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

by Hazel Parker

  “That’s fine,” I said. “It’s like I told them. Two people in one room, hashing out issues, will get more done in one hour than two committees trying to reach a consensus in one week.”

  “Now there’s the first goddamn sensible thing I’ve heard anyone in Brooklyn say since I found out about you guys,” Richard said with a cough. “Get the room set up. We’ll be there in two minutes.”

  I hurried back inside, leaving some of Richard’s men to question if that was the best choice. I knew Richard wasn’t going to change his mind for the same reason I knew he had scoffed in front of me. He had to save face in front of his people; to look weak before them would have been a loss in leadership. He may have had the maturity not to have acted like a macho badass, but any man in any leadership had some insecurity about making a public decision and sticking to it.

  Fuck, there was a reason politics were a nightmare.

  I went into the room.

  “Everyone except Fitz needs to leave,” I said. “They know you’re coming outside.”

  No one questioned me. Uncle nodded to me on the way out, but he wisely kept his mouth shut. As soon as all of the members had gone outside, I turned to Fitz.

  “You’re going to have to negotiate on behalf of the Saints yourself.”

  “But—”

  “It’ll be OK,” I said. “I made the deal with Richard to get him in here. If I start acting on your side, then that’s going to betray his trust, and our best shot at working out a deal will be done with.”

  Fitz looked nervous. He gulped, his words were more of a stammer than an actual speech, and his leg was shaking under the table he was seated at.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I’ve wanted the chance to prove that I was a real club member,” he said. “For so long, it’s all I’ve dreamed about. The chance to prove that I belonged to the Savage Saints. I don’t know if the club members believed it, but I thought they saw me as weak for being a banker. When I quit, it got a little better, but I still wanted a real chance. A chance with stakes on the line to make a difference. I always thought it would involve bullets and a heroic saving of someone’s life, but...I guess it’ll be just like the days at Rothenberg, huh?”

  I smiled, leaned forward, and kissed him once more.

  “Don’t worry about proving anything,” I said. “You’ve already proved to me that you are a man in every sense of the word. You aren’t afraid to go and get what’s yours. Who cares if you’ve never been in a gunfight? You’ve been in plenty fights of a different kind, and you’ve made the right choice in every single one. If that’s not being a real Savage Saint, then nothing is.”

  Fitz shook his head in delight.

  “I knew I made a great choice in choosing you.”

  I giggled as I leaned forward in kissing him.

  “So does this mean I’ll get another date out of this?” he said.

  “Only if you don’t blow the negotiations.”

  “I thought you were a neutral arbiter.”

  “I am, but that doesn’t mean I won’t have my own thoughts in my head.”

  “That’s pressure.”

  “Dating me is a lifetime of pressure.”

  “That’s even more pressure.”

  “I can make it worse if you’d like.”

  We finally cracked and laughed at that. Soon, we’d be sitting diagonally from each other, me at the head of the table as Richard and Fitz hammered out the differences of the club. Soon, we couldn’t even so much as look at each other in a certain way, let alone kiss and flirt.

  But just a little more beyond that, if all went well, we’d be doing a whole lot more.

  “Any last-second advice?” Fitz said.

  “No,” I replied. “You already know what you need to do. Be the Fitz that I fell for. Be the calm, collected, and detached Fitz. Be the Fitz who isn’t just a good dealer in investing, but in the world. You’ll be fine.”

  Fitz didn’t look entirely convinced, but what I said had enough of an effect to calm him down. Behind me, I heard the door open.

  “It’s time,” I said.

  I took a seat, giving him one last look of encouragement. Richard walked in a couple seconds later. I pointed to his seat, also diagonal from mine, with Fitz across from him. Richard examined the room carefully before sitting, looking for bugs, microphones, and other ways of eavesdropping.

  “Open your shirt,” he said to Fitz.

  Fitz did as commanded. I tried to display no reaction to his shirtless body. He nodded in approval. He looked at me, as if considering the same thing, but then thought better of it.

  “Well then,” he said, finally taking a seat. “Let’s make a deal, shall we?”

  Chapter 19: Fitz

  There was a certain rush that came as soon as Richard said those words.

  The bullshit and drama of the past month had come and gone. The taunts from Marcel and Uncle, the decision to quit work, my evenings out with Amelia—none of that mattered anymore. The only thing that mattered was that I did right by the club, allowing us to continue as an entity in Brooklyn.

  It was pressure, but the good news was, I had spent the last decade and a half in a world of pressure. It was hard to create a more stressful environment than Rothenberg Banking. I wasn’t exactly keen on trying to make the present as demanding as this, but I’d be ready for it if need be.

  “That sounds good to me,” I said. “As I understand it, Richard, you want half of the profits of our company, correct?”

  “That is correct.”

  I paused for a second, waiting to see if Amelia would say a word. She kept as silent as the table between us. I should have known that would be the case, given that there was no one who took her work more seriously or with as much determination as Amelia did.

