by Hazel Parker
Fitz
Savage Saints MC – New York
~
Hazel Parker
Fitz – Savage Saints MC Series © 2020 Hazel Parker
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This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1: Fitz
Chapter 2: Amelia
Chapter 3: Fitz
Chapter 4: Amelia
Chapter 5: Fitz
Chapter 6: Amelia
Chapter 7: Fitz
Chapter 8: Amelia
Chapter 9: Fitz
Chapter 10: Amelia
Chapter 11: Fitz
Chapter 12: Amelia
Chapter 13: Fitz
Chapter 14: Amelia
Chapter 15: Fitz
Chapter 16: Amelia
Chapter 17: Fitz
Chapter 18: Amelia
Chapter 19: Fitz
Chapter 20: Amelia
Epilogue
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Author Bio
Prologue
Thomas “Fitz” Fitzgerald
No one takes me seriously here. But someday, I’m going to prove them wrong.
“Everything all good?”
I jolted up from my laptop, looking at the president of our brand new club, Marcel Stone, as he entered. Though the club had started on some rocky times, and though Marcel himself had nearly hit some spots where it looked like he could have wound back in jail, he and Uncle had managed to steer the Savage Saints back to stability. It had helped that we had gotten his obnoxious brother, Kyle, off our backs.
But that didn’t mean that the belittling and criticism from the other members would stop any time soon. If anything, it meant that it would quickly intensify. Every club needed a whipping boy, and because I was mostly dressed for my day job and less for the “part-time” job as secretary of the Savage Saints, I was said whipping boy.
“Oh, yeah, right,” I said, trying hastily to make sure I had everything organized for the boss. “I’m just trying to find ways to help the club. Call it some off-the-clock work.”
I was just trying to make small talk with Marcel, but I was also completely serious about trying to find ways to increase the revenue of the club. My day job in investment banking gave me insights into the future of a variety of industries, and the transportation industry was one that was being revolutionized and changed by the day. To say that car repairs for manually-driven vehicles was going to be a viable business in the future was laughable.
Unlike Uncle, who didn’t mind wading into the gray and black areas of business for some unethical opportunities, I tried my hardest to find normal opportunities that would pass an IRS examination. But also unlike Uncle, I didn’t have the admiration of the Stone brothers and our sergeant-at-arms, Niner. This was a club where the more “normal” you were, the more you were going to get mocked.
I didn’t mind it that much. I knew that someone had to take up the role, and without an apparent rival for us to unite against, we had to turn inward. But I did feel frustrated that I had not had the opportunity to prove myself yet. So far, the only real problem had been Kyle, and the Stone family had handled that themselves.
“You could start by being a bit more social,” Marcel said with a chuckle. “And not such a dork.”
And so it goes. Leave it to the guy with glasses and an actual collar for his work uniform to be seen as “not dark enough” for the club.
“I’ll see what I can do,” I said.
“You do that.”
Marcel sat across from me, opening his laptop. What I would give for a chance to show I’m as badass and tough as these guys. I’d done the research on MCs like ours. I knew that the most likely way to showcase toughness was in a fight or a shootout. We had not organized to raise money for sick kids.
I also knew full well that it was going to create some inevitable conflict with the day job. All of us had seen Fight Club at some point; we all knew that someone who showed up to a white-collar profession with a black eye or a purple welt was going to get questioned by superiors who hated their lives as much as they hated us.
But if I had a solution to that problem, I would already have gotten out of this predicament, wouldn’t have I?
“Well, well, well,” Marcel said.
I turned to Marcel. His look had shifted from cocky and self-assured to forced confidence. He was doing a good job of projecting authority and strength, but he hadn’t said “well” because he saw something fun.
“Everything OK?” I said nervously.
Visions of Kyle striking back, a police investigation, or an enemy gang threatening a strike danced in my head. Funny how it’s easy to want a chance to be so badass, but the moment that you get the opportunity, you start to get fearful. You want to be a part of this club, or are you going to be another white-collar wuss?
“At this exact moment? Yes.”
He laughed. Again, it was not the most convincing laugh that I had ever heard.
“But in the future?”
Marcel raised his eyebrows.
“Looks like we got ourselves our rivals after all.”
He turned the computer to me to show what he was talking about. There was an anonymous email that read: “You’ll never be us. Don’t try to be. -RP and TC.”
“Do you know who RP and TC are?”
“I have an idea,” Marcel said as he pulled the computer back. “But if I’m right, I’m even less worried.”
“Why?”
Marcel smirked.
“My best guess is that it’s whoever runs the clubs out in Vegas and Green Hills. Both on the West Coast. Both about a six-hour flight away. Both running motorcycle clubs, not a fucking bank.”
