Fitz: Motorcycle Club Romance (Savage Saints MC Book 10)

by Hazel Parker

  “So with that all said,” Richard said, sounding visibly annoyed. “Here’s what’s going to happen. It’s nine. right now. After every half-hour of failed negotiation, we are going to shoot someone in this room. I don’t know who, and I don’t know if it’s going to be fatal. I do know—”

  “Richard,” the blond man who had taken me at gunpoint outside said. “A moment, please?”

  Richard stared at the man and stared back at the others, holding rifles and keeping us pinned.

  “Thirty seconds, Dom.”

  Dom and Richard exited into the shadows, shutting the doors behind them. I tried to eavesdrop on their conversation, but I could only make out general gibberish. There wasn’t anything I could even pick up that would have hinted at their conversation, let alone told me all of the details that I needed to know.

  And then, just like that, Richard walked right in, a smile on his face.

  “Apologies for the delay in negotiations,” Richard said. “But whenever you get the chance at having more leverage, you take it. And Dom has been nice enough to supply me with some leverage.”

  My eyes widened in horror when he dragged in the limp body of Amelia and tossed her on the floor before slamming the door shut.

  “Amelia!” I shouted, crawling over to her. “What the fuck did you guys do?”

  “Knocked her out,” Richard said dryly. “You think killing her would give us leverage?”

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I said, cradling her. I examined her wounds. She was still breathing, but she did have a bump on the back of her head. “You call this leverage? This is bullshit. You’re supposed to be an MC, not a fucking bunch of thugs.”

  “You can say whatever you want, but we are the ones with the leverage here, and, because of your actions, we now know who you care about the most here. We also know that you’re the only one here with an ounce of negotiating common sense. So, consider this your warning, if you can catch my drift.”

  Richard smiled.

  “We’re going to go outside for a smoke and give you gentlemen a chance to think things through,” he said. “We’ll be back, oh, I don’t know, in half an hour. And I would suggest not trying to escape. There is only one exit out of here, including the windows, and we will shoot anyone who comes out for any reason other than to discuss terms.”

  Richard smiled and walked out of the room. The rest of his club members followed.

  “What fucking nonsense is this?” Uncle said.

  “This is some bullshit,” Marcel added. “We’re not negotiating with them, plain and simple. They’re fucking vile snakes, all of them.”

  They’re doing what any good business does. They’re maximizing their chances at making the most amount of money. They’ve probably got people they care about too, but from our point of view at the table…

  I don’t know why I’m humanizing them. Probably because it’s the one thing I’ve always done that helps bring peace and deals to the table.

  “If we don’t do a deal, someone in this room gets shot,” Uncle reminded him. “And I don’t know what the fuck you’re planning on doing, but I would like to plan on not playing Russian Roulette with my life.”

  “So when they shoot us, we come back after them,” Marcel says.

  “Stop acting like Superman and recognize for a goddamn minute that this is real life!” Uncle spat.

  The room devolved into chaos. Marcel and Uncle fought. Biggie tried to make peace and kept getting shot down. Niner stood in the corner, pondering what to do—probably the only person amongst all of us who had experience in hostage negotiation, or at least knew people who had experience in it.

  I sat there cradling Amelia, wondering how the hell it had all gone wrong.

  I realized with horror that leaving the room was also a negotiation tactic. They knew we saw them as the enemy, but by letting us bicker amongst ourselves, it was going to make an even better deal for them. No one had the calmness or detachment to realize that.

  “Guys, shut up! Shut up!”

  I rose after propping Amelia against the wall. Marcel and Uncle stared at me.

  “They want this to happen, don’t you realize? They want us to tear at each other’s throats and act like assholes to each other. They want this in-fighting. If we fight like this, it just gives them all the leverage.”

  Marcel and Uncle folded their arms.

  “Look, I don’t know what the solution is,” I said. “But I do know that any time you get the other side bickering about what’s best, you win. Inevitably, the more they fight, the more they forget who their opponent is, and they end up making a terrible deal for themselves. So we need to sit down, save the fighting for later, and figure out a deal.”

  “He’s right,” Uncle said. “I fucking hate him right now, but he’s right. Let’s sit at the table and talk. Fitz, you want to move her—”

  “I’ve got my eye on her,” I said.

  The only thing I knew for certain as we all came to the table was that there was zero chance that Amelia was going to get hurt here. It didn’t matter what Richard did. Even if they pinned me down, I would find a way to protect her. She wasn’t someone who deserved to get caught up in the cross-fire of this bullshit. She had come to find me for some reason.

  Unfortunately, she had.

  We sat at that table and tried to figure out something. We all knew we weren’t getting out of there without offering something to the Las Vegas Saints, but questions of how much we could give them sparked fierce debates that I had to quell a couple of times. Marcel and Uncle were interested in minimizing the amount we had to pay to them. Biggie wanted to give them whatever it took to get them off our backs.

  We were in the middle of conversation when the door swung open. Richard and Dom walked in, followed by the rest of the Las Vegas Saints.

  “Well?” Richard said. “Did you Yankee shitheads figure out what you wanted to do? Or did you decide that you’d rather die?”

