Under Locke

by Zapata, Mariana

  "I really need to talk to you though," I insisted.

  Dex blew out a raspberry from between his pink lips. "One minute, babe."

  Sheesh.

  "What’cha need?"

  I couldn't summon the courage I needed to tell him verbally, so I shoved the paper across the desk.

  Wordlessly, Dex picked up the paper, his smooth forehead was already lined with rows of frustration at whatever was bugging him. Those bright blue eyes moved in a line across the paper twice.

  And then he balled it up and tossed it into the trash can, his expression unchanged.

  Dex said one word and one word only. "No."

  Umm...

  "What?" I asked him in a squeaky voice.

  His attention was already back on the computer screen he'd been glued to when I walked in. He simply lifted a single shoulder in a shrug and repeated himself. "No."

  "No what?" What the hell?

  Dex repeated the two letter word again.

  "No...you don't want me to finish out my last two weeks? Or—"

  He huffed, his eyes still locked on the monitor. "No, you ain't quittin' on us."

  That was absolutely the last thing I expected him to say. I scratched my nose. "I mean, I can probably swing both jobs if it takes a little longer than two weeks to find someone else."

  "Ritz, I don't have time for this shit right now," he huffed. "You ain't leavin' and that's that. You want more money or what?"

  "No! Jesus, Dex. I'm not trying to play a mind game with you or something. You have no idea how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me, but I figured you could find someone who fits in better than I do," I explained to him honestly. Well, as honest as I could get without admitting that I'd started looking for another job almost immediately after he hired me.

  "You fit in fine."

  "I don't have any tattoos. Half the time I think you don't really care for me either. You can find someone else that you like more."

  The way he looked over at me was so slow it threw me off. Like he was thinking, or absorbing what I'd said. Dex tugged his signature black cap off his head and tossed it onto the edge of his desk, sighing loudly. "Babe, seriously, I don't have time for this. You aren't leavin'. I don't give a fuck anymore if you have ink on you or not, and if anybody else gives a shit, they can shut the fuck up. You're fine here. You're stayin' here."

  His words felt like a punch to the gut. You know, if a punch to the gut could be a pleasant thing.

  Because, I mean, The Dick wouldn't just instruct me that I wasn't leaving if he genuinely didn't feel that way. I knew it. I knew that. I should be outraged that he was telling I wasn't allowed to quit. Then again, I'd been having issues accepting the idea that I'd be leaving Pins behind to work at a daycare for nearly half the hourly pay.

  If I really wanted to go, I could just walk out right then and never come back.

  "Don't even think about it, Ritz," Dex grumbled from his spot. He wasn't paying attention to the screen anymore, he had his gaze locked on me, his eyes intense. "You walk out, and I'll go get you."

  It was completely inappropriate that his words brought a shiver up my spine.

  "Call your other job back, tell 'em you aren't comin' in, and then I have an order I need you to place."

  "I already told them I was taking the job."

  He raised an eyebrow. "And I'm tellin' you you aren't takin' it. I've already trained you. You want more money, I can swing a little more your way until it's been a year. I already told you I'd add you to the insurance plan in September. And I don't wanna talk about this anymore, babe."

  What in the world had told me that this would be easy? That I should be worried about telling him that I was quitting?

  Arguing with him was futile, I knew that but I tried again anyway. "But—"

  Dex scrubbed his hands over his face, his eyes wide with intent. "Babe, I've handpicked everythin' and everyone in here. I know what I want and I get what I want," he breathed. "And I keep what's mine."

  ~ * ~ *

  After cleaning up and making sure none of the guys needed anything before I left, I was running home a bit later than usual. There were a few things I wanted to get from the drugstore that I forgot to pick up before work. I pulled into the first Walgreens that didn’t look totally sketchy, bought new razors and lip balm, and headed the rest of the way to Sonny’s.

  My mind was usually in a million different places, but all I was focused on at the moment was getting in, eating and vegging out on the couch to relax. With only Monday off because of the Expo and the stress I'd put myself under at the thought of quitting Pins, my body was suffering from the long days we had. Not to mention the fact that my brain hadn’t stopped running different scenarios and ideas on what I could do to change my life's current situation forever for the better.

  I'd been given a second chance, it only seemed fair that I take advantage of it. What was the purpose of wasting years, months, weeks, days, minutes, even friggin’ moments of life, after everything I'd been through? My mom and yia-yia had done so much for me. I had to figure out something.

  Sonny hadn’t come from beginnings that much more different than mine. He had a good job, a house and—except for this crap with our sperm donor—security. There was a reliable future ahead of him.

  If Dex could come out of his father's shadow, somehow manage to stay in the supposedly reformed version of the same motorcycle club who had lost half its members over the years, moved passed the years he spent in jail, and built a successful business... there was newfound hope in the world.

