by Hazel Parker
Maybe someday, when I quit and was on great terms with all of the Stones, things would be better. But until then…
I guess you could say I had my biggest sign yet that I needed to shack off the golden handcuffs and live a life I actually enjoyed, not one where leaving at six was considered leaving early.
After a quick nod to Gerald that was not reciprocated, I headed for the elevator, ignoring the fact that it probably would have looked better if I had stayed behind for another hour or two. If anyone questioned me, I would have just said that I assumed he was referring to ensuring days. And in any case, I couldn’t stay tonight—I had our weekly meeting with the rest of the Saints.
I pressed the elevator button and silently waited for it, hoping and praying that Gerald wouldn’t suddenly realize I hadn’t returned to my desk and called for me to return. The doors opened. A young woman with a binder in her arm smiled at me. She had dark brown hair, a sweet smile, and ferociously intense eyes.
I hadn’t interacted with the girl much before, but I immediately recognized her as Amelia Hughes.
Everyone in the company—not an exaggeration—knew of Amelia Hughes. She was the girl who combined the grit of investing with the blunt attitude of a hardcore feminist. She produced results like almost no one else her age, and she wasn’t afraid to make her accomplishments and feelings known. She was just as likely to hold a knife to someone’s throat to get them to do what she wanted as she was to pat them on the back and congratulate them.
And yet, through it all, I had never really had a bad interaction with Amelia. In fact, a part of me wondered if maybe she had a thing for me. She always smiled when she saw me, I frequently saw her staring at me in the employee cafeteria, and as soon as my name came up in the few meetings that we shared, she immediately clammed up and seemed to behave perfectly.
To me, she was a wonderfully hard worker who seemed to be quite nice to me. To the rest of the company, she was either going to become CEO someday or drop dead from stress.
And then, just before I could say hello, Amelia’s phone rang.
“Amelia Hughes,” she said in her formal voice. “Yes, Josh, I can hear you loud and clear; how are you?”
Not for long.
“Yes, Josh, we are planning on looking into your P&L to determine the appropriate amount to invest. Yes, I know it’s stressful. I’m sorry? Hello? Josh?”
She patted the phone as if that would somehow magically work.
“Fucking phone, fucking elevator,” she growled.
I did something then that most people would consider akin to poking a hungry lion with a freshly cooked piece of steak. I made a joke.
“Guess Josh is going to drop us because you went into an elevator, huh?”
The look that Amelia gave me was the kind of gaze that made me believe that someone could die from fright.
But then, just as quickly as her gaze had seemed intent on preceding a knife to the chest, she just rolled her eyes.
“It would be just the kind of thing that Ben would want to make happen so he doesn’t have to promote me. Might work out, though. Maybe you and I could start our own firm and burn this fucker to the ground.”
My eyes went wide as I laughed. It wasn’t so much that Amelia’s words scared me; I didn’t get scared easily in the world of finance. We were a bunch of smart people trying to reach a high score for our respective accounts.
It was more that she had cracked a joke instead of getting defensive at what I had said.
“While that would certainly be ideal, Amelia, it might also be a headache,” I said.
“Like we don’t deal with headaches here,” she said. “We should put Tylenol down as one of the company benefits.”
I laughed at how utterly true that statement was.
“And on top of that, I’d make my boss happy by actually staying past six.”
“Wait, you’re leaving now?”
She sounded, to my surprise, more disappointed than upset.
“Yeah, I got things to do and a life outside of here,” I said, hoping she didn’t press me for further detail. Which she didn’t, but her question still surprised me.
“What’s that like?”
She wasn’t asking it as a rhetorical question. She was completely serious.
“If I said out loud, Gerald would find out, and then he’d eliminate it.”
“What, by eating it?”
That made me laugh the hardest I had yet. She was whip-smart and funny as hell, with a sense of humor that the club would approve of. It was a damn shame she’d chosen to make her career finance and not...well, anything else that could have used a talented individual like herself.
The elevator doors opened, but not to the bottom floor.
“This is my stop,” Amelia said. “The coffee shop beckons for me. I don’t know how you manage to stay away from it, Thomas.”
“Everything in my life is so perfectly scheduled that I have no choice but to follow it,” I said with an eye roll.
That wasn’t quite true, but with the Savage Saints coming into my life, it was true that I had very little free time.
“Well, lucky man,” she said. “See you later.”
I nodded goodbye as the doors closed. She’s kind of cute. Too bad she’s actually dedicated to the job and someone I’ll probably never see when I quit.
If I quit.
But as soon as I got out of the lobby, I was no longer Thomas Fitzgerald, employee of Rothenberg Banking. I was Fitz, the secretary of the Savage Saints, Brooklyn chapter.
God, that felt fucking amazing to say.
* * *
I got to the clubhouse just before the meeting started at seven. I looked obscenely out of place in my suit and tie, but at least we were still a relatively small club with pretty low membership. We’d added about six members since we had started, but that only meant we had eleven members, including the officers.
Unfortunately for me, the other ten members, and especially the officers, seemed to delight in reminding me of my standing in the club.