  “OK, so that you can understand where we are coming from. We recognize that we have used your name, image, and likeness without permission. We first want to say that we’re sorry for that. Marcel got carried away, but we as a club should have stopped him or advised him of this in the first place. At the very least, we should have reached out to you to let you know that this was going to happen. No matter what, though, we did a poor job of that, and so we’re sorry.”

  Richard gave a hint of a smile.

  “I knew this was a good idea,” he said. “Your pretty lady over there has some brains in her skull, huh?”

  Stay calm. He’s trying to get you off a bit by flirting with her.

  “A little,” I said, doing enough to acknowledge it without letting the conversation feel out of control. “Now, with that said, we recognize that you deserve some compensation. However, we think that fifty percent is a little extreme. We applaud what you have done in Las Vegas with The Red Door, but we are nowhere close to that. We are more akin to the repair shop in Green Hills. Actually, we’re not just akin; we’re exactly like it. The point is, we’ve barely been open a few months, and we’re barely breaking even, so taking half of our profits would kill us.”

  “Hmm,” Richard said.

  He didn’t say anything. He was waiting for me to continue. I was waiting to see how Richard would respond to this moment, but he was doing an unfortunately pretty good job of not revealing how he truly felt.

  “I can remember when Mama and I built up The Red Door,” he said. “You know, we could give you folks an idea of how to generate more money. We wouldn’t just want fifty percent of your profits and to then walk out the door. Fifty percent of a hundred bucks is a lot less than fifty percent of a thousand bucks.”

  “Yes, exactly, but fifty percent of a hundred bucks is also a lot less than twenty percent of a thousand bucks,” I said. “We need to grow, but we’re never going to do it if we cannot reinvest our profits back into our business.”

  Richard leaned back and nodded his head slowly, giving the appearance of having not considered that point from before. I tried not to react in an excited manner, knowing that revealing an emotion like that would harm our chan
ces of getting more. Still, it was a great start.

  “Let’s talk about the things that are not financial,” I said. “We offer presence of mind on the East Coast. You have come to dominate out west with Las Vegas and Southern California. We—”

  “We didn’t exactly set out to expand,” Richard said. “When the two of us came together, expanding into new cities was not our goal.”

  “Sure, that’s fair,” I said. “But if someone comes to you and promises you an investment opportunity worth millions of dollars, but you had never looked into breaking into that field before, do you ignore it because it’s something that you didn’t look into before?”

  Richard laughed.

  “OK, I’ve been with you up to this point, but if you’re going to tell me that you’ll be worth millions of dollars—”

  “No, no, no, no. I’m not referring to us. I’m referring to the idea of expanding into other cities.”

  Richard folded his hands and listened.

  “I’m referring to the idea of using us as the model for expansion,” I said. “Brooklyn is the largest place on the East Coast that you’ll get another Savage Saints. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other places, other major metropolitan areas, that could use a chapter of you guys. Boston. D.C. Charlotte. Atlanta. Texas. Chicago. Indianapolis. Minneapolis. All cities that are mostly sprawled out, all cities where you could have chapters of the Savage Saints. Recurring revenue coming your way just for the right to use the name Savage Saints…”

  “Interesting.”

  This is good. This is really good.

  “And what part would you play?” he said. “With all respect, we’re not going to take off a percentage of sales just because you’re an inspiration to others.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “Depending on the location, we can have one of us go out and show them how to get the club off the ground. What you and Green Hills are to the West Coast, we can be to the East Coast.”

  Richard nodded, stood up, and paced, contemplating. When he had his back turned to us, I briefly glanced at Amelia. She flashed me a grin and a very subtle thumbs up. I had to put my hand over my face when Richard turned back to us to avoid being obvious about looking at Amelia.

  “OK, what else?” he said.

  We got into a variety of smaller other topics, from giving him support with law enforcement here to establishing a web presence to a whole host of factors. None of them carried the weight that expansion did, but the sheer volume of ideas that came Richard’s way were enough to make it seem promising.

  “OK, well, you’ve—”

  The door opened. Richard stood. One of his crewmen came out.

  “It’s the top of the hour,” the man said. “Should I—”

  “No,” he said curtly. “Let us continue to negotiate. Make sure they don’t do anything stupid though, Barber.”

  Barber nodded, heeled, and walked out.

  “Consider that a gesture of good faith on my part,” Richard said.

  I didn’t think it was a gesture. I thought it was just common sense. It only would have been a gesture if it were automatically scheduled.

  But I articulated none of this. Instead, I thanked Richard. I was certainly flattering him a little bit, but I was also making sure that negotiations didn’t hit a snag over something stupid.

  “So then,” he said. “You’ve pitched all of this to me. This is good. But I need a number from you, Fitz. That’s what this comes back to.”

  I nodded.

  “I’m not going to low-ball you and say twenty percent because I thought Marcel was just doing that to fuck with you.”

  “He did a lot of things to fuck with me,” Richard said, the tension in his voice obvious. “Thinking about that stupid man does not make me feel good. You have him as your president? Why are you not president?”

  “He started the club, actually,” I said with a chuckle.

  “And? A founder is not always CEO of a company.”

  All good points, and I certainly didn’t want to kill the flow of the negotiations.