  Marcel stood with a nervous gulp. He walked over, stood in front of Richard, and nodded.

  “We’ll make a deal,” he said.

  “Good,” Richard said, patting him on the cheek. “I’m sorry it took you idiots witnessing nerd’s girlfriend over there getting hurt, but better late than never.”

  Stay calm, Marcel. Stay calm. Don’t lose your cool.

  “What is your proposal?”

  We hadn’t reached a consensus, but at this point, it was on the president to act as the leader of the club and do what was best for us. Whatever that turned into, we had to accept and embrace.

  “We’ll give you twenty percent of profits for the first year, twenty-five for the second year, and thirty thereafter.”

  Richard pulled out a cigar, lit it, and looked over at Dom and the rest of his crew. He then looked back to Marcel, blew a puff in his face, and smiled.

  “No.”

  “No?” Marcel said in stunned disbelief.

  “I don’t know if you’re aware, but we have all the leverage here,” Richard said. “You will give us fifty percent.”

  “Kiss my ass,” Marcel said. “There’s no deal then.”

  “Are you sure of that?”

  Goddamnit, Marcel, pull it together. Come on. Please.

  “I’m as sure of it as I’m sure that your mother’s a fucking whore.”

  Fuck us all.

  On cue, Dom slightly raised his pistol, aimed it at Marcel, and fired. Marcel fell to the ground...alive.

  Easily alive, in fact. Dom had shot at Marcel’s foot. Marcel howled in pain and cursed out the Las Vegas Saints with a vengeance, but the fact that Dom had fired at a relatively innocent place told me that the Saints had not come here to kill. They may have had all the leverage, but they didn’t seem interested in using it at the cost of lives.

  Well, for now.

  “In half an hour, we’re going to shoot again,” Richard said. “Consider that a courtesy shot that we did not take out a more vulnerable target. We may no
t be so kind in half an hour.”

  Without another word, Richard exited. I waited a few moments after the last of the Vegas Saints had left before I spoke again.

  “Marcel, don’t take this the wrong way, but that was a good thing.”

  “Are you fucking stupid, Fitz? I have a fucking bullet in my left foot!”

  “And that’s far better than in your left eye or your left lung,” I said. “The easiest way Richard can end this negotiation on his terms is if he shoots you in the face and forces us, in a panic, to accept the fifty percent offer. But he didn’t. Why? Because he probably recognizes the value in having us here. He kills all of us, there are no Brooklyn Saints to make money off of.”

  “That’s fucking stupid!” Marcel yelled.

  “No.”

  Niner?

  “It’s not. Marcel is right. You’d be dead if he wanted it all.”

  Niner speaking up was enough to get Marcel to shut up about how stupid I was, though he kept complaining about the pain in his foot. By this point, Biggie had already wrapped his shirt around the wound, but he clearly needed to go to a hospital.

  “He’s not going to go for such a target next time,” Uncle said. “He’s going to make us suffer. But I don’t think physically.”

  He nodded in her direction. Amelia was still out. I grimaced at the thought; seeing her with the bruise on her skull was bad enough. Imagining her with a bullet wound…

  “I know,” I said, sighing. “Clock’s ticking. We gotta come up with something. We know it has to be more than what we offered. But we can be pretty sure we can get away with less than fifty percent.”

  “True,” Uncle said. “But then what?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “That’s why we...we….”

  I stopped.

  Amelia was waking up.

  Chapter 18: Amelia

  I was staring at a white-tiled floor when I woke up.

  I tried to put together what had happened. I had seen a creepy man named Dom. I had asked him to take me to Fitz. He had led me into Brooklyn Repair...and then…

  “Ow,” I said, feeling the back of my skull. “Fuck…”

  “Amelia!”

  I glanced up to see Fitz rushing over to me, with several more men behind him. Fitz hugged me and kissed my forehead multiple times.

  “Are you OK? Do you remember what happened?”

  “Yeah,” I said groggily. “How long have I been out?”

  “Probably about thirty-five minutes or so,” I said. “Not long. But we don’t have long. We need…”

  Something appeared to dawn on him.

  “We need your help with something.”

  “OK…” I said, grimacing and groaning as I tried to sit up. It felt like someone had driven something into the back of my skull—which was probably more accurate than I wanted it to be, given that I’d gotten knocked out. “What the hell is going on, then?”

  In the next five minutes, Fitz, along with a few other members of the Savage Saints, tried to give me the quickest version they could of the situation. Although I was missing huge chunks of information, I picked up enough to know that the Las Vegas Saints wanted money from the Brooklyn Saints, and that the Brooklyn Saints had essentially taken the name for themselves without first asking.

  “So let me get this straight,” I said. “You all stole the name and likeness of the Savage Saints out west. You now have those Saints with guns just outside. They have requested that you give them fifty percent of your profits. You think you can get less. If negotiations go poorly, then you believe that they will kill all of you?”

  “I don’t think they’ll kill us all, but—”

  “Violence will happen,” Uncle interjected.

  “And if I’m understanding right,” I said, looking at Fitz. “You think because of my experience with high-level negotiation that I can figure out something that both parties will like?”

  “That’s the hope,” Fitz said.

