Spades: Motorcycle Club Romance (Savage Saints MC Book 5)

by Hazel Parker

  I laughed.

  And I didn’t just laugh. I laughed in his face, making it a point to make sure that the force of my laugh and maybe some spittle hit him. I swore I heard him growling, but I didn’t stop.

  “That might work on some of your businessmen in Russia,” I said. “But we’re a motorcycle club. Not sure if you’re familiar with it, so let me explain. We don’t deal in bullshit. We are outlaws. If you pull some shit like this, we’re not going to rely on the justice system to help. We’re going to rely on ourselves. And you might put up more of a fight than some stupid patron who gets too drunk at The Red Door, but you’re going to quickly realize we will not be intimidated. Some rich Russian doesn’t scare me.”

  “You apologize!” Igor said, his voice rising.

  “For what?” I shouted.

  For a brief moment, I wondered where the hell Natasha was in all of this. I supposed it was possible that she was in the shower still, or maybe she was in her bedroom, but surely, she had to hear the pandemonium going on right outside her front door, right?

  “For courting your daughter? She’s not your possession, Igor! Stop treating her like so!”

  “She is not my possession, but she is a Sokolov, and Sokolovs must treat the family name with respect!”

  “Then maybe you can start with respecting your daughter,” I said.

  Igor took a step forward, meaning that the two of us were now close enough to headbutt each other if we wanted to.

  “Pick your next words very carefully, Richard,” he said. “You are not the only one with friends in high places who can help out. See, you don’t rely on the police. But I have the police under my control. I have the government under my control. I have something you don’t, and that’s a face that can be taken seriously in public. You think the public will ever believe a tattooed biker over a businessman? Never. So, speak carefully.”

  OK. I can take a lot of shit. I can take a lot of things. But threats like this?

  “There was one thing you fucked up,” I said.

  With that, I headbutted him and delivered a hard body shot with my right fist, crumpling him to the ground.

  “You didn’t tell me to pick my next action carefully.”

  I started to try and move past him, but Igor tackled me to the concrete ground, almost knocking my head straight into the pavement. He got off two solid punches on my face, delivering much more force than I had anticipated, before I bucked him off of me and onto the yard. I quickly hopped to my feet.

  “Not so bad, Igor,” I said.

  Igor charged at me. I was surprised to see his fighting technique was actually pretty grounded and solid—it wasn’t the flailing strikes of a drunken bar patron, but the solid fundamentals of someone who had trained. I got a good cross on him, but he followed that up with a hook punch that collided with my jaw.

  “Not so bad indeed,” he said. “They didn’t train me in the military for nothing.”

  Then the door opened. Both of us stopped dead in our tracks, horrified at the sight of Natasha on the verge of tears.

  “What the hell is wrong with you two?” she said, her voice wavering. “Dad! Richard! Get a grip!”

  “You think you can carouse with this man without consequence?” Igor said. “You will find a man worthy of your love, or you will—”

  But Igor never finished his sentence, because Natasha stormed over and slapped him hard—the kind of hard that produced a smacking sound that could be heard in the entire neighborhood.

  “I will love who I want to love, Dad!” she said.

  “Damn strai—”

  But I didn’t finish my words either, because I got slapped just as hard.

  “You think just because you don’t like my Dad, you can hit him?” she said. “He’s not a rival club member! He’s my father!”

  I bit my lip. I fucked up, didn’t I? I fucked up big time.

  “Both of you disgust me!” Natasha said, tears coming down her face as she struggled to fight them off. “Dad! I don’t care if I fall out of your will! I am a grown woman, and I am going to make my own choices! And Richard! You… you…”

  Her words failed her, which in some ways hurt me even more. It was like she didn’t have much to say that was bad, but she still couldn’t bring herself to take my side.

  “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “You didn’t deserve to get in the middle of this.”

  Didn’t? As in, this is done?

  “Natasha—”

  But she was storming inside before either of us could say a word, slamming the door behind her with the kind of force that caused both Igor and I to jump in surprise. I rubbed my jaw, the pain slowly setting in. I turned to Igor, who was doing the same.

  For the first time since I had known him, I saw an expression that I didn’t think he was capable of feeling—hurt. He genuinely looked like he might cry, and I knew it had nothing to do with the punches I had landed on him. He had a mess to deal with, and I had my own.

  But neither of us would solve our messes with the other there.

  “You leave me alone,” I said. “And I’ll leave you alone.”

  Igor gave only the slightest of nods, but it was enough that I felt like we had some sort of mutual agreement not to escalate the situation. I went to my bike, hopped on, and started the engine. I waited a couple of seconds, just on the off chance that Natasha would come running down, ask me to come back, and leave her father in the dust.

  But I had misunderstood her relationship with her father. She might have disagreed with him on a lot of things and found him too conservative on many things, but she still loved him. I never thought she hated him, but I had just assumed she’d move on faster than she had.

  I had failed. I had misunderstood what her father meant to her. And it had cost me the best thing I’d had since Mama and I started The Red Door.

