Lust Hard (Savage Saints MC Book 2)

by Hazel Parker

  I went about my usual routine, brushing my teeth, doing some yoga, and relaxing with the morning news before I grabbed my phone. I texted Splitter “Good morning :-) When you wake up, please give me a call. Just want to go over some things.”

  I was tempted to add “nothing big,” but I didn’t want to set poor expectations. Besides, the smiley face, in my mind, had given Splitter a sign that this wasn’t some breakup talk. The good morning didn’t hurt, either.

  I hit send and shifted over to my email. I deleted the usual spam, the speaking requests, the media requests, anything that was not directly related to my job.

  And then I saw the message that said “URGENT: FW: Two men killed overnight in LA.” It was from Edwin. The body had five chilling words.

  “Splitter know anything about this?”

  I looked through the email and saw that two men suspected of having ties to the Devil’s Mercenaries motorcycle club had been murdered the night before. When I saw their names, I had a horrifying realization—they were two of the witnesses.

  In the middle of reading the message, I saw something else pop up—another email from Edwin.

  “Had two of our witnesses state they would not speak in court anymore,” he said. “If the Saints are tampering, know that witness intimidation carries a heavy sentence. For all of them.”

  Splitter…

  Did you know about this?

  Suddenly, why Splitter had been so distant last night made too much sense. Way too much sense. He had to have known what was going on.

  But how had he gotten the names? I had only shown him the list in passing; it wasn’t something that I had intended to print out and give to him. And it wasn’t like I had caught him spying on my computer. What had happened?

  And how much did Splitter know?

  I knew that he wasn’t going to respond to my text now, or if he was, he was going to deflect and say we should save it for tonight. But I wasn’t in the mood to wait until tonight, not with the prosecution now breathing down my neck for potential tampering. To say this was bad was an understatement—if it was proven that Splitter and the Saints had engaged in this…

  What else would get out?

  Would my relationship with Splitter get exposed?

  Would my inability to stay focused on the case get exposed?

  Would all of my legal efforts have been for naught, resulting in Splitter going to jail—along with the rest of his club for their actions last night?

  “Lord,” I said to myself. “Give me the strength today. I’m going to need a lot of it. I’m going to need an awful lot of it.”

  I quickly hurried to my room, put on the minimum amount of clothes I needed to remain professional, grabbed my keys, and headed to my BMW. I noticed a cameraman situated on my street, but I just ignored him. He called out and asked if I was headed to any particular client this morning, but I still ignored him, though the temptation to flip him off or even, I daresay, curse at him was strong.

  You’re not going to do any good if you don’t get control of yourself, Amber, I told myself. Be stern with Splitter and with others but be in control first. Without that, what you’re doing won’t mean anything.

  I backed out of the driveway and drove aggressively at the speed limit en route to Green Hills. My not speeding was my way of making sure I did not lose total control, but the anger I was starting to feel was immense. This was not a coincidence; it just was not. One witness getting killed, especially a Mercenary, was one thing.

  Two of them? And then having multiple witnesses say they weren’t going to testify?

  If the Saints had intended to lay low, they had done the exact opposite. They had stuck their tongues out at the state authorities, given them the middle fingers, and then pretended that nothing had happened. The only thing working in their favor was that the state could not prosecute on the basis of coincidence, but that didn’t mean that they couldn’t apply a ton of pressure in the hopes that they would crack.

  In short, there were many ways for the Saints to come under back-breaking pressure that had nothing to do with official charges. I’m not sure if they knew that or if they even cared about that, but as their lawyer, you can bet I cared.

  When I pulled into the shop, I saw that Trace had just arrived before me. He was hopping off his bike as I got out of my car.

  “Amber, you’re here early.”

  “You guys are morons,” I snapped.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The lawyer in me doesn’t know what you did,” I warned. “But I am not stupid and if you think that the authorities aren’t going to notice, you’re beyond stupid.”

  Trace gave no reaction, but he wasn’t dumb. He knew that I knew, and he knew that if I knew, others knew. He recognized he had just made things worse for himself.

  Realistically, at this point, his best hope was that the state would have to drop the case against Splitter but then withstand years of incessant pressure. And when I said years, I meant until Edwin moved on—and since he was a young DA who had just gotten elected to office, there was a very good chance that that wasn’t going to come anytime soon. They were going to be on his shit list for decades.

  I stormed into the clubhouse, finding a couple of younger members cleaning up. They gawked at me, but I walked right past them, heading into the bedroom where I had left Splitter two nights before and almost spent last night with him. It was probably for the best, anyway; if I had woken up to him by my side and then seen that news, I might also be responsible for a murder.

  I knocked on the door twice, heard Splitter yell, “One sec,” and stood with my arms crossed. I still had my sunglasses on, but I was in no rush to take those off. If it added to the effect—something I had learned very well how to do—that could only help.

  He opened the door and smirked when he saw me.