“Fitz!” Marcel said, standing up and extending his hand. “You know we’re going to have to put a ban on ties and suits because of you, right? Only at weddings and funerals?”
“Well, you know, figured it was easiest to come directly here,” I said. “Didn’t want to hold up the meeting.”
“The fuck do you think you are, Marcel?” Uncle cracked, laughing loudly. “It’s alright, Fitz, we’re just giving you shit. I showed up in a suit and tie too. I just took mine off. Wouldn’t want to show up as a loser!”
The rest of the officers burst into laughter as I sheepishly took my seat. I laughed along with them, hoping that in short time, I’d get the chance to prove that they had nothing to laugh at me for.
“Now then,” Marcel said, clearing his throat. “Let’s talk about something that’s actually relevant. I received an email this past Saturday from what I believe to be the presidents of the Savage Saints chapters on the West Coast. The letter essentially states that we will never be a Savage Saint chapter. I perceive it as a threat.”
Uncle took a puff of his cigarette. Marcel and Biggie sat silently. Niner stared straight ahead, seemingly in his own world.
“I don’t think this is something that we need to pursue aggressively,” Marcel said. “They are on the other side of the country, and even if they want to come here and cause trouble, it would be an awful lot of effort for them to.”
“Don’t underestimate pride,” Niner said without elaborating.
“Legally speaking, we’re in something of a fucking pickle,” Uncle said. “It would be one thing if we were Savage Saints in, say, the punk t-shirt industry, but the fact that we are the Savage Saints, motorcycle club, means that we ripped off our identity right from them. We may have an argument that we are only local, but I’m not a lawyer, I have a soul, so I have no idea if that’s something that’s going to come back and bite us in the ass.”
“So you think we should j
ust ignore it?”
“No.”
Everyone turned their eyes to me. Admittedly, I had a stake in that I wanted to see the club take action so I could be a part of it. But even then, even if this led to nothing but some nasty emails, I didn’t think it was a good idea to just sit idly by.
“Part of being an MC is that you show strength when it is called for,” I said. “You demonstrate you're capable of fighting. If we don’t say anything, we’re saying we will cower at the first sign of trouble. I know that’s not the case for this club.”
Marcel stroked his chin.
“Didn’t think Fitzy would be the one to say that, but he does make a good point. Us being so new, we have to be able to stand up for ourselves. Still, if we do so, I don’t think we need to expend a ton of resources or time on it.”
“Oh, agreed there,” I said. “Not like we’re going to war with them.”
“No, of course not,” Uncle said. “But Fitz is right. We should respond in a way that makes it clear we heard them, and we’re not afraid of them.”
“OK,” Marcel said. “I think we’re all on the same page there. Does anyone think they could cause trouble, though? Maybe the Las Vegas chapter, given how they have money.”
“They have money, but do they have ‘fly everyone over and raise hell’ money?” Uncle said with a snort. “Even if they have eight figures, that’s a shitload of time they’d need to take away from their club just to make some noise over here. No one’s ever going to confuse Brooklyn Repairs for a fucking rich haven of strippers and dancers. At most, they’ll send a delegate. We’ll play nice, we’ll tell them we’ll consider whatever they have to say, and then we’ll leave it at that.”
“All works for me,” Marcel said. “Does anyone else have anything to say on the matter?”
No one did.
“I will email them back and wait to hear their response. I won’t be inflammatory, but I won’t cower, either. Now then. I mentioned last week that we needed some new revenue streams. Does anyone have any thoughts?”
This was my area of expertise. Finally—
“You could get into guns and drugs and make fucking bank,” Uncle said. “Trust me, kid, we got money and we got connections. You’d be amazed what sort of shit you can get away with when you have more than seven numbers attached to your bank account.”
Well, so much for that. The funny thing was, though I didn’t have an eight-figure net worth, I probably came very close to what Uncle had in terms of money. I certainly had more money than the other three combined.
But that didn’t mean I had carte blanche just to do whatever I wanted. On the contrary, that seemed like an excellent way to guarantee that Kyle would have multiple options to throw us under the bus.
“Really,” Marcel said, “I’m not interested in going back to jail, you know. My little girl—”
“Oh, you’re so naive,” Uncle said as he took another puff of his cigarette. “Do you really think if we get busted, we’re going to put your ass back in jail? Fuck no! We let some of the prospects take the fall.”
And if they aren’t big enough pieces, someone else in this room takes a fall. Me or Niner.
“I’m just saying, we don’t have to decide upon it today. But you’d be well-fucking served to do it soon.”
“I’ll think on it,” Marcel said. “But don’t count on me thinking it’s a good plan. Anyone else?”
Defeated by Uncle and his aggressive approach to black-hat tactics, I declined to say a word. I was also just worn out and beaten down.
“Very well. Party tomorrow; everyone come. Fitz, throw on a t-shirt. You’re not allowed to be overdressed.”
I smiled as everyone else got up from the table. I had survived the meeting relatively unscathed.
