“Good.” She looked at me some more, examining me with her watchful eye. “You said you went out with Lara, by the way. I haven’t forgotten about that. How did it go?”

I shrugged. “I don’t think I’ll be seeing her again any time soon.”

“That bad.”

I nodded and said nothing else. I couldn’t. She knew me inside out. If I so much as elaborated about that night, she’d figure I was holding something back from her.

“Where did you go?” she inquired, appearing casual but I knew that tone. She was fishing for information.

“Um, Owls.”

“The club?”

“Yeah.”

She was unimpressed, pursing her lips and all. “I hear a lot about that place. Know there are a lot of shady people that go there. Marcus Borden owns it, doesn’t he?”

Just his name reminded me of today’s events.

Of his lips and face.

Of how embarrassingly riled up he’d made me.

I tensed and cleared my throat, offering her a shrug. “Does he? I’m not surprised. He owns everything, right?”

She frowned. “I suppose, but I like to deter from any place he particularly owns or even goes to. That man is a dangerous criminal.”

Fuck, I would not be telling her about that kiss ever, ever, ever.

“Yeah,” I weakly said.

“A murderer,” she added gravely.

“Alleged,” I corrected, much to her dismay. “Didn’t you say you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover?”

She raised a sceptical brow. “Borden has no disguise. He’s evil.”

I didn’t answer.

Why the hell was I defending the asshole, anyway? He’d come to my place of freaking work for the purpose of intimidating me into silence, which I’d already been happy to do. Then he kissed me after I’d hurt him, turned us both on, and abruptly left! I felt so goddamn confused, it had made my head hurt just thinking about it.

And why was I thinking about it all the time?

“That poor privileged girl ended up dead,” she mused on, shaking her head. “Broke all our hearts when they found her in that river. It was all Borden’s fault. Had he never come back, she’d have continued being a harmless schoolteacher. She was so beautiful, so sweet. Shame. Real damn shame. It always made me think of you.”

I sighed, picking at the crumbs of my cake. “Yeah, I know. You hounded me a lot to stay home around then.”

“Well, you were always out.”

“I know. I was a rotten teenager, and I’m sorry about that.”

No words would ever describe how sorry I felt for putting her through that. They were dark years of mine. I’d been in a hole of depression after my mother took her life away in prison. I spent so much of my time escaping home, seeking…something out there in the streets and never finding it.

“It was a hard time for all of us,” Granny said, reaching out to me to stroke my hand. “But we made it through. I’m just happy nothing happened to you.”

I avoided her sweet face at that. She didn’t need to know the amount of times I’d been in dangerous situations. The dumb idiot that I was, thinking I could fight the world with my hate.

The serious cloud eventually moved on from there, thank God. Not long afterwards she grew tired. I put her to bed when she begged me to sleep in the spare room.

“It’s too late. The buses won’t be running now,” she complained.

“The busses stop running at eleven, Gran. I have plenty of time. Don’t worry.”

“But it’s dangerous.”

“It’s not.”

It was, but I knew how to handle myself.

I left her to sleep and began packing the food she’d put aside for me into my bag. The smell alone was making me hungry all over again. She baked the tastiest foods. Leave it to her to fulfil the role of grandmother to a tee. It was a shame her daughter didn’t follow in her footsteps, but I didn’t want to think of my mother, or the fact she had sucked at baking, and cooking, and pretty much everything in life.

After, I did a quick tidy up of the house. I washed her dishes and tidied every room, hoping tomorrow she’d have a good day resting instead of doing the chores.

I dreaded going to this blind date she’d organized. I hadn’t been in a relationship in over a year and even that was short lived and highly forgettable. While the loneliness had depressed me in the beginning, I learned not to depend on a man to make me feel good about myself. I especially didn’t have time in my life to worry about making some other guy happy when I could hardly afford a week’s worth of groceries.

As I was tidying up, I spotted her ancient laptop she’d purchased years ago and turned it on. I couldn’t wait until I got home to jump on mine, so I sat down in front of the kitchen table and decided to look up the doctor. The practice he worked for popped up immediately and I got to see a face shot of him on his profile page. He did look young with thick black hair and a long face. He was an attractive man, and I admit I felt less apprehensive about meeting him.

I was about to close the computer when I stopped midway. Curiosity got the better of me. Despite burying the thoughts, I stupidly decided to feed them with more.

I felt guilty typing in Marcus Borden’s name. I didn’t even have to write New Raven in the search engine to find he was in the top search results. There were a lot of photos of him and he looked exactly like today’s confrontation: stern, uninviting and emotionless. Even long before he made his fortune, he looked like a street thug; there were leaked photos of him in his early twenties, some without his shirt on. Intricate tattoos covered his once lean upper body, crawling up each arm. He was almost unrecognizable if it weren’t for those piercing eyes. Bastard cleaned up well, though the tatted look wasn’t off putting.

In every social event like a party or New Raven’s charity balls, there was never a woman by his side, but he was dressed to impress, looking sharp and clean in his grey or light blue suits. I bit my lip, picturing the former photos of him merged into these, knowing damn well that beneath these suits was a tatted up body. And a beast.

There were tons of articles on him too. Of his court cases and accusations against him; all shortly after he’d returned to New Raven mysteriously rich. This was the time he first purchased his club and began venturing out, and mouths ran wild at the level of money he was dropping. I heard the rumours. People said he’d been a troubled youth, in and out of jail, heavy into drugs and in debt with drug lords around our parts, and that he’d lived in a rough neighbourhood for some time.