  But his demeanor quickly soured when he saw I wasn’t smiling one bit.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  “Remember how I said in my message we needed to talk this morning? Well, turns out that we have a lot more to talk about than I thought.”

  I stormed into the room, slammed the door behind me, and stared straight into his eyes—which were reeling, hard. He really had no idea where I was going with this, but he knew it wasn’t good.

  “I woke up to an email from Edwin, our opponent in court,” she said. “Your friend, the DA? He forwarded me a news story that two of the Devil’s Mercenaries who just so happened to be eyewitnesses were murdered last night. And, on top of that, a short while later, he told me that several of the witnesses had withdrawn.”

  I shook my head in disgust, wanting to maximize my displeasure with how this had gone.

  “Tell me, what do you know about this, Splitter? And remember my first rule. I want the full truth.”

  “I…”

  He looked like he was looking for the right words.

  “Don’t try and word this right, damnit,” I said, swearing for emphasis. “I need to know what you know and now.”

  He bit his lip and turned. I tried my best to remind myself to be patient, and I admittedly felt a little bit of sympathy when he started to choke up, but I wasn’t going to show him any of that right now.

  “I had Trace sneak in while we were having sex so he could read off the list from your computer,” he said.

  Oh… why…

  Why, Splitter, you were better than that. I want to believe you are better than that.

  But…

  You actually did that.

  I was beyond floored. I was beyond hurt. I was…

  I could never look at Splitter the same again on a personal level. Professionally, my trust in him might have recovered, but personally, this would sting a long, long time.

  Is this what dating in the “real world” looked like? Is this what I had to look forward to?

  “Why?”

  I couldn’t even muster any anger right now. I was just so stunned, so hurt, that… emotions d
idn’t feel right. I was turning into a blubbery mess of something, and to say I was feeling emotional was to imply that I could put some sort of definition to my feelings, which I most certainly could not.

  “I didn’t think that we could win the trial any other way,” Splitter said. “I didn’t think that if we went to trial with all those witnesses, that we stood any chance. I know that my brothers here have my back. I know they can defend me. I—”

  “You know what’s sad?” I said, stopping him dead in his tracks. “What’s sad about this? You’ve told me that you’ve murdered people. You’ve told me that you laid down charges. And you know what? I understood. I tried to, at least. I tried to understand who you are and why you did what you did, because at least then I could give you the best possible shot. If you had done this, I would have to tell you that what you were doing was—and now is—criminal and could get you and the whole club in a world of hurt.”

  But…

  “But you lied to me,” I said. “Worse, you betrayed my trust. You manipulated me. You didn’t just passively forget to do something. You actively manipulated my physical attraction to you so that one of your buddies could get some names and commit some crimes, and now guess what? The entire DA’s office is probably investigating you and talking to these witnesses. If you did not do everything perfectly, you and the entire Savage Saints are going to be a prison-only club.”

  Splitter continued to blubber out excuses with tears in his eyes. I just muttered under my breath, a sort of defense mechanism against following in his footsteps.

  “It’s why I went to get food last night,” he said. “Because I wanted to defend myself. I could prove I had an alibi. I wasn’t the one who did that.”

  “Yeah, but this isn’t just a case about you,” I said. “It’s about all of you. The DA was always using this as a way to get you to break so you could say more about the Savage Saints. I have zero doubt all of you have committed some heinous crimes, but at least you did it well, and you did it for good. You hid it, and those who cared that were closest to you were willing to protect you. But this?”

  I threw my hands up. I was losing the battle to stay poised.

  “You flat out used me. You lied to me. You knew that I was in a vulnerable state with my recent divorce. You knew that I was attracted to you and probably bound to make some mistakes. And with that knowledge, you took what was classified information for the case and gave it to your team.”

  Why, though? Why? Did you…

  “Do you even care about me, Splitter? Or was I just a ‘hot woman’ to sleep with and then take advantage of?”

  “No!” he said with such passion that I believed him. As much as I could believe him right then, anyway. “Trace suggested it. I hated the idea, but he was right. Not his fault, though. I did it. I care about you, Amber. I really do. I care too much about you.”

  I took a couple of steps back, toward the door. I wasn’t going to stick around any longer for this.

  “You know what’s shitty? I believe you. But you don’t get to say you care. You prove it. And the only thing you proved is that you care more about the Saints and your hide than you do me. And maybe in your spot, I would have done the same thing. I don’t know. I am not living your life, Splitter. But if there’s one thing you have taught me since you met me, it’s that I have to do what’s best for me. That has helped me in more ways than one. But right now, what it has taught me? Us, as a thing? It’s no more.”

  Splitter turned to me, his eyes down and shame written across his face.

  “I will continue to consult you via video chat and phone call, and when we get to court, I will be by your side,” I said. “But until then, consider this goodbye.”

  I left before he could say anything else. I had a sick feeling that if I stuck around and let him speak to me, he would convince me somehow to give him another chance.

  But there was a reason that my first rule was to tell the truth, and it wasn’t because I had a history of liars.