But the day had taken something of a toll on me. I knew the direction I needed to go with my life, but every time fate tried to push me forward, I was left with a bit of an aftertaste that made me wonder if it was such a good idea. Even though I’d wanted Gerald to fire me, I couldn’t help but feel a little concern when it all went down.
Instead of sticking around and having some drinks, I went to the rear of the building and grabbed my motorcycle. I wheeled it out to the front of the building and paused. Finally, I could be free.
I put my helmet on, swung my leg over, and revved the engine.
I may have had golden handcuffs at work and the lowest step on the ladder at the club, but when I was on the bike, I could practically fly to the top of the world. Finance, politicking, money...none of it mattered.
I guess you could say that’s why I joined the Savage Saints.
To be free.
Chapter 2: Amelia
He’s pretty cute.
It’s too bad that I’m too dedicated to this job, and it’s someone whom I will probably work with for the next decade and a half or so. Otherwise, I might just have a drink or two with him.
Assuming that I could ever find the time to break away for a drink or two, that is.
As I walked away from Thomas, I had to fight not to turn and look at him. Guys like him at a place like Rothenberg Banking were few and far between—actually, scratch that, guys like him in the world were few and far between. He was someone who seemed to have his shit together in all areas of life—his career, his fitness, his personality...and to boot, I was sure that he was single.
Meanwhile, here I was, a hot mess whenever I wasn’t running numbers or creating reports. Of course, no one knew it. I had so perfectly crafted an image at work of a hard-nosed, grinding professional that no one ever bothered to question if I was burning myself out. Ben was literally the first person to have ever told me to slow down.
Sometimes, when I got home, I would have a quasi-nervous breakdown. I would start to cry. I would start to laugh. I would start to drink. I’d do all the things that normal people evenly spaced out. Crying was normal when you did it at sad moments. Laughing was normal when you saw something humorous. When you did both in the span of ten minutes over nothing more than the thoughts in your head, you were a hot mess.
But hey, I was making over five hundred grand a year, not including bonuses and such, and I was well-liked at the bank. So clearly, that more than made up for the fact that I was fucking crazy, right?
Secretly—I barely admitted this to myself, but in those moments of nervous breakdown, it was laid out fully in my mind—I would have loved to have had a day where I just walked into the bank, gave everyone the middle finger, and walked out, never to return. I’d take all the money I had saved, retired to Maine or some remote state out west, and never see any of them again. I would unwind, find the meaning of life, and write the next great American novel.
There was just one problem with that. It assumed that I had the ability to unwind and find meaning in life. My job was everything to me. It had been instilled in me by my father that my work was my worth, and the more work I could do on my own, the better. If I were to suddenly quit, I wouldn’t just be letting down my bank account. I’d be letting down my very self-esteem and self-worth.
So, yeah, no fucking wonder I was so tightly wound and just bursting at the seams with blunt truths every opportunity I got.
I got myself two cups of coffee while considering finding a pill at a nearby pharmacy to calm my anxiety. That seemed like a terrible idea to suddenly kick myself into gear with one substance while simultaneously calming myself with something else, but there just had to fucking be something in the world that could do both at once. Make me productive at work and calm in the head. Why the fuck didn’t anything exist? Why the fuck weren’t we investing in companies that could do that?
Ignoring the insane thoughts that danced in my head—the white noise equivalent of my mind—I went back upstairs and started fretting over what I always did. Numbers. Reports. PowerPoints. Excel sheets.
I swore, I used Microsoft Office products more than anyone else in the entire world. I could have given a better presentation on how to use those pr
ograms than the fucking engineers in Seattle. I’d probably get paid a tenth of what I was doing now, but at least I’d have a twentieth of the stress.
I was up in my office until eleven, and the only reason that I left then was because I had to be back in at seven for a conference call with our office in the UK. While that might have suggested I was going to get seven hours of sleep, in reality, I had to wake up at five-thirty to get dressed, and it would take me a good hour to unwind just enough to get sleep. So five hours was the ideal that I was aiming for, but in reality, I was probably going to get three or four.
I got home about half an hour later, and as soon as the door closed to my apartment, I kicked my heels off, rubbed my toes on the carpet beneath me, and slumped against the wall. Exhaustion was an understatement.
So was the fact that I needed a drink.
Once I gathered enough strength to move to the kitchen—a much harder task than it sounded, given how all of my fatigue seemed to catch up at once—I poured myself a vodka tonic. My hands shook as I stirred, a surefire sign that my nerves were at the end, and I was running on fumes. Still, I took a sip of the drink.
It was much too strong. Somehow, I had gotten the volume of the tonic mixed up with the volume of the alcohol. It was exactly what I didn’t need to do, and yet I had gone ahead and done it like an idiot.
Fuck, I needed a vacation.
But double fuck, I couldn’t take one.
I went to the window of my apartment, some thirty-eight floors above the streets of Manhattan. Even from this high up, I could hear taxis honking. But on this night, I was more taken in by the view. The Empire State Building’s majestic lighting was easily visible, as was almost all of downtown Manhattan. I could see Brooklyn in the far distance, a borough that seemed like suburbia to Manhattanites but was as much a city as anything else with a population of over two million people.