He winked at me when he said that. I pursed my lips together; the “banks suck” line was something that I’d heard so many times that by now, it might as well have become synonymous with, “Hi, here’s some small talk.”
That, and if I thought about it, I wouldn’t want to admit that despite easily making over ten times whatever Marcel made as a car mechanic at Brooklyn Repairs, I wasn’t nearly as happy in my role as he was in his. And heaven knew that as long as golden handcuffs had their tight embrace around me, there was no way I was escaping it.
“Although, I should note, the Saints in Vegas run a high-end club. One of them could probably come over here. But what are they going to do? Shoot us? They’ll probably ask us to change our name or some shit like that.”
“Are we?”
“Hell no,” Marcel sternly said. “I didn’t get out of jail to have some West Coast hippies tell me what the fuck to do. The name stays.”
“You know, there are legal means they can take to…”
I stopped talking when I realized one, Marcel
wouldn’t care, and two, even if he did, he wouldn’t want to hear it from me. Only if a Stone told him would he listen to that.
“I’m just saying,” I said after clearing my throat. “If there’s anything you want me to do on the back end before things might get ugly in person, I have resources we can leverage.”
“That’s nice,” Marcel said. “But it won’t be necessary.”
For a moment, I thought that we’d had a genuinely nice moment.
And then Marcel kept talking.
“If anyone is going to get anything done for us, it’s certainly not going to be the secretary of the club. But, hey, the support is appreciated.”
He then closed his laptop with a shrug.
“I’m going to go and get some food. Kicking my brother’s ass has given me something of an appetite. You want anything?”
Was this a test of some sort? Marcel never asked me if I needed anything.
“I…no, I’m good.”
Marcel shrugged.
“Hey, starve yourself, Bones,” he said with a snort. “You’re lucky Fitz is easy and quick to say. Otherwise, pretty decent chance I’d be calling you Bones.”
Marcel chuckled to himself, repeating the name “Bones” as he walked out of the repair shop. I let myself slide a little bit down the chair I was in, relieved to be done with that round of bullshit.
“Maybe it should get ugly,” I said to myself. “Maybe you should relish the chance to prove yourself in the club.”
But such an idea seemed like I was asking for war to descend upon the club so that I could prove myself. Good for me, terrible for just about everyone else. If that wasn’t stereotypical banker behavior, I wasn’t sure what was.
I went to the mirror and looked at myself. Marcel was somewhat right—I was skinny, but that was only in comparison to all of the Stones. I’d spent my fair share of time in the gym, and when I rolled my sleeves up, I saw pretty clear definition in my arms. When I removed my glasses, I even thought I saw the faint outline of a gruff, take-no-shit biker.
But the one thing I had that no one else knew of, not even Uncle, was what was on my back.
The Savage Saints tattoo.
I’d gotten it only about a week ago, and though it still stung, I wanted it to serve as a representation of me going all-in on the club. If I couldn’t act like a biker, then maybe I could signal that I was one.
The only problem was that if I showed it to the rest of the club and they laughed their asses off, that was the end of it for me. There would be no coming back from that level of disrespect. It would be even worse if someone at the office somehow found out.
It felt like I had one foot in each part of my life—investing and biking—and the respective platforms tried to knock the other out with very little regard for subtlety or sharing the space.
I guess when it came down to it, the only question was which part of my life would win out? No, that wasn’t the right question. I knew which part I wanted to win out and would do everything I could to make win out.
The real question was, how soon could I get out?
* * *
Amelia Hughes
“How soon can I get promoted?”
I sat in the office of the partner overseeing my division of Rothenberg Banking, Ben Wales, on Monday morning. I had had this conversation about three times in the past year. It was a conversation I was tired of having.
Though I refused to use an excuse like sexism for why I wasn’t getting promoted, I was getting to the point where I was willing to pull out any card I needed to reach Executive Director. I had devoted over five years of my life to Rothenberg Banking, and I wasn’t about to let another one go to waste without some appreciation.
Especially since I continued to keep up the eighty-plus hour workweek lifestyle long after all of the analysts fresh out of college had gone elsewhere and worked at some easy-ass jobs, content to let their talents go to waste.
“Miss Hughes, as I have explained to you before,” Ben began in his disarming Australian accent. “An employee of your age simply does not become executive director this quickly. You need to be with the firm for a little bit longer and demonstrate production over a longer sample size than you have in order to receive such an honor.”
“Do you really think I’m like any other employee at Rothenberg?” I said, doing my best to stay professional but blunt. “You can see the work I’ve put in. You can see the data for my accomplishments; the sales I’ve made, the leads I’ve generated, the—”
“Yes, yes, Miss Hughes, we are very appreciative of all that you have done for us.”