  It was because Jacob and I had struggled so long to speak our truth to each other in full.

  We never lied to each other. Whenever we had conversations about the direction of our marriage, we always had a nagging, spoken suspicion that things weren’t going as well as they could have. But after those brief conversations, we’d simply put them to the side and pretend they either didn’t happen or let enough time pass that they didn’t carry any more relevance.

  Given Splitter’s freedom and his don’t give a flip attitude, I had hoped the opposite might be true. I had hoped that his confession of all that he had done the night of the warehouse bombing suggested he would do the same personally.

  But no.

  The hunt for love would continue.

  Trace saw me as I exited the clubhouse, but I did not look at him or acknowledge him. If I had a modicum of empathy and sadness for Splitter, for Trace, I just felt rage and disgust. I’d forgive him for what he had suggested eventually, but not for a long time.

  I got in my BMW, shed a few tears, and drove off, determined to remain strong. I would not act weak and wallow in sorrow, at least not at the office. When I got home tonight, I was going to have a lot of wine and a lot of comedy shows on Netflix, but for the time being, I was going to compartmentalize that as I had my divorce.

  Love really sucks sometimes, doesn’t it? You put so much energy and emotion into it, and then it just falls right from underneath you.

  Splitter said he cared for me. OK. But he screwed up royally.

  I played my radio as loudly as I could, trying to drown out my thoughts. It worked to some degree, although I couldn’t say it did the job perfectly.

  About five miles from my office, I noticed smoke billowing in the distance but didn’t think anything of it. I had missed a couple of phone calls, but right now, my focus was just on getting to the office, getting work done, and going the heck home.

  When I got off the highway exit to my office, though, the smoke had come closer and closer.

  Then I turned the street to my office, and I realized what had happened.

  My building was on fire.

  Chapter 17: Splitter

  In front of the club, I often did my best to hide my more somber emotional moments, the ones in which I wanted to cry, wanted to wallow in pity, and wanted to avoid the world.

  Right now, though, I didn’t give a fuck about any of that.

  Amber had found out what had happened. I couldn’t keep it from her. I deserved to be dumped unceremoniously as I had because I had unceremoniously taken advantage of her trust in me. It was one thing to have lied about, say, where I had gotten a tattoo from. It was a very different one to use her lust against her.

  If I could ever get her back… and that was a big fucking if, one not likely to happen, but if… I was never putting anyone ahead of her. No one. No fucking one!

  Not even the Saints.

  That might have been the emotions talking, but the more I thought about it, the more I considered what Amber might mean to me, the more I realized that I was probably never going to have a chance at a woman like her again. She was just the perfect combination of looks, intelligence, drive, and empathy to work for a person like me. She made me a better person by smoking less and swearing less—things which, actually, had made my mind clearer.

  And I’d thrown it all away because I couldn’t ask one fucking question. “Can I see the names on the list?”

  She was right. She would have judged the hell out of me, told me I was a fucking idiot—might have even actually called me a fucking idiot—and then told me what I was doing was illegal and dangerous. But it still would not have been as bad as this.

  I heard a knock on the door. Trace entered without waiting for me to answer. He was the only person whose ass I wasn’t going to kick for coming in at this time for me.

  “I take it she found out about what happened?”

  I nodded. I didn’t even need to do that; there was nothing else that could have s
et Amber off to such an awful degree.

  “Can we trust that she’s not going to spill the beans?”

  “Of course she’s not going to spill the fucking beans, you idiot!” I roared. “She’s a better person than any of us! She’s not going to betray us! God fucking damnit!”

  Trace took a deep breath. He had to have known how bad he sounded, how selfish he sounded right now. I knew he had my best interests at heart, but boy did he look really fucking bad right now.

  “I’m sorry, Splitter,” he said. “I’m really sorry.”

  Thank God he didn’t add any “buts” to that, or I might have beaten his ass right then and there. I was so easily triggered then, I might have beaten him just for smiling.

  “This is so fucking dumb,” I said. “I should have never suggested it. I should’ve just taken the fall if it came to that. The Savage Saints would still go on.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  I looked up at what I considered a very peculiar statement.

  “We’re facing enormous pressure. Us avoiding this would still have brought pressure eventually from the state. And as it is, our little stunt might have brought some benefits.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Trace cleared his throat, pulled out his phone, and showed me a message.

  “I’ll get in his ear.”

  “Who the fuck is that?”

  “That is someone we have on Edwin’s staff,” Trace said. “We got him on board thanks to the work of BK last night. I don’t know that it’s going to work. Edwin is pretty hell-bent on getting us all behind bars. But the more we can slow down the process, the more chances we’ll have at winning this war. I’ll bet you this guy can get your trial delayed by some time.”

  “Wait,” I said.

  Had last night actually worked? Had it frozen, delayed, or even canceled the trial? Had it had some value?

  Well, even if it did, I’m not sure it much mattered. Amber hated me not for what I did, but for lying about it. There was nothing I could change about that.