Maria

 

“He said he wasn’t going to pay, didn’t he?” I asked Mickey while he was in the kitchen fixing our drinks.

 

“What makes you say that?” he called back into the living room.

 

“Well, for one, you’ve been avoiding giving me an answer to the question, like you’re doing right now. For another, you have a shitty poker face, Mickey. I can read the disappointment in your eyes.” I almost felt bad for him. He was trying so hard, but he really had no clue what he was doing. He wasn’t a kidnapper. He wasn’t even much of a criminal, other than things he surely hadn’t had any choice in doing as a younger member of the MC.

 

Something wasn’t adding up, though. He was a biker. He had the tattoos and wore the clothes. He had the hard image. But he was still coming across to me as the sensitive, creative type. I’d had enough experience with people to know that everything could have been a front for someone much more menacing. After all, he’d kidnapped me and brought me out to a cabin in the middle of nowhere. This whole inept act of his could have just been a way to get me to drop my guard.

 

“Please, call me Brawn,” he said when he came back into the living room with two glasses of bourbon over ice. One of them had a straw in it, a sign that he wasn’t untying me any time soon, which simply reinforced the notion that his kindness was an act.

 

He held my glass close enough for me to get the straw and take a sip, like drinking from a kid’s cup at a restaurant. Except children didn’t usually get delicious, calming bourbon. It was so smooth. He didn’t play with low-end shit.

 

“Thanks,” I said as he pulled the straw away. “Why Brawn?”

 

He looked around the room again. “Because I’m strong. I build more than I think…We all took names like that.”

 

“That makes sense,” I said, taking in the cabin again. It really was impressive that he’d built the whole thing and most of what was in it.

 

He took a long drink from his glass, finishing it at once. Then he sighed and slumped back on the couch. “And to answer your earlier question, no, he’s not paying. He laughed at me for asking for a ransom for you and told me to keep you. Then, he wished me luck.” He wouldn’t look at me while he was talking. Instead, he stared at the ice left in his glass.

 

“Told you. Man, he must be really pissed that I quit.” I laughed, but I wanted to cry. As much as my father was an asshole, it still hurt to hear what Mickey – Brawn – was telling me.

 

“So now I’ve got to figure out what else to do with you,” he mused.

 

“You can always just let me go and call it even,” I suggested. “Let me use your bathroom and then drop me off at the nearest gas station. I won’t even make you drive me all the way back to my father’s house.”

 

He laughed. “Are you serious? I can’t let you go now.” He drank my glass of bourbon next. Then, he got up and walked back into the kitchen, presumably to fix us more drinks.

 

“Well, if you don’t mind my asking, Brawn, what do you need the money for? There’s got to be some reason why you decided to kidnap the daughter of a man who’s connected to the mob,” I called after him.

 

“So it’s true what they say about your dad,” he said when he came back, once again avoiding the question. That was something he was good at. He should have been a politician.

 

“I suppose. He didn’t deny it when I challenged him, and he made some very connected-sounding threats while we were talking this morning.”

 

“Huh. So his own daughter doesn’t even know for sure. This guy is unbelievable.” He shook his head and offered me a sip of my drink. I turned my face away to decline. I wasn’t keen on drinking bourbon through a straw any longer.

 

“Right. Whatever he’s doing, he keeps it close. So, again, why do you need the money?” I was determined to get an answer out of him.

 

“This,” he said, patting the arm of his wooden couch frame again. “I want to open a shop, start my own business, so I can do this full time instead of doing it on the side like I have been. I want to turn my hobby into a career.”

 

I could hear the defeat in the tone of his voice. I could tell he was starting to feel like it was never going to happen.

 

“I just figured if I kidnapped you and told your dad some amount of money, I’d be able to go ahead and get off the ground without having to accept any help,” he mused, staring at the floor. “I think I said something like five million.”

 

I laughed. “It shouldn’t take that much to get off the ground,” I told him. I tried not to think about how that wasn’t really a lot of money to ask my father for because that made my current situation all the more insulting and hurtful. Oh well, I was better off sitting with Brawn, I guessed. I just wished he’d untie me.

 

“Well, I was going to invest whatever was left after my startup money,” he continued. He took a sip of his bourbon, setting my glass on the table next to the knife he’d threatened me with and the glass he’d used to give me water.

 

“I’ve been saving up to go to nursing school,” I told him. I figured if I confided in him, I would be able to earn his trust enough to get out of this stupid chair. I wasn’t thinking about running away. I just wanted to be able to move a little bit.