  If they could do it, so could I. It was just a matter of time.

  I’d barely pulled the car into the open spot right in front of the house when I happened to look down the street in the opposite direction I’d come in from. And what I saw made the hairs on the back of my neck prickle up. I forgot all about eating and watching the History Channel.

  There were three men straddling old school bikes two houses down. Three men I could barely see in the dark under the luminescence of the street lamp. It was the same friggin’ guys from the party and two of the same guys who had driven down the street. The one with the shaved head was in the middle as before, his big body looked incredibly imposing from where he was rooted.

  Shit!

  Double shit.

  Something in me told me that wasn’t right. These guys weren’t like Trip or Luther, or the other people I’d watched while at Mayhem. These guys weren’t a part of Sonny’s club.

  So I did what any somewhat intelligent woman that’s watched too many movies did—I hauled my ass out of the car, kept my focus on the door, slid my three keys between my knuckles for protection Wolverine style, and slammed the door shut the first nanosecond I was in.

  And then I shrieked, “Sonny!”

  ~ * ~ *

  “You’re sure?”

  I glared at the dark haired man across the table and nodded slowly. We were sitting at the dining room table while I scarfed down toast and a warm glass of milk before bed. This was normal behavior.

  If only there weren't creepy ass bikers down the street.

  And if only Sonny didn't currently look like he was fighting every cell in his body to unleash something ugly that was residing beneath his light brown eyes.

  “They’re the same guys.” I bit into my toast. “I recognize them from when I left the bar that night, and I swear they drove down the street a couple weeks ago looking over here in a weird way. They have jackets instead of vests, and there's a big bald guy that looks familiar.”

  His attention was focused on the wall while his hands propped up his chin. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  My question was calm. “What is it?”

  His eyes stayed on the wall.

  All right, he wasn’t going to tell me that either, so I was going to plan B.

  I reached out to touch his hand, trying so hard not to let the tiny nip of fear in my gut swallow me whole. "Sonny, did you do s
omething?"

  He slammed his eyes shut and grunted. His hands fisted into tight balls on the table as he blew out a long breath.

  "If something happened, I'll help you," I promised him. Because I would. There wasn't much I wouldn't do for him, and that included letting him use me as an alibi if he'd done something awful.

  Sonny's fingers uncurled just enough to wrap around my elbow, squeezing just lightly. "I didn't do anything, Rissy."

  Jesus F. Christ. He called me Rissy. He only called me Rissy when he had bad news to tell me.

  "What is it?"

  He groaned, earning him a poke in the rib.

  “Are they like your… arch enemies or something?” I asked him quietly, setting the bread back onto the plate. I probably sounded like an idiot with that terminology, but I didn’t know his biker lingo, and I thought that description worked well enough when his cheek quirked up for a split second before his lips hardened.

  He leaned back in his chair, clenching his eyes closed. “Kind of but it's not like that.” He paused. "They're part of a group of wannabes in San Antonio that aren't exactly fans of the MC's territory here."

  Oh my God, I was living in a real-life television series.

  I blinked at him, confused as hell. “I thought you said you guys weren't doing stuff anymore.” I pushed the plate away, leaning toward him.

  He was going to tell me the truth, damn it. My mom had told me that back when my dad had left the MC, they'd been associating with drug distributors, whatever the hell that meant. I could clearly remember Sonny telling me that president, Luther's old nutted self that'd been making out with a much younger woman at the bar, had split the club up, cleaning it out after his wife had gotten murdered in retaliation.

  He dropped his gaze down to press his forehead to one of his upturned palms, closing his eyes in the process. “It's nothing like that, Ris,” he promised. "It's not me or the Club they have business with."

  That little bit of information was better than nothing, but it didn't mean I wasn't going to fish for more. “Okay, so why are they here?"

  “I’m sorry, kid, but I can't drag you into this, okay?” he murmured, still looking down. “Don’t worry about them, all right?”

  Telling me not to worry would be the equivalent of telling me not to have my period.

  But I wasn’t about to stress him out more than he already was, so I mustered my most bullshit face. "You're sure?"

  He nodded slowly, darn it.

  “Okay," I agreed hesitantly.

  Sonny’s features softened at my weak ass smile. “Iris.” In a second he had dropped down to his knees, placing his palms on each of mine. “It’ll be fine,” he assured me.

  Listening to him was one of my life's dumbest decisions.

  Chapter Sixteen

  There were a lot of things that immediately let me know as soon as I woke up that something was wrong.

  Seriously wrong.

  The top drawer of the dresser was open, and I never left any drawers open. Keeping them closed was a neurotic tendency of mine.

  My cell phone was on the bed instead of the nightstand where I’d left it charging before I fell asleep.

