Page 4 of The Devil's Playground

“One day, you might find the only woman who’ll make you lose your head and your damn heart. Someone who you love with every last piece of you, enough that you’d carve that same fucking heart out of your chest and let her stomp on it with her pretty little feet if it made her smile. Because, goddamn it, the only thing worth anything in this Godforsaken world is that fucking smile.”

His gaze never once leaves mine as the last of my smile slides off of my face as he adds one last shot before I pop open the passenger-side door: “I look forward to seeing it happen to you, Royce.”

That makes one of us.

One day… right. Because it hasn’t happened yet. Not to me, at least, no matter what the seedy underworld of Springfield believes. No matter what the various women I take to bed believe until I set them free. They all want to be the one to capture my heart, to make me love them, to tame the wild gambler with the wicked grin.

But they can’t.

Fall in love? Not going to happen. Obsess over one woman the way that Link’s been doing for half my life? Nope.

Give my heart away to someone else?

Yeah, no.

Kind of impossible when I realized I was heartless that night three years ago when I watched Heather Valiant die in my arms.

But I don’t tell Link that. I don’t have to. He’s the only one in Springfield who knows the truth about what really happened that night, which is why he said ‘one day’ the way he did.

I just hope that day never comes—even as I give the boss my trademark grin and say, “Wanna bet?”

ONE

SNOW

ROYCE

I’ve always hated the snow.

It’s cold. Wet. Damn inconvenient, too. Springfield gets its fair share of it, but there was no such thing as snow days in the city when I was a kid unless we were talking feet instead of inches, and I’d bet part of my dislike stems from way back then.

Two decades later and I still curse under my breath when I see the first flakes fall—and for a totally different reason than when I was a ten-year-old icicle, tromping my way through the eight blocks it took me to get to my elementary school.

The snow makes clean-up duty a bitch.

Countless footprints crunch the crusty, icy, day-old layer. Some of the snow melted through the day, turning into a solid sheet once the sun went down and the February temperature dropped. I’d prefer the fluffy shit. At least, then, I could kick aside the prints and no one would know we were here.

Instead, to mess up the scene, I instructed Marco and Case to add even more steps around the back of this empty lot while Killian searches for any shell casings we missed on our first sweep.

While I supervise, I stamp my feet, trying to get some feeling back in them. I can just hear Devil’s low growl as he mutters that I should’ve grabbed boots before I set out. My insistence on wearing my Italian loafers out to the scene meant I slipped once already on a patch of black ice I thought was a safer bet than the unplowed lot. One of the guys snickered. Too busy trying to keep from busting my ass, I don’t know which one it was, but they were all conveniently doing their tasks when I looked around before.

We’re a well-oiled machine. There’s five of us that Link calls on when there’s body duty, and All-Thumbs is back at the van, laying out the tarp so we can bag up the DB and store him until we can bury him.

If it wasn’t a syndicate-related hit, I’d leave him here. Good riddance. For the last six months, Garrett Fink’s been a pain in my ass. An informant who traded his info for free drinks down at the Playground, he kept hinting that he was going to spend more time over on the East End. It was his heavy-handed way of saying that he thought he’d get better perks informing for the Libellula crime family, and that the Sinners needed to step up.

I didn’t bother Link with that. I gave Garrett a couple of ‘sure’s and ‘maybe’s before eventually telling him that, if he wanted to see what being a Dragonfly was like so bad, go right ahead. He didn’t have Devil’s mark on his skin. He wasn’t a Sinner. He wasn’t a prisoner of the Devil’s Playground, either. He could leave whenever he wanted.

Garrett must have, too, since we got the call in earlier that his body was found in neutral territory, just a shade closer to the East End Damien Libelulla rules than the West Side where us Sinners have our turf.

It would be so much easier if the boss hadn’t gone along with the idea of a truce between us and the Dragonflies. I understand why he did. When his rival had his gun to Ava’s head, Link was willing to sacrifice anything to keep his wife safe. If that meant finally giving in to Damien’s insistence that his Family and the Sinners didn’t have to be constantly at war, fine. He would’ve done anything to get Ava out of danger.

Did I expect that he’d follow through with it once she was locked up tight, safe and sound inside of their penthouse? No. Last August, I had every one of our guys on guard, ready to retaliate.

Link had us stand down. First, because he was distracted by the big church wedding he was throwing for Ava. Then, because he found out that he was getting that heir he wanted after all. He’d knocked Ava up, and suddenly the idea that there wouldn’t be a firefight between the two main players in Springfield seemed a lot more attractive to the father-to-be.

Or maybe the friendship he once had with Damien meant enough to Link that it was worth seeing if we could have a little peace.

Not like I could say anything. The other Sinners wouldn’t dare, but as Link’s second, I technically could—but when I remember that I’m the reason the big divide between Sinners and Dragonflies really began to grow six years ago and… yeah. He wants peace?

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