  I turned my hand, moving the motorcycle forward, but my eyes never left her window until it had completely disappeared from my field of vision. It was, I imagined, the last time I would ever see her.

  Chapter 14: Natasha

  Life can really suck sometimes.

  Six days had passed since the fight between my father and Richard, and none of them were good. None of them had days of silver linings, of hope, of optimism. None of them made me believe that my father and Richard could ever make amends for what had happened.

  As far as I was concerned, at this point, I had given up on ever seeing Richard again. I’d obviously see my father again, but he had the good sense to leave me the hell alone. Even the past three days at work, he’d avoided me. I’d seen him once coming in the opposite direction in the hallway, but a quick reversal to a different place in the building told him everything he needed to know.

  I was infuriated at both of them, but more than that, I was upset with myself for believing that Richard and my father could ever coexist once the truth came out. I wished it hadn’t happened because my father had taken matters into his own hands—I wished that he had confronted me first so I could handle things—but it was obviously far too late to do that. And in any case, the person really at fault wasn’t my father or Richard.

  It was me.

  On this Thursday, like the previous three days, I had just gone to the office in my own car—ignoring the offers for Antonio—kept my head down and gone straight to my office. I barely acknowledged Debbie when I walked in the building, and though she had asked if everything was OK, I dismissed it by saying I was fine and didn’t need to have her comfort any further.

  When I got to my office, I shut the door before I even had the computer open, an unusual act compared to my normal open-office policy. I just needed at least a week before I could even face the world, not just because I’d lost Richard, but because of the embarrassing way that my father had acted.

  I also needed to find a way to get over the fact that I missed Richard and I missed the normal, rational father that I had for most of my life.

  Maybe I had first thought th
at I only liked Richard because he was such a stark contrast to the usual pickings, but after our second date in the mountains, I knew then that I liked Richard for the man he was. He hadn’t changed who he was just because he’d hit my father in the face—if anything, it only further reinforced that he was a rugged outlaw. It was the wrong side of the double-edged sword.

  And my father… terrible as he was when it came to my dating life, he was an amazing person otherwise. He ensured all of my needs were met, would help me train for athletics as a child, and encouraged me to make friends throughout school. He was not great at understanding emotional needs or opening up, but I didn’t need my father to have that. He was great at what he was, and he was most certainly not those things that last Friday.

  But fuck if it was going to be easy to get over that.

  I tried to throw myself at work, analyzing potential ways we could get my father onto the board of directors at some of the big-name casino companies in town. All that ended up doing, though, was make me wonder who else my father might threaten or who else my father might get in a fight with over his standing in a given company. It also made me—

  A gentle knock came at the door. I took in a deep breath in the mouth and let it out through my nose.

  “Come in.”

  I immediately leaned back and crossed my arms when I saw that it was my father, still sporting some purple and black around his eyes. His face wasn’t as beat up as I would have thought for having taken on Richard, but there were definite signs he’d been in a fight, even if someone hadn’t suspected or known about it.

  “Hi,” he said. “Do you have a moment?”

  “Depends on what it’s for,” I said.

  My father nodded, closed the door behind him, and sat down in the chair in front of my desk. I kept my arms crossed and had trouble looking at him in the eyes as he spoke.

  “I came here to explain myself,” he said.

  “OK,” I said.

  I was really looking for an apology. Maybe that would come at the end of this; maybe I’d get that after he explained whatever he needed to. I didn’t keep my hopes up, though.

  “The Sokolov family name is something that is greatly valued by me,” he said. “We have been wealthy for generations, but more than that, we have been wealthy in reputation. We are considered tough but fair, ruthless but ethical, and uncompromising but loyal in our business endeavors. Can you understand why this would matter to me?”

  I nodded. I’d heard so many stories about my grandfather and my great-grandfather and my great-great-grandfather, stretching back to the nineteenth century, that I was pretty sure I could recite them by memory.

  “Therefore, it is essential that not only do I carry on the family name with the honor and pride that my father and his predecessors did, but that you do the same. You are different—you are a woman, the first in the family chain who would inherit the title. We have no sons—”

  “And you never bothered to have one,” I said. “Yet you put the weight of such expectations on me? That does not seem like a very fair deal to me.”

  I’d almost never seen my father get emotional, but at this moment, he came close to what I felt was real, genuine emotion. He bowed his head, bit his lip, and sighed.

  “I have not told you this before, because I did not want you to assume unnecessary guilt,” he said. “But when your mother gave birth to you, there were severe complications that almost killed her. Numerous surgeries and treatments were done. Your mother, obviously, survived and returned to full health, but she was warned that if she got pregnant and tried to give birth again, the risk of death was very high.”

  “Oh my God…”

  My father was right. I never had heard that before. I’d never even had a hint of it before. I just assumed that they had wanted one child and to give everything to me.

  Apparently, there’s a lot to my parents that I don’t know about.

  “My father pushed me to have a boy, but I felt that you could do well enough. It’s a different world now than the one that he grew up in. It’s one where you may someday run this family-owned company and be treated with the respect a man would.”