  And the third was that the door to the bedroom was also closed. I never closed the door because I was paranoid about screaming and not having someone hear me.

  My first thought after my brain decoded the clues was that Sonny had come in at some point during the night. Everything besides the drawer and my phone was in place, so I tried to think of what I should do. Luckily, my first instinct had been to check my messages and when I unlocked the screen, I saw that it’d been the right step.

  If I don’t leave you a note on the kitchen counter,

  call Dex ASAP. My phone and other stuff is in your drawer.

  Tell him what you saw.

  The three messages were from Sonny at two o’clock in the morning. Thirty minutes after I’d gone to bed and left him sitting in the kitchen shooting off several text messages one right after the other.

  I’d known something was wrong and that realization choked my insides, making me throw back the sheets and run out of the bedroom as quickly as I could. But what I saw wasn’t what I wanted to find. There was no note on the counter.

  Fuck!

  Never in my life had I ever moved so fast besides the time I tried to dodge Will when I took off with his secret stash of Playboy magazines to parade around the house. And this was Sonny. I'd just gotten him back in my life.

  His wallet and another set of keys that looked to be too small for any door or car, were sitting right on top of my pile of socks. My fingers trembled as I flipped open his old, basic flip phone and tried to get through the menu with a panicking, freaked out mindset, searching for Dex’s phone number. When I found “Dexter” under the contacts, my thumb was hitting the call button before I even thought to do it.

  “Please, please, please, please, please,” I begged to myself, listening to the ringing on the speaker. My heart was hammering its impatience. “Dex, c’mon—“

  “What the fuck?” a sleepy, throaty voice answered with a yawn. “It’s nine, asshole.”

  I sucked in a breath. “Dex?”

  There was a clearing of a throat and another sleepy sigh. “Uh… Ritz?”

  “It’s me,” I confirmed quickly. “Sonny’s gone.”

  In the span of a millisecond, Dex’s sleep laced voice froze over. “What do you mean Sonny’s gone?”

  I didn’t notice until I heard the trembling in my voice that there were tears in my eyes. “I think these guys took him."

  ~ * ~ *

  I was kind of a mess following my brief conversation with my new ally, The Dick. After having him basically demand that I calm down, I managed to tell him in ten seconds about the guys I’d seen parked down the street, and what Sonny had texted me. Needless to say, I was really friggin’ glad that I wasn’t having this conversation with him in person.

  Using the word “pissed” to describe his reaction would be like saying that the Pacific Ocean was a body of water. The term didn't give any justice to what was said over the phone. I didn’t even get a chance to say “bye” before he’d hung up, giving me a thirty minute notice on his arrival.

  Twenty-nine minutes later, I’d taken the fastest shower of my life, cried over my missing brother, and freaked the hell out all over again. Even though I knew it was coming, the knock on the front door made my hands shake and heart rate speed up. Keeping in mind what the hell had just possibly happened to Sonny, I checked the peephole to make sure it was Dex—it was—along with Trip and another guy I’d never seen before.

  “Open up, Ritz,” Dex barked from the other side of the door.

  “’Kay,” I mumbled, unlocked the bolt and took a step back to let them inside.

  Dex’s eyes were on me as he strode in, his walk full of that same swagger that made me think he either practiced it or he just got really lucky. That gift kind of seemed unfair but whatever, this wasn’t the time to think that.

  “You okay?” Trip asked me, following in after Dex, who also watching me closely but without a crease between his brows.

  I should have been tough and said that I was, but realistically, I wasn’t. “Kind of.”

  The new guy walked in with a nod and a, “Sup,” which I answered with a weak “Hi.”

  “Where’s his stuff at?” Dex asked me as he made his way into the living room like a mother goose leading its babies to water.

  “On the coffee table.”

  He nodded to himself, bending over the table with his faded but fitting jeans winking at me. “Trip, go check his room. See if anything’s missing. Buck, check out the garage,” he ordered them as he flipped through the slots in Sonny’s wallet.

  The two guys didn’t say anything in response but split up, going in opposite directions in the house to do as he’d asked. I just hovered in the corner at a loss as to what I could do without getting in the way of whatever their plan was.

 
“Can I do anything?” I asked hesitantly.

  Dex’s eyes drifted up to mine, slowly. He was still pissed, I could tell, but he was trying to rein it in. “No, babe. We got this.”

  “You sure? I don’t have very much money, but if that’s what they want, I’ll give you what I have to get him back,” I told him, feeling my chest constrict. This shit was straight out of an action movie, only this time I couldn’t be certain it would have a happy ending because life wasn’t always like that, unfortunately.

  Dex looked at me for the longest before shaking his head and lowering his voice. “No, no. Don’t worry about that. It's not your money they want.”