  “Marcel is a good leader in different ways. Negotiation isn’t one of them, though. However, let me explain what I’m thinking.”

  I cleared my throat. A lot of this was just going to be made up on the fly. I had to trust my instincts for what I could and could not get away with.

  “I think the biggest thing to say is that expansion can net you more money than any deal with us ever could. Let’s just use a round number, say a thousand bucks a month in profit. You get fifty percent, you get five hundred. Or, we help you expand, and you get ten clubs that give you fifteen percent. And we’ve already established that we’ll be above twenty percent, right? So you see?”

  Richard nodded.

  “I think we should take off twenty percent for expansion and five percent for the other perks. So you’d get a quarter of profits. However, this is my twist to the proposal. For the first year, you don’t take anything from us. But! But. If, after a year, we haven’t expanded at all, we’ll pay up to forty percent of the profits.”

  “Ah, a hedge to ensure that you follow through on your part,” Richard said with a laugh. “And how am I to know that you won’t just disappear or refuse to pay after a year?”

  “I think you’ve demonstrated you have the superior weaponry.”

  “As if you won’t expand your militia in that time.”

  True. That’ll probably be the first thing Marcel wants to do.

  “At some point, you just have to trust us, Richard,” I said. “We can sit here and talk numbers and possibilities all day. But somewhere in the negotiations, an element of trust has to come into play. Because without it, we’re just two lawyers yapping away. And I don’t think you want that.”

  “Fuck no!” he said with a laugh.

  He then sighed. A tense silence filled the air. I’d made my offer. I didn’t have anything to say. I didn’t care if Richard fell asleep. I wasn’t going to say anything else until he spoke.

  “Arbiter?” Richard said. “Do you see anything to critique?”

  “No,” Amelia said. “He has offered you more than your last deal and has given you opportunities that will expand well beyond the scope of mere profits. In the event that the two of you have a small part of the deal you cannot bridge, I will be happy to intervene, but for right now, I am not needed for anything other than confirmation of a successful deal.”

  Now that’s my girl. Fair, tough, but very good at her job.

  My girl.

  I guess that’s what I’d like her to be, huh? I just can’t believe I’m saying it so strongly and so boldly. Well, not really saying it, at least not yet.

  But maybe that’s something that I need to do…

  “Let me go and take the deal to the rest of the club,” he said. “I will be back within five minutes.”

  As soon as Richard had left the building entirely, I turned to Amelia, held her hand, and kissed her.

  “I knew you had it in you,” she said.

  “Deal’s not done yet.”

  “It all but is,” she said. “Richard might request to change a percentage of something, but like you pointed out, he doesn’t want to kill you guys. He sees you guys as doing the legwork for something that he may have planned himself anyways. In that case, it’s just fine-tuning.”

  “I guess so,” I said with a smile. “By the way.”

  “Hmm?”

  “I was thinking just a second ago, while you were talking,” I said. “I know that my life with the Saints can drive you crazy. I know that when you showed up at the party you felt overwhelmed and disgusted, and I get that. I hope you know that my connection to the club is not through violence or parties but through brotherhood and simplicity.

  “But I hope you know that more than them, you’re the person that I feel the most connected to. You have the intelligence that ninety percent of the bankers envy. You have the go-getter attitude necessary to succeed, but you have the compassionate side�
��when you’re not overburdened with work. You’re sexy, you’re beautiful, and you’re tough. I know that after tonight, after getting knocked upside the head and having to mediate between two motorcycle clubs, there’s probably a part of you that’s looking to get the hell away and never return. I don’t blame you.”

  “But if there’s a part of you that wants to keep this going, if there’s a part of you that says, ‘let’s try this and not care about what each of us cares about the other’s job,’ then I would love to.”

  Amelia’s smile grew by the second and her cheeks got redder with each passing moment.

  “You know what’s funny?” she said. “I was thinking the exact same thing. It’s why I came here. I can’t say I enjoyed getting knocked upside the head—who would?—but I can say that this moment, strangely enough, I think it’s brought us closer together.”

  I squeezed her hand harder.

  “When this is done,” I said, “you’re getting the longest bike ride of your life.”

  “Yeah?” she said, her eyes narrowing. “And after that, you might just be getting the longest ride of your life. If you know what I mean.”

  The thought had me instantly aroused. Amelia must have seen it in my eyes, because she burst out laughing, pulling her hand back to put them on the table for support.

  Richard walked back in. We both straightened up, turned our attention to Richard, and waited.

  “We want one small change,” Richard said. “If you can’t expand in a year, we want you to pay up to fifty percent. Otherwise, you got yourself a deal.”

  “Done,” I said.

  Amelia was right. The main part was in place. And there was no part of us that needed to negotiate that minor of a point. I just wanted us to get a deal.

  Richard extended his hand. I took it and shook it firmly.

  “Guess we’re MC brothers now,” Richard said. “Pleasure doing business with you, Fitz.”

  “Same, Richard,” I said. “I guess we should go and tell the rest of the club now, huh?”

  Richard and I walked out the door, leaving Amelia behind. We gathered all members of the Savage Saints—from both Las Vegas and Brooklyn—and announced the deal.