I folded my arms and leaned back in the guest chair in Ben’s office. At least we had the kind of relationship where I didn’t have to put on a pretty smile if I didn’t like what he was stating. He never had to doubt where I stood, and right now, I stood on pretty pissed-off ground.
“You know full well that I’m worthy of this promotion and that you’re only hurting the company if you play office politics.”
“Yes, well, you do also realize the pace you are working at is unsustainable, right?”
I had to admit, of all the reasons I got told I couldn’t do something, that was a new one. The investing world was notorious for turning its employees into chopped meat; it was maybe one in a hundred executives or partners who suggested or even implied to their employees that they needed to slow their work pace down. This just felt like more bullshit for why I couldn’t get the role.
“I’ve been doing it for five years, and I’m to believe that suddenly I’ll hit the wall now?” I asked incredulously.
“You should believe that what you’re doing will get you in trouble, yes,” Ben said. “No one is expecting you to treat this like a nine-to-five. We all know that, at minimum, you’re going to be working sixty hours a week here. But what you’re doing? That’s how employees get heart attacks and drop dead in their thirties. How good are you to the company when you’re in a coffin, Amelia?”
“Christ,” I said. “Look at me. Seriously, I’m giving you the chance to look at my body. I’m in shape. I run marathons. What part of me suggests to you I’d drop dead?”
Ben chuckled politely.
“I know what you’re doing here, Ben, and I—”
“Look, we’ll look into it, OK?” Ben finally said, exasperated. “I’ll take it to the rest of the department management and see what they think. But I’m serious, Amelia. You ought to start looking for things to balance yourself outside of work. It’s great you’re dedicated to Rothenberg. But we want you here for the next thirty years, not the next three. Understood?”
“Yes,” I said. “But I don’t agree with it.”
“Well, hopefully you do before you reach the point where you walk out the door, never to return because of a medical issue.”
I scoffed at Ben, who just smiled at me from behind his desk. I didn’t say anything else as I walked out of the office and took the elevator for my floor.
Even if I wanted to find outside activities, what was I going to do? Go on a meetup site? Use Facebook? Join a martial arts class?
Or, God forbid, date?
That seemed outright ridiculous. Of all the things I could do, dating while working on Wall Street was the most ludicrous idea of them all. The only people who understood what it meant to work such a demanding job were other bankers, and let’s just say that the chances of me dating someone else on this street were about as remote as me quitting Rothenberg Banking and going to live in the wilderness of Montana.
I relished the challenge of facing the bro culture of Wall Street and not just kicking ass but rising above all the other asshats in the field. I took pride in not backing down, not being afraid to embrace the “bitch” moniker even though it secretly bothered me. I enjoyed seeing the shocked look on my colleague’s faces when I got promotions and they didn’t.
Which, yeah, made it incredibly frustrating to have Ben turn me away for a third time. If bankers played by who was most qualif
ied and less by office politics, we’d fucking crush every other bank in the area, and it wouldn’t even be close. We’d have the funds to purchase all of them ten times over.
For now, though, it looked like the most likely outcome of the next few months would be me continuing to work in my current role, outselling and outperforming the rest of my department while I waited to reach an appropriate age.
And if I was going to do that, I was going to need a shitload of coffee.
I decided against getting out on my floor, instead choosing to get off at the second floor, which housed the employee cafeteria and lounge. I brushed past some of the executives who came in a little later than the rest, smiling politely to them, doing my little part to play the silly game of office politics. I began pouring the strongest cup of coffee I could while looking at my watch.
Not even nine. And this is my third cup already.
OK, maybe that will be something that causes me problems. Not something I can worry about right now, though.
As the cup poured, I looked over the cafeteria and examined the rest of the people there. Most of them were analysts whose names I hadn’t yet learned. A few were higher-level execs, but after dealing with Ben’s bullshit, I had a feeling trying to network right now would just result in me being blunt with people who weren’t ready for it.
Everyone looked on edge. Everyone was sipping coffee with shaky hands or with a struggle to stay awake.
Everyone, that was, except for one guy sitting in the corner of the cafe, the one person in all of Rothenberg who seemed to be somehow both extraordinarily good at what he did and didn’t also suffer periodical nervous breakdowns.
Thomas Fitzgerald.
With his square-rimmed glasses, his navy blue suit, and his brown dress shoes, he looked every bit the part of the banker. But unlike everyone else, he leaned back in his chair, not forward; he read from his laptop with ease, not with the nervous look of someone set to give an executive presentation; and he even smiled and chuckled, something that was practically unseen in the banking world.
I had only interacted with Thomas in superficial settings, but he was one of the few people that I genuinely respected as both a professional and a person at Rothenberg. He was understated, but he told the truth; he was kind, but firm; and he did his job well.