Saved by the Outlaw: Motorcycle Club / Hitman Romance by Alexis Abbott, Alex Abbott Page A

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