Page 68 of The Devil's Playground

There’s no way to know which floor belongs to Royce unless someone told him, and when I’m not hanging out with my lover in his place because he’s too busy to keep me guarded? He shuffles me off to the penthouse to keep Ava Crewes company.

Now, I like Ava. It was easy to form a quick friendship with her once I realized that, when it comes to any possible relationship she has with Royce, I have nothing to worry about. They’re close because he’s Devil’s right-hand man and Ava is Devil’s coddled bride.

And despite being a coddled mafia queen, she’s so sweet and down-to-earth that I couldn’t help but like her. Besides, it’s not her fault that she gets stuck with me because, in his way, Royce is just as overprotective as Ava’s husband. Especially since she’s going on seven months pregnant, Devil refuses to let Ava leave the penthouse. I’m not forbidden to go myself, though Royce has ‘suggested’ that I stay upstairs where it’s safe while he’s busy with Syndicate business.

Like tonight.

The top Sinners seem to be busy, busy fellas. There’s always some deal going down, some business that needs to be taken care of, some meet that needs to be made. More often than not, Devil has to be there—as the head of the mafia—with Royce acting as both back-up and the voice of reason for him.

However, when Royce received a phone call two hours ago, it wasn’t a Sinner who needed his help. It was that cousin of his. Jake. The guy who got involved with Heather Valiant all those years ago, then got poor Royce mixed up in it, too.

I don’t know what he did. From Royce’s expression as he kept the conversation short and clipped, it’s not good. It was important enough to have him deciding to send me up to the penthouse so he could go out and handle it, though he swore he’d be home for dinner.

Ava’s husband is gone, too. Where? Who knows. Unlike me, Ava doesn’t want to get involved with the Sinners. At first, that surprised me. I mean, she has the devil brand on her inner forearm just like the rest of the gang. When I pointed that out, she actually smiled and said she got that to piss her husband off.

Okay, then.

A lot of the wives and girlfriends don’t have the mark. They don’t do ‘property’ on the West Side, though Royce told me he could arrange for that guy, Cross, to give me one if I want it. I’m thinking about it. Part of me really wants to say ‘fuck it’ and get it done. It wouldn’t even be a knock against Kieran, either, like erasing his dragonfly with my seahorse was. It would be my way of saying I was going all in with the man that I love.

The Sinners are his life. If I take their brand, telling all of Springfield I’m one of them, I’m telling Royce in one of the only ways I can that I’m his.

He loves me. He told me so. He says it in words, in the matching seahorse tattoo he got just for me, and definitely in the way he’ll kill to protect me, even if he doesn’t do the actual dirty work himself. He loves me—and I just wish that was enough.

It’s so soon. That’s all I keep thinking about. It’s the end of March, I haven’t been with him for two full months yet, and I want to believe this whirlwind relationship means forever… but I thought that about Kieran once, and got stuck with him for way longer than it should have taken me to get out.

I don’t want to leave Royce. But I have baggage, and he has never committed to anyone before… so, despite the seahorse, I just don’t understand why would he choose me?

He says he’s protecting me. When he kisses me on the forehead, leaving me with my friend, I can’t help but feel like I’m being passed from babysitter to babysitter.

In frustration, I mention that to Ava. She actually smiles, her green eyes bright as she shakes her head and says, “Welcome to the West Side.”

She seems to think it’s normal. I guess, when she’s married to the head of the Sinners Syndicate, expecting his baby early this summer, it is.

I let it go. Instead, since it’s just the two of us in the living room—with the housekeeper in the kitchen, and Ava’s personal guard milling around the front hallway—we decide to spend the afternoon planning her upcoming baby shower.

I’m honored when Ava asks me for my help. A little less than honored when she admits that she has no one else to ask since she cut ties with her old life when she chose to marry Link—like Royce, she calls Devil “Link” though I’ll never dare—and the other Sinner wife is child-free. I don’t know shit about baby showers, but thinking like Royce, I decide to help her research how to throw the best one possible.

Around mid-afternoon, we take a break. I’m still holding out hope that Royce will bring dinner home like he promised, but when Ava murmurs something about craving tacos, I think that sounds like a great idea.

“I had these really awesome tacos from Jay’s last week. Link picked them up for us when he was coming home for the night.”

“I’ve heard of that place, but never at there. They’re good?”

“Very. But they don’t deliver.”

That’s okay. I shrug. “I’ll go get you some tacos.”

“What? No.”

“Why not?”

Ava leans back into her seat, cradling her baby bump. “Seriously, Nicolette. I mean it. You don’t have to do that. If I’m hungry, I can get something from the kitchen.” She pauses for a moment, then chuckles. “Well, no. Mama Mona will insist on feeding me?—”

“And she makes a mean taco?” I ask.

I’ve met the Crewes’s housekeeper-slash-cook-slash-honorary grandmother. A stern yet friendly Polish woman in her late sixties, she lived in the same apartment building as both Devil and Ava back when they were teenagers. When Devil became, well, Devil, he hired Mona to work with him. Ava admitted to me that Mona was facing homelessness when he did, and that Ava’s husband wasn’t as much of a dangerous gangster as his reputation suggests, but even serial killers can love their mamas.

Kieran certainly does. With a leaf tattooed down the back of his arm for every life he took as a Dragonfly, he might boast that he was an enforcer for the Libellula Family, but I know better. He’s a sick and twisted killer who’d kill a hundred men if he thought it would bring Maizy Alfieri back from her grave…

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