Page 6 of The Devil's Playground

Dickhead. He spent half the clean-up in the van and he wants to yank my chain? I’m not Link. I won’t retaliate by swinging my fist or pulling out my piece. But if depriving one of my guys of some free booze reminds him where his place is in our hierarchy?

Yeah. I’ll do that, too.

Killian drives off first. Marco rolls up his window, more to drown out All-Thumbs’ groaning that I’m being an ass than because Case is still complaining that it’s fucking cold out.

Once they get gone, I open up my curled fingers, glancing down at the quarter nestled against my palm. There’s ol’ George Washington again. With a grin, I flip it, nodding to myself when I see him on the other side. Maybe it’s not fair, rigging my pockets with a double-headed quarter in the right one, and a double-tailed one in the left, but life’s not fair, is it?

Besides, I never leave anything up to chance.

When I started checking her schedule, seeing what shifts Jessie put her on, I should have known it was more than just making sure the new waitress I hired for the Playground was settling in well.

At first, I told myself that she was new to the job and the life. It isn’t often we take on waitresses that don’t have the sort of experience our girls need, but when Officer Burns suggested Nicolette Williams for an opening, I did the interview as a favor for one of Link’s cops. If I didn’t think she would be a good fit for us, I’d say I tried, then send her on her way.

Well. That was the plan.

Then I met her. I got my first glimpse into those haunted brown eyes of hers. I looked at her wavy, golden blonde hair—a few shades darker than my own—and imagined it spilling across my pillow. The tiny diamond stud in her nostril winked up at me, tempting me in a way I couldn’t understand at the time. And when I asked her why she wanted the job, the frank way she said, “Because I desperately need money,” resonated with me.

She was working at an Italian restaurant in downtown Springfield already so she had server experience. When I probed her more on how much she was looking for, she had another honest answer: “More than I’m getting at Mama Maria’s, but not as much as I’d get if I sold myself alongside some whiskey.”

I respected that. Anyone who’s in Springfield long enough to learn about what the Sinners Syndicate sells discovers that we do the three g’s: girls, gambling, and guns. For a cut of the profits and promised protection, we have rooms on the floor above the Playground where ‘wallets’—our customers—can buy a night with one of our girls.

Nicolette didn’t want to become one of them. She just wanted to sling drinks and earn tips, and with Burns’s recommendation in my ear, I took her on—and that’s fucking bullshit. Link’s the one who deals with the crooked cop. I didn’t hire her for Burns.

I hired her for me.

It’s hard to explain. From the moment she walked into my office for the interview, I was snagged. She caught my attention, and I kept waiting for her to lose it. Due to my own twisted code of ethics, as soon as I gave her the job, she became untouchable to me.

Three months later, and I’m regretting that.

I don’t fuck my employees. It’s a thin line, but one I don’t cross. And I would have had to have been a bigger asshole than I am to refuse her a well-paying job just because something about her made me want her at first glance.

So I gave her the job, put Jessie in charge of her, and tried to keep my distance.

Tried.

Definitely failed.

The spark was there during the interview. No denying that. Nicolette caught my eye, and whenever we were at the Playground at the same time, I unerringly found her. She seemed to fit in easily with some of the other waitresses, making friends with a couple of the downstairs girls. Then I heard through the grapevine that, despite how clear she made it she was in it for the cash, she gave one of the other girls half her paycheck so Tina could buy Christmas presents for her kids.

I arrange bonuses for the Playground employees every Christmas. Following Nicolette’s lead, I doubled it for the front staff out of my own pocket so that anyone working for the Sinners had a merry Christmas. When I realize that I did that because I wanted her to have one… well, I didn’t play favorites.

I want to play favorites.

She’s so fucking cute. I can’t explain it. I’ve gone for all kinds of women before. Knock-outs, plain Janes, women who are more adorable than attractive. I’m a ‘personality’ guy, first and foremost, and the little hints of who she is behind her apron and her serving tray intrigue me. More than that, though, she’s cute. Only a couple of years younger than I am, the twenty-seven-year-old waitress has a perpetual smile on her face, and whenever she’s not being drowned out by the thumping bass coming from the club’s dance floor, she prances around the kitchen, humming songs under her breath.

I recognized one. Some Disney shit, about a spoonful of sugar. It’s an infectious melody that got stuck in my head for days, to the point that I fired up my TV, found the film, and watched Mary Poppins for the first time in my life to see what she liked about it.

That’s not all I did, either.

It’s Link’s fault. When I couldn’t get her deceptively innocent face out of my head, I started watching her as she made her way around the club, taking orders and serving drinks. The tiny uniforms our waitresses wear might be good for business—and excellent for tips—but when I couldn’t go a single night without stopping by my personal office and rubbing one out… I knew I was in trouble.

Then, when I stopped chasing other women because none of them compared to her… I accepted that I was fucked, and obviously not in the good way.

So, pulling a page out of Link’s book, I started to watch her. No. Let me be clear. It became stalking, and I knew I crossed a different line the first time I looked up her schedule, saw she was off, tapped into the HR files, got her address, and went by. I just wanted to see if she was there, and when she was? I didn’t leave.

Just like I caught Link doing three years ago, I sat in my car and I watched Nicolette’s windows for any glimpse of her I could find.

I spied the cameras the first time I drove over to her house. They’re not like the regular doorbell ones that some homeowners get. She has that, yeah, but two pairs of obvious surveillance cameras. One on each side of her house so that there aren’t any dead spots, plus another couple posted on the back to guard the fenced-in yard.

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