending him a text to begin with.

He stared at the alleyway harder. It was the perfect spot for someone to be in if they wanted to catch a glimpse. Was there somebody there now? Thinking one step ahead was what Borden excelled at, and in his mind, logic told him there was.

Or was he paranoid?

His logic lately had been muddled. It’d been disrupted and torn apart piece by piece all thanks to the soft little body feet away from him.

Borden shook his head just then, trying to rationalize this. Whoever sent the text was just messing with him…and yet he couldn’t help but feel like there was a sliver of seriousness about it. That ignored paranoia was what killed Kate. With all his new wealth, he’d felt untouchable back then, and at the moment, with the city bending to his will, he was getting too comfortable.

He wasn’t untouchable. He would never be, and he would never disillusion himself by thinking he was again. Bad things always found a way in, no matter how many steps ahead you were, and it was that thought alone that gave him a twisted feeling from within. Shit, it felt like his insides seized. He tried to block it out. Feelings at a time like this weren’t going to solve the problem, but fuck, he pictured Emma hurt and afraid, and that twisted feeling grew hotter inside of him. He glanced down at his hands. Tremors ran down his arms and to the tips of his fingers.

Shit. Shit.

Borden returned to the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed. He shut his eyes and breathed.

Calm the fuck down.

Calm the fuck down.

He thirsted for the blood of the maggot that thought he could get away with this. Borden couldn’t disintegrate right now, although every inch of him was blazing with the need to turn this city apart for answers. He was being impulsive. He needed to think first and act later. Yeah, that was exactly what he needed to do. The violence would have to wait.

He turned his head to Emma and watched her for some time. Breathing lightly, her lips were parted, strands of her black hair over parts of her face. Fucking stunning, his little firecracker. Slowly the anger within him disappeared and his hands no longer shook. Always she had this affect on him.