Stolen from the Hitman: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance(202)

“Lower the weapon, son,” says the agent.

“Don’t let him shoot me!” Doyle wails.

“Shut your mouth,” the agent barks. Doyle goes pale, finally realizing he’s actually going down for good. This isn’t a game.

Reluctantly, Leon bends down and sets the gun on the floor.

“Good man,” the agent says, walking past him to jerk Doyle up by the collar. Two more agents file into the room to wrest Doyle’s hands behind his back and cuff him.

Leon finally turns around and looks at me, his green eyes bright even under the dim lighting of a single, flickering lightbulb above us. He’s got a black eye, as well as bruises and lacerations up and down his arm and neck. They really beat the hell out of him here.

“Cherry,” he murmurs, saying my name like a prayer.

I rush into his arms and press my face into his chest, my tears staining his shirt. He embraces me and kisses the top of my head, stroking my hair. “I’m so sorry we took so long,” I whimper, clinging to him.

“No, no, I’m sorry you had to see me that way.”

“Well, if you aren’t a sight for sore eyes,” Genn says jovially, standing in the doorway.

“Genn! What the hell did you say to them to get out of that mess I caused?” I ask incredulously, utterly relieved to see him alive and in one piece. After all, I did inadvertently sic a pack of armed federal agents on him out there.

He shrugs. “I told them the truth. Turns out it really does set you free. Oh, and the gun wasn’t loaded.”

The three of us walk out of the building, Genn running ahead to catch up with the feds and talk to them. Battered and broken as he is, Leon smiles as the sun hits his face. He wraps an arm around me and spins me to face him. Then he leans down and kisses me hard on the lips, his fingers tangling in my hair. We stand this way for awhile, wrapped up in each other, all too relieved and elated to be together once again — alive and free at last.





45





Leon





With Doyle in jail, the police are reeling from lack of support up top. The rest of the club that was arrested gets released along with me, given that Doyle’s entire operations in Bayonne were invalidated in light of his corruption. Besides, pressing charges now for the stuff they might actually have on the club would only bring more heat down on them. They want to take care of this as quietly as possible.

I get news from Mikhail that Marty Chandler died silently around the same time Doyle was smugly arresting me in the warehouse office. By all rights, it looked like a car accident, and neither Doyle nor the county sheriffs knew anything about it as it pertained to us. With that information, we don’t waste any time in busting up all the illicit rings Doyle spent so long raking in profits from.

We start where it all began, at the dockyards in Bayonne. While the police who’ve been on the take for years watching their superior officers get away with murder get to finally arrest all the dock bosses who’ve been taking part in the human trafficking ring, the club and I team up with some medical personnel to free the immigrants locked up in the freighter.

Me, Cherry, and the rest of the club personally help unload them all as the medical staff on hand start tending to their injuries—the healthiest of them are dehydrated, but catching this when we did has saved a lot of lives, one of the paramedics informs us.

A few hours into the rescue, Cherry makes her way over to me as Genn and I help lift an older man onto a gurney with one of the paramedics.

“One of the nurses who speaks Spanish was able to talk to one of the victims,” she explains as we finish and turn to her. “Between the two of us, we were able to interpret that Doyle’s had a hand in facilitating these operations all up and down the seaboard. There’s a ton of operations like this one taking place.”

“Shit,” Genn says, “so what, there’s a string of Agent Doyles keeping these rings up and running?”

“On the contrary,” Cherry says, and I see a spark of investigative fire in her eyes that makes me want to kiss her, “with Doyle’s arrest, any other corrupt federal support is going to go into hiding, fast. This could be the one moment in a long time all those trafficking rings are vulnerable to being busted, hard.”

A smile crosses my face, and I fold my arms, looking out over the Bayonne public servants working together with the club to make a real difference in these people’s lives. I exchange glances with Genn, whose expression tells me he’s thinking the same thing I am.

“If that’s the case,” I say to Cherry, “then there’s no time to lose, is there?”

“Think you’re right, Prez,” Genn answers with a grin. “I’ll go look for Eva and get the club riled up. Think it might be time for us to expand out?”