  I started to talk, laughed, and then just sighed.

  “I don’t know how the fuck you guys thought you were going to get away with this.”

  “It was a tribute!” Marcel shouted.

  “Hey!” Fitz shouted. “She can help us. It doesn’t matter what the reasons were for setting it up or doing it like so in the first place. What does matter is that we need her help right now, and if we let it go to waste, then we’re going to get shot. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want any more bullets hitting any of us, even if we think they aren’t going to kill us.”

  Even though I’d gotten myself way into a situation I had no business being in, even though I was now more convinced than ever I would never understand the MC lifestyle, I appreciated Fitz. I was growing quite fond of him, actually. If anything, I hoped that this might spur a couple more dates for us.

  “Look, you guys are kind of fucked, OK?”

  “Boy, she doesn’t have a filter, does she?”

  “Uncle,” Fitz snapped.

  “But, to Fitz’s point, someone who has all the leverage doesn’t engage in negotiation. They engage in orders. The fact that they’re doing this tells me they want something from you, and it doesn’t have to be money. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not all money necessarily.”

  “With all respect, sweetie, that’s not how MCs work,” Uncle said.

  “Call me sweetie one more time, and I’ll make sure that a bullet isn’t the only thing that goes up your ass.”

  Uncle started to laugh, but no one else joined in. In fact, Fitz came over and shoved him to the ground.

  “Hey, hey! What the hell happened to your point about not fighting?”

  “Ask yourself that,” Fitz said.

  “Alright, enough,” Marcel said with a sigh. “Fitz…”

  He rose, hobbled by the bullet in his foot.

  “It’s obvious to me that you and her have the knowledge and detachment for negotiations that no one else in here does, save for maybe Niner. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Uncle is too involved in this and is too much of a stubborn fool to stay out of harm’s way. So here’s what’s going to happen.”

  Marcel turned to the rest of the group.

  “These two are going to negotiate on behalf of us,” Marcel said. “I trust you, Fitz, Amelia, to do the best you can. I will accept whatever you do, so long as you recognize that you can’t throw the club under to save our hides. Our lives may not depend on it, but our livelihoods do. Fitz’s included, now that he’s quit.”

  You crazy fool, I thought with a smile.

  “However you do it is up to you.”

  An idea came to mind.

  “Let me go talk to him,” I said, pulling on Fitz’s arm.

  “What?” he said. “Me being here got you in enough trouble as it is. I’m not going to let you get hurt any further than you already have.”

  “He’s not going to hurt me, I promise,” I said. I then turned to the rest of the group. “Negotiations often fall apart when large groups get together. Two, three people in a room hashing out differences will go a hell of a lot further than a room of a dozen or so people. I am going to request to speak to just Richard alone. The rest of you will wait outside.”

  No one fought back. I think everyone knew better than to think they had better ideas than I did.

  “Amelia,” Fitz begged. “Don’t go.”

  “Don’t worry,” I reassured him. “I’m coming right back in with him. The point isn’t to say that I’m going to work on my own. It’s just to get him into the room. That’s it.”

  It didn’t surprise me that Fitz still didn’t look the least bit reassured by my words. I was pretty sure that anything short of a bulletproof vest across my body and a bulletproof helmet over my head would not have assuaged him, and even then, he might have found reason to worry. But all that did was make me more sure about what kind of guy he was.

  A guy who, no matter the external circumstances around him, was worth having.

  “I
’ll be back. I promise.”

  To drive home the point, I did something that I would never have done a week ago.

  I kissed him in front of other people.

  “Just wait here.”

  Before he could say a word, I stepped out of the office, found the door, and opened it. Several bikers cocked their guns at me.

  “Richard,” I said.

  Richard turned to me. He was smoking a cigar.

  “Yeah?” he said. “They sent out the lady to get half?”

  “They sent me out to start a dialogue. I only request one thing from you. You alone negotiate on behalf of the Las Vegas Saints. And in return, Fitz and I will be the only ones to negotiate on behalf of the Brooklyn Saints.”

  Richard looked at the rest of his club members. He scoffed, but what was noticeable was not the reaction; it was that he had not yet said no.

  “So let me understand something,” Richard said. “The Brooklyn Saints sent out the love interest of one of its members and is requesting that you and he negotiate with me, alone, and that that is supposed to settle everything? And why should you be a part of that?”

  “I shouldn’t be,” I said. “That should be Fitz’s role. But I can act as an independent arbiter of sorts. I can be fair to both sides. Yes, I know. You’re going to say I’m biased in favor of the Saints because of Fitz. I’m more biased toward getting Fitz out of there alive than I am in getting the Saints the best deal possible.”

  Richard put the cigar on the ground and came close to me. He towered over me, but there was nothing about him that intimidated. I was used to dealing with men trying to use their size on me. Another one of hundreds of men who had pulled this tactic off didn’t frighten me in the slightest. I normally would have made a comment about how they weren’t as tall as my husband, but given the heightened physical stakes here, I decided staying silent was the best course of action.

  “No tricks,” he said. “Just the three of us. Fitz will act in his own interest. You will oversee it. And I can call bullshit on things at any moment.”