Stolen from the Hitman: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance(168)

Then I remember: a field scattered with old auto parts and tires, just a half mile or so from the docks. That has to be it. I used to hang out there as a kid sometimes, picking through the rusting car doors and endless nuts and bolts. My friends and I pretended to be scavengers, like we were going to find all the necessary pieces of a car and build one like Doctor Frankenstein or something. I smile at the memory. What a bunch of dorks.

I think I can still remember how to get there.

Carefully pulling out of the parking spot, I drive off in the general direction of the coast, passing by familiar old buildings and neighborhoods, most of which have fallen into some degree of disrepair. The old general store where I used to buy sodas and pastries looks almost dilapidated now, the roof sinking in from years of harsh weather and not enough funding to get it fixed properly. I shake my head sadly at the state of things. The town I left behind was a quiet one without a lot of prospects, sure, but I never thought I would return to find it in an even bleaker place than I left it.

When I pull up to the field, a wave of memories washes over me. I get out of the car, holding the journal in my hand as I carefully step over the termite-eaten wooden fence. It’s barely more than a few stubborn pegs in the grass nowadays, and as I look out over the field, I see that the car parts and tires have been cleared away at last.

“At least somebody tried to help out a little, I guess,” I mumble to myself.

But what could be the “something off” my dad suspected? His journal entry is short, but it’s easy to see that he was concerned about something going on here. I wonder if he ever made it out here to check. And if he did, what did he find?

Then I see it. Up ahead, there’s a wide patch of overgrowth that looks… strange. Unnatural. The whole field is overgrown, of course, but that particular part doesn’t look the same. I approach it quickly, tucking the journal under my arm. Up close, I can see that someone has obviously dragged a bunch of ripped-up plants and underbrush from somewhere else and dumped it here. I kick my way through this shoddy covering to see a plot of recently upturned earth. The dirt looks rather freshly placed, as though someone were trying to bury something.

“What the hell?” I breathe, my heart starting to pound.

Did I just find a shallow grave?

I start to feel dizzy and sick to my stomach so I immediately turn and bolt back to my car. I don’t know what could be buried there, but I know one thing for sure: I am going to find out.





33





Leon





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.