Stolen from the Hitman: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance (44 page)

I
can’t get
her out of my head. The more I try to push the thought away, to stuff the feelings into the same box I shoved all the rest of my good memories of this town before it all went to hell, it just floats right back up to the surface, harder and stronger than before.

She’s something else entirely. For her to come back into my life here, now, with everything that’s going on, I feel like I’m trying to ride out a storm inside me. I’ve always been the one who can handle these kinds of things. This is unbelievable. I’m the president of the Union Club, and one woman from my adolescence gets me turned inside out. She’s getting in my way in more ways than one, and the only thing worse than that is the fact that I don’t think I mind her doing so very much at all.

Right now, I’m trying to get the thought of her out of my mind while I read over research on James & Son Realtors, a company that’s trying to sell off that big plot of land near the water. Keeping tabs on local realty isn’t something an MC leader is known to get involved in, but then again, not many MCs look out for local affairs as closely as the Union Club does.

This particular plot of land is a big sell. It’s in a prime location for commercial activity, it’s close to the water, and it’s big enough to be split into a handful of local businesses, but the city has kept it as one big parcel and just sat on it for a long time.

Part of that is our doing. Lots like this tend to be ready-made for big national business to draw in revenue. Lot gets sold off to some mega-corp from out of town, a huge store gets erected on the spot, and before you know it, most of the jobs in town get filtered into that one location, lining corporate pockets and driving local business owners to their doorstep. We’ve taken it upon ourselves to make sure, one way or another, that realty agents like James & Son don’t sell them off. Worker collectives can do wonders for political change on a local level.
The things you figure out as an MC leader
. We’d been about to start pushing for the city to split up the lot into smaller parcels to sell off to local upstart businesses, before the FBI decided to show up.

My best guess is that their presence is what’s emboldened the realty agency to sell.

Fuck, this is frustrating work. I’m not made to sit at a desk all day when I could be out on the streets getting shit done.

I try to bat those thoughts away, but they keep getting in the way like flies.

Cherry would be great at this kind of investigative stuff.

I take a drink of my beer as I try to dispel that thought. Not many people get in the way of me and my club anymore, but it wasn’t always like that. When we were first starting out, the skeezy business owners would discretely try to hire thugs to threaten us, find dirt to blackmail us with, even come start fights at The Glass. I’ve had to fight a man off in front of the very desk I’m sitting at in the bar’s office in the back. The desk still has a chip in it where the man’s knife hit.

The fact of the matter is that this is dangerous work we’re doing, especially with the FBI breathing down our necks now. I don’t want Cherry to get wrapped up in all that.

I rub my temple.
Who am I kidding? I’m not getting anything done tonight
. Why do I even care so much about Cherry, though? She’s basically an out-of-town stranger at this point, right? Yet she’s slipped right into the swing of things as if she’d never left. She’s a liability, isn’t she?

Well, actually, even acting alone with no resources, she’s been keeping up with our entire club every step of the way. She’s a natural. Even the way she handles herself on a motorcycle feels like she was meant to be there. She’s got every bit of the fire I do to dive right into things at the first whiff of foul play. She’s got even more of a stake in the murder investigation, and she’s handled herself like a professional more than once.

I feel a pang in my chest as I realize how much I’ve been thinking about her.
What’s gotten into you, Leon?

I’ve got to shake myself out of it. But fuck, it’s been a hell of a ride on my own, trying to fight upstream against what seems like the whole institution lined up against me. The patch members and my officers, they’re truer brothers and sisters to me than any flesh-and-blood siblings ever could be. I couldn’t ask for a tighter group to ride with, and we’d all take a bullet for each other if it came to that.

To meet someone else, a ghost from brighter days, storming into town with all the tenacity and fire I had when I was just starting out, looking like a vixen with eyes and lips that could knock a man out, and a body so stunning I can still feel it when I think about her...

“Hey, boss?” I hear Eva’s voice from behind the door with a light knock before she lets herself in. “Still tied up in all that paperwork?”

Snapping out of my thoughts, I grunt in response, setting my beer aside and leaning back. “Kill me. We ought to hire a suit to take care of this kind of work for us.”

“Might not need to,” she says with a smile. “we just got a tip from one of the maintenance workers at James & Son.”

“You’re shitting me,” I say, sitting up with a sudden smile. I can’t express how done I am with dealing with this paperwork, and I’m eager to get out on the streets again.

“Apparently he overheard a meeting with the bosses. It’s a definite lead, but you’re not gonna like it. They’re trying to sell to NexaCo.”

I feel fire burning in my chest, and my hand clenches. They aren’t fucking around. NexaCo is the big leagues.

It’s a superstore corporation that has branches all over the United States. There’s even been talk of them spilling into Canada, but there’s been a ton of pushback up there. Having a NexaCo in town spells death for any local businesses that don’t have hefty backing from somewhere else. They drive consumer prices into the ground, making competition basically impossible, to the point that NexaCo gets to dictate the prices they pay to their suppliers and shipping companies. They’re single handedly responsible for the fall in farmers’ wages over the past few years, and I don’t want to think about what they’ll do to the workers at the docks here in Bayonne.

Worse yet, the company employs one of the most highly trained divisions of union busters in the country. So much as a whisper of collective action, and corporate descends on a branch like the hammer of the gods.

Not in my town.

“That’s all I need,” I say, standing up and striding around the desk. Eva follows me out the door as I step out into the bar, where a couple of the members give me respectful nods, happy to see me emerge from that lair.

“Alright, everyone,” I shout, “listen up! James & Son are bringing NexaCo to town if we don’t do anything about it. So we’re gonna go have a chat with them.”

There’s an angry shout of agreement from everyone in the bar, beers and pool sticks raised high.

“Eva, Genn, you’re with me. We’re gonna go have a talk with them ‘quietly.’ The rest of you, go make some noise close to Mickey’s. It’s far enough away that if the feds catch a whiff of you, they won’t be paying attention to where the real business is. Just don’t answer any questions if you get pulled over, and remember which of the boys in blue are on our take, got it?”

“You got it, Prez,” shouts one of the members. A few moments later, half the club is gearing up to get moving, and I take a deep breath.

This is what I live for.

* * *

W
e’re riding again
, this time for what feels like a more white-collar meeting than our trip to the liquor store. Well, not for us—we normally don’t go storming into realty offices like this.

Our bikes pull up at an office building with a nice exterior garden plan. It’s got a fountain outside and everything.

“James & Son Realtors,” Eva says as she pulls up beside me in the parking lot, Genn pulling up a couple of seconds later. “Nice place. Wonder if they’re busy this time of day?”

“Nah,” I say back, “most of them will be out to lunch right about now.”

“Good,” Genn says, cracking his knuckles, “I’d like a little one-on-one time with someone right about now.”

“Only a couple of cars in the parking lot,” I point out. “Whoever brought lunch from home today is going to get a rude interruption, hate to say. Let’s go.”

We push the door open and let ourselves inside, making a quick and direct path to the nearest open office door we can spot.

“E-excuse me?” the secretary at the front desk tries to say as we stride past.

“We’re expected,” Genn says with a friendly smile as we walk by, and the secretary just gapes for a moment before giving up. The balding, white-collar scrub inside the office we make our way to looks up from the sandwich he’s eating, and his face goes pale at the sight of us.

“C-can I help you three?”

“Yes, we’d like to arrange a meeting, immediately, if you’ve got an opening,” I say, standing in the middle of the room with my arms crossed as Eva and Genn flank me.

“Y-yeah, I guess I can squeeze you in,” he stammers, sweating at the forehead before taking a deep breath and getting his bearings. “You’re from the Union Club, aren’t you?”

My face splits into a grin. It feels good to get a little recognition every now and then. “And you must be one of the lackeys opening the doors for NexaCo to stroll up in here, huh?”

“Now sir,” the man says, holding a hand out as if trying to explain, but there is a definite edge of condescension to his voice, as though he’s explaining down to someone. “NexaCo has a complicated reputation, but besides the fact that we’re just agents carrying out a sale that’s been trying to go through for
years
, the jobs that NexaCo could bring into this city are—”

“Underpaid, without benefits, and designed to drive the local competition to the poor house,” I finish for him. “Unlike yours, I’d be willing to bet, but you don’t have to think about that on a day to day basis, do you?” I add with a wink.

His face is still, but he looks nervous.

I continue, “Now I know the town’s newest guests from Washington make you think we’d change our tune, but just to be clear that isn’t the case, I thought we’d drop by to—”

I’m cut off as the man leaps from his office chair, making a mad dash for the door to bolt out the office. Genn catches him at the waist as he tries to slip by, and as he loses his footing, he smacks his head against the side of the doorframe and starts kicking his legs, knocking over some of the office equipment on the desk, I catch a snippet of the voices up front.

“I’m sorry, the only person in the office i-is tied up w-with something right—”

“Okay, yeah, I know them, now just let me get past so I can—”

I know that voice. “Cherry!” I shout out from the office, and it goes quiet up front a moment, the only noise being Genn’s grunting with the agent in his grasp. “Hey, you two got a handle on this guy?”

Genn gives a stoic nod, and I return it before slipping around them and making my way out the door and down the hallway to see a flustered-looking Cherry standing beside the distraught secretary.

“Leon, what the hell’s going on here?” Cherry has to keep her volume in check, despite the shouting from the office behind us.

“Look, I know what this looks like. We— one sec. Miss?” I turn to the secretary, slipping a $50 out of my pocket and setting it on the front desk. “Give us some privacy and go get lunch, will you? You can tell ‘em we threw you out.”

The secretary looks hesitant for a moment, then takes the money and gives a curt nod before shuffling out.

“As I was saying,” I try to continue with a coy smile, but Cherry doesn’t look amused.

“Save it, Leon,” Cherry almost snaps, “this is too far.”

“Is it?” I say, genuinely surprised. “The weasels who work here are capable of doing a lot more harm than skeezes like Mickey, you know.”

“That’s not what I mean, and you know it,” Cherry says, pacing around the room. “I know why you’re here, Leon, and this is insane. You claim you’re trying to protect the people in this city, but by all means, tell me how busting up a land sale to keep a shallow grave hidden constitutes ‘helping’ anyone but yourselves?”

The words hit me out of nowhere, and I just stare at her, dumbstruck for a few moments. “...huh? The hell are you talking about?”

“I went to the plot of land these people are trying to sell, Leon,” she says, taking out her phone and showing me the county appraiser’s website. “I found out who’s selling it, as well as the fact that it’s been on the market for ages. And I just stopped by there. I saw the grave, Leon.”

“Wait wait wait,” I stop her, shaking my head, trying to wrap my mind around what I’d just heard. “What’s this about a grave? Cherry, what’d you see?”

Cherry looks long and hard into my eyes, and for a moment, I almost forget she’s accusing me of murder. It’s an intense gaze that holds me still for a moment, and as I look back into hers, I wonder if she feels the same as I do.

“You really don’t know, do you?” she says, her shoulders lowering just a bit. “Oh my God, you don’t. Leon, you need to come out there with me. I think this is more serious than we know.”