 

“Is that why you quit?” he asked.

 

“Yep. I was going to take my savings and go stay with a friend while I went back to school. I was going to use that cash to live off and pay off anything I owed after financial aid. In fact, she was expecting me to call her back after I left the office, but my father turned my phone off before I even made it to the car.”

 

“Sounds like he has screwed us both pretty well today.” He chuckled, but it turned into a groan as he ran a hand down his face. “He’s been screwing his employees for a while now. I saw the house you guys live in. He makes enough to afford to live like that, but he pays us next to nothing.”

 

“Yeah, well, to be fair, I don’t think much of his money comes through his contract work. You follow me?”

 

“True.” His eyes grew distant again.

 

I decided to take a different approach to earn his trust, or at least get his interest back on me.

 

“So, Brawn, I couldn’t help but notice you noticing me over the last several months. Like what you see?” I felt so corny trying to approach him this way, but talking about money only seemed to bring him down. I wasn’t going to get anywhere being a downer.

 

“Yeah, sorry. I bet you get a lot of guys gawking at you,” he said.

 

“I do, but none of them have tried to kidnap me just to make time with me,” I joked. There was no point in lying and pretending Brawn was the first guy to ever check me out, but there was something different about the way he looked at me. His eyes were usually full of a creepy, unsettling desire. I wouldn’t have expected him to kidnap me for money. If I had ever thought he was going to take me somewhere, my money would have been on something much more carnal.

 

“Believe me, if I just wanted to get you in bed, I wouldn’t have done it this way,” he scoffed, but he opened the door for me to come right in and make myself comfortable.

 

“How would you have done it?” I asked.

 

He looked at me and took a moment to size me up, as if he were trying to figure out why I was asking. “If I knew that, I might have approached you differently,” he said, getting up from the couch again. He walked out of the room with his glass of bourbon in his hand, leaving my full glass sitting on the end table.

 

“Where are you going? Was it something I said?” I called after him, but he didn’t respond. He just left me sitting in the living room again.

 

I sighed and shook my head. I tried my ropes again to see if they were giving at all, but they wouldn’t give. I was stuck. I was alone with a man who obviously wanted me and who apparently felt like all his options were running out. I seriously didn’t know whether to pity him or fear for my safety.

 

I figured my best bet was going to be to convince him I could help him with his dream of opening his own shop. I didn’t have anywhere to go once he let me go, and he didn’t seem like he had any other plans for me.

 

The only thing was having to wait until he came back in so we could talk some more. I did feel a little sorry for him, but it was still amusing that today had gone so completely wrong for both of us. I had no idea what time it was, but I was pretty sure I could have been settling in with Elissa by now. Chances were it was late enough that Brawn would have been getting off work to go hang with his biker friends.

 

I wondered why he didn’t turn to them for help. That was what a lot of these little riding clubs did for each other. They helped out and created their own support groups when members needed help. Hell, sometimes even when non-members needed it, they would come together to create a greater sense of community. It seemed like one MC or another was always in the news helping the underdog, the downtrodden.

 

I was pretty sure Brawn didn’t belong to one of those clubs. It seemed like he was trying to fill some shoes that didn’t fit by being a badass and kidnapping somebody so he could get the money he needed on his own.

 

I rolled my eyes and groaned.

 

“Lord, what the hell is going on here?” I asked, looking up to the ceiling. It was like something out of a comedy: the big bad biker kidnapped his boss’s daughter, who never gave him the time of day before, only to find out his boss had just disowned her, so he couldn’t get any money, and eventually they became good friends, partners in crime who took on the world together. Except with big names acting out the parts and great comedic writers throwing in one-liners and gags to make it downright hilarious.

 

Unfortunately, I wasn’t living in a movie, and despite how ridiculously inept my captor was, there was a hint of danger underneath it all. I knew if I didn’t play my cards right from here on out, I was probably going to be in trouble. If I did play them right, and I felt like I had been, I stood a chance to come out better than I would have had none of this happened.

 

I almost laughed out loud when it hit me. We both stood to benefit from his botched attempt at holding me for ransom. He wasn’t much of a criminal, but he was a very talented carpenter. He had the support of the MC, if he’d just open his eyes and realize it. And he had me. But I also had him. I could ride with him for a while until I was on my feet. Then, we’d be able to part ways, and we’d both be better for it.

 

“You’re not the only one who can hatch a plan, Brawn,” I said under my breath.