Chapter 3: The Devil’s Bargain: Chapter 2

Pocketing my business phone, I shove my body out of the booth, loose tie swaying as I