Page 7 of Biker's Hostage

“That’s what they are,” I replied, shrugging. “Why should I pretend any different?”

“Because that’s my family you’re talking about.”

“And what about my family?” I demanded. “If your family had never existed, mine would.”

She bit her lip, falling silent for a moment. Yeah, she didn’t have some smart comeback for that. I drew my gaze away from hers, not wanting to give away any more than I already had; I felt like I’d edged too close to sharing the truth with her, and I didn’t want to deal with that. I hadn’t spoken to anyone about what had happened to Liam, and I didn’t want to start now, least of all with someone so close to the people who had killed him.

“What happened to your family?” she asked me, her voice taking on a soft edge that caught me off guard.

“What do you mean?” Like she gave a damn. She was just trying a different approach to get me to give her what she wanted. There wasn’t a chance I would fall for it. I knew better than to give away anything about myself, not to her, not when I had her right where I wanted her.

“You said something happened to your brother. What was it?”

I was surprised she remembered me so much as talking about that. I had thrown that shit at her in the hopes of catching her out, but she was treating it… treating it like some kind of intimacy.

“It doesn’t matter.”

I rose to my feet again, not bothering to find another tie to lock her back up.

“Of course it matters,” she replied, raising her eyebrows at me. “It’s why you’ve got me here, isn’t it? Because of what happened to him?”

“Don’t talk about him,” I snapped at her. I didn’t want her trying to worm her way into my good books, not knowing the kind of person she was, not knowing the people she was associated with. If she thought it was going to be that easy to get under my skin, she had another thing coming.

I headed toward the door before she could say another word. She could have the food. I wasn’t going to tie her back to the bed. I would just lock the door behind me, and there would be no way for her to get out.

“Hey, please, just talk to me!” she called after me, but I shut the door tight behind me and slid the lock home. Shit. I didn’t know what was going on here, but there had been a part of me that wanted to tell her why I was doing this.

I didn’t talk to anyone about that shit. Not a damn person on this planet needed to know why I did the things I did, why I chose to take revenge for what had happened to my brother, least of all her. I had learned a long time ago to keep this shit firmly to myself. There was nothing to be gained in going to other people for help. All it did was give them power over you, power to control you because they knew what could hurt you. I was never going to let anyone do that to me, not again, not after I had come so far in putting that life behind me.

I leaned against the door for a moment, eyes closed as my mind drifted back to all those times when I had been a kid, a kid, searching for some kind of care and support from my mom, coming to her crying because I skinned my knee, how she had brushed me off and told me to handle it myself because I was old enough to do it. Drunk, she had slumped there in the armchair, the low buzz of the TV in the background, and told me that she wasn’t going to help.

“You’re a big boy,” she had slurred to me. “You deal with it.”

I had taken that to heart then, and it stuck with me, even now. I didn’t go to anyone else for help. Something had happened to my brother? Then I would deal with it. That’s how I handled my shit. How I always had.

I made my way over to the counter, where I’d left the food I’d brought for myself. I had headed out late and kept watch on my journey, glancing at the road behind me as I made sure nobody was following me. I doubted the Dogs would have been on to me yet, and I intended to let them sweat it out for a while before I told them I was the one who had taken Chelsea, one of their daughters. I knew it would throw them into disarray, knowing the people close to them weren’t safe. Knowing their families weren’t exempt from this.

Just like mine hadn’t been.

Chapter Five – Chelsea

I flopped down on to the bed, brushing off the pile of takeout containers that I had left sitting there since the day before. I wasn’t hungry anymore, and that was something. The red, angry welt around my wrist was already starting to ease up a little bit, too. But I was still very much stuck in this place, and I didn’t want to have to deal with that any longer.

I had never done well with walls penning me in. In the week or so I had been here, I felt like I had been losing it. Even when I was a kid, I used to kick and scream whenever my dad dropped me off at school during the first grade, knowing I was going to have to abide by all their rules for the next six hours or so. It took me weeks to settle in, and even then, I resented the hell out of the school for putting limits on me and what I could do.

I had fallen into the same routine, every day. He would wake me early and bring me to the bathroom while leaning outside the door. I half-expected him to watch me, but he gave me my privacy, at least.

After, he’d feed me; it was one of the few moments I got outside of the room each day, and I savored every second of it. We’d sit at the table beside the fridge, and he’d watch me as I ravenously devoured the toast and peanut butter he’d pulled out for me as he sipped his coffee.

One morning, a few days after I arrived, he caught sight of me eyeing his cup of pitch-black coffee and cocked an eyebrow.

“You want one?” he asked me. I hesitated for a moment. Could I ask him for anything? Would he just laugh in my face?

“Yeah,” I confessed. What did I have to lose?

He rose to his feet and, wordlessly, set about making me a coffee—he asked me how I liked it.

“Just as black as you had it…”

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