  “OK…” I said.

  It was nice to see my father show some vulnerability. But I still felt like it needed to connect to a larger point and possibly an apology.

  “So with this all in mind, I am hyper-conscious, perhaps to a fault, about who you marry and what impact it has upon the Sokolov name,” he said. “I… I am sorry for my behavior last week.”

  It was a start. I ultimately wanted him to apologize for trying to control my dating and marriage life so much, but I was willing to accept one thing at a time. For now, I would take that he was apologetic about fighting Richard.

  “I just want you to marry someone who will treat you well,” he said. “And I have a hard time believing that a member of a biker gang would be that.”

  “First of all, Dad, you know he’s not ‘just a member of a biker gang,’ and it’s a club, not a gang,” I said. “Second, if he’s someone that you have such a hard time believing would be good for me, then maybe you should consider that he runs one of the most exclusive nightlife spots in this city—and that’s saying something. And, I should add, it’s a place you have gone to play poker before and network.”

  “Yes, I am aware,” he said, seeming to absorb what I said with ease.

  “So then… I fail to see why you would say he’s not a good man when you spend so much time there.”

  My father bit his lip, struggling for the right words. He started and stopped multiple times. I refused to allow myself to believe that he might have been reconsidering how he felt about Richard; that felt too optimistic. But he was at least starting to let his beliefs in his control over my dating life crumble just a little bit.

  “The club offers a wonderful opportunity for me,” he said. “And Richard… I do not think he is a bad man. He has a great punch, actually.”

  I knew my father meant the line as a joke, but I didn’t react. I didn’t feel like going off on a tangent related to that right now.

  “He is a good man who has been kind and generous, last Friday aside. I just… you can have any man in the world you want, Natasha. Anyone who passes you up and is single would be out of their mind.”

  “I know that,” I said. “But I’m not looking to date and marry a resume, Dad. I don’t care where someone went to school. I don’t care how much money they have, so long as they are self-sustaining and not a bum. I don’t care about what family name they have. I just care about how they are as a person. Are they someone that takes care of their loved ones? Are they someone who has friends? Are they kind? A lot of the men you introduce me to only seem interested in power or politics.”

  “Yes, unfortunately, I am aware of that,” my father said, a surprising admission. “I will admit that many nights, I just feel like I am giving you the best of the available options. It’s not something I take pride in. I just… I want you to be happy.”

  I couldn’t help but smile at that. I always knew my father had my best interests in heart, even if the manner in which he went about it was very poorly done. It was just nice to hear him somewhat apologize for handling it poorly.

  “And I will be, Dad,” I said. “You need to trust me and my choices. Richard…”

  I bit my lip. Richard had his own makeup work he had to do. I wasn’t going to just take him back so easily for trying to solve the dispute with my father with violence.

  But he was the one that I had most recently dated—if you could call it that; I sure did.

  “Richard was, is a man that I know is good. If I wind up seeing him again, trust me that things will be fine, OK?”

  My father didn’t look comfortable at all with the idea, but I could see a part of him was struggling to fight the impulse to say no. If he was neutral or at least willing to step aside on the issue, then I could live with that.

  “You know, I keep telling him to sell me The Red Do
or,” he finally said. “He’s a stubborn man when it comes to that place.”

  “You keep telling him, or you drop hints?” I said with a small smile.

  I knew how my Dad negotiated. It wasn’t direct, not at first at least.

  “Well, I mentioned that I would imagine the club would be worth tens of millions, and he said he had no interest in selling it, which confused me.”

  “He’s not motivated by money,” I said, a phrase that seemed to baffle my father. “He’s not going to retire.”

  My father sighed.

  “You know, I cannot say I was happy when he tried to fight me,” he said. “But I have a level of respect for him that goes beyond what I think you realize.”

  “How?” I said instinctively.

  Part of me suspected it was just the fact that Richard wasn’t afraid to fight my father; he wasn’t someone who was going to fear vague threats of Russian violence. I hoped it had something to do with Richard’s steadfast commitment to his principles, but I got the sense that my father wasn’t going to admit as much so easily.

  “I will just leave it at this,” my father said. “Though Vladimir’s death was tragic, he was not someone that was particularly close to you; this I am aware of.”

  Huh, maybe Dad does know and relate to us in ways beyond just business.

  “When I saw Richard there, I was curious to see how he would react to my presence. He was unfazed. That was not something I see often.”

  He cleared his throat. Am I going to get that apology, Dad? For controlling my dating? Can you give that to me? Or is that going to be too much for you to try and handle right now?

  “In any case, I should get going; I do not want to waste too much of your day.”

  It wouldn’t be a waste if you apologized. But I guess you can’t bring yourself to it yet. I suppose I should just be happy that you’re making progress, but…

  “Oh, and before I forget,” he said, placing his hands on the chair he had just sat in. “I know this may seem like it is in poor taste after our conversation just now. But I am throwing a party on Saturday. The mayor of Las Vegas will be there at that time. Please come.”