Page 48 of Borden 3

He was giving me looks lately. I was giving him looks, too.

He was sort of covered up in bruises because the fights were so fun, the boys loved to have them. I thought it made him look rugged, though I always nursed his wounds by cleaning them up.

“You good at singing?” he wondered once.

“I sound like a strangled chicken when I sing,” I told him.

He laughed and it sounded foreign to my ears. “My ma used to sing to me.”

I pursed my lips. “What happened to her?”

“She’s dead. You know that already.”

“But what happened?”

“She got killed.”

He was being vague on purpose so I didn’t pressure him. “Was she good at singing?”

He smiled, softly. “She was.”

“I bet she wouldn’t like you fighting with the boys.”

“They don’t hurt me.”

“You hurt them,” I stressed. “You should ease it.”

He nodded. “I will.”

Like clockwork, I waited for Granny to be in bed at her usual 9pm time. I waited another hour for good measure, and then I slipped out of the house. I took a late night bus ride to the West side of New Raven.

To Neverland.

Chapter Nineteen

Borden

“These petty attacks are getting out of control,” said Gerry.

The attack at the harbour was more a nuisance than an actual threat. There was no attempt at seizing a ship loaded with Warlord products. All it brought down on Borden was heat. A lot of it. The bikers were in disarray at first. Borden had to talk Hawke down from coming to New Raven.

“You come, and the pigs are going to love that,” he said on the phone.

“It’s more a demonstration of strength,” Hawke replied. “If we don’t come down, bikes blazing, there’ll be more destruction.”

“Your shipments are intact,” Borden returned swiftly. “They’re not after you.”

“What are they after?”

“Chaos.”

What else was new?

“It’s just another head I gotta cut off,” he said next.

But the second that head was cut off, another head popped up. This was getting out of hand. At first, the streets had been rife with gang violence. Gangs vs gangs. It was easier back then to tame. You just had to wait for one gang to annihilate another, and then Borden swept in, removing the last one standing.

This time, however, it seemed the activity was directed at him. These guys were coming at him in full force from all directions, like a fucking army. It was impossible to figure out the direct culprit. One minute it was the “Immortals” and the next it was the “Sharktooth Rubies.” No word a fucking lie, the names of these gangs were almost as annoying as the fucking fires they were causing. He kept waiting for the Rainbow Rangers next, or something as equally sad they’d cook up in some google gang name generator.

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