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.”