Under Locke Read Online Free Page A

thought it'd be best to—," come mooch off my brother? "Come here. Mr. Locke knows my brother."
     
    Blake laughed, loud. "Mr. Locke?" He laughed again. " C all him Dex. Please."
     
    I smiled at him and shrugged. It wasn't like he'd told me what to call him. Plus, with as quiet as he seemed to be, the last thing I wanted to do was piss him off and call him something that he didn't approve of. My last boss had lost his mind if he wasn't referred to as a sir.
     
    Which I figured completely merited the fact that we called him an asshole when he wasn't listening.
     
    "I heard Sonny's sister or something was visiting the last time I went to Mayhem," he threw in.
     
    "Are you... a member of the Widows?"
     
    "No," he answered instantly, his face flushing out of what I could assume to be embarrassment for shooting down the idea so quickly. "I've known Dex for a long time. That's it. I know all those guys." Then he plunged in the knife. " Only heard of your dad though, never met him."
     
    It took such a small part of me to smile like what he said wasn't a big deal, when it still was. Which was stupid. I was too old to still let him bother me. I'd been through too much to care about where he was and who he'd kept in touch with, when he hadn't kept in touch with his own kids.
     
    But it did.
     
    I'd gone from thinking about him once a year to all-of-a-sudden getting constantly bombarded with reminders of something—someone—I'd rather forget.
     
    And it must have been noticeable on my face because Blake had a guilty expression on his.
     
    "I'm gonna get a pop, you want one?" he asked, already pushing himself off of the couch he was on.
     
    Avoiding the awkwardness? I think I liked Blake already.
     
    "No thanks."
     
    He shrugged and was around the desk a moment later, his Meshuggah t-shirt draped loosely around his shoulders, faded jeans sagg ing , before he was out of my line of vision. It kind of made me feel like an old grandma, dressed in black work pants and an elbow-length lavender blouse that covered all my fleshly valuables.
     
    I just didn't feel like explaining my arm. Everything always changed after The Arm Conversation.
     
    As long as I could keep wearing my longer sleeved shirts, I could put that bomb off for a while.
     
    ~ * ~ *
     
    I'd been staring at the screen for the last hour. The notes that Dex had set down almost two hours ago seemed to be mocking me in mute delight.
     
    What I should have done was ask him the day before to explain to me one more time how to work the program.
     
    Half of it had been more than easy enough. Memos, dates, all that stuff I could guess. But I'd already gone through the same spreadsheet twice, and I swear two of the numbers on the balance were different than they had been originally.
     
    Holy crap.
     
    I had two options. I could go ask Dex for help. The other would be that I could look up instructional videos on how to use the accounting program because the Help button wasn't as helpful as I'd hoped.
     
    In hindsight, I'm really not sure why I chose to ask Dex instead of suffering through a thirty minute long video.
     
    But I got up and headed toward his office, feeling that same urge to gag as the day before , creep up my throat.
     
    Crap. Crap. Crap.
     
    The folder clung to my fingertips as I paused right outside of the opened office door. Dex was behind his desk, a sheet of paper spread out where the keyboard had been yesterday. A pencil bobbed back and forth as he stared at the sheet, two fingers pinched the bridge of his nose.
     
    Deep down I knew I was going to regret this. I really, really did.
     
    "Hey Dex?"
     
    Those two Crayola Blue eyes shifted up to look at me. Emotionless. Impassive. "Yeah?"
     
    I had to swallow back the urge to gag as I lifted the blue folder for him to see. My mouth, the traitor, lifted up into a nervous smile. "I'm having some trouble with that program you showed me yesterday, and I was wondering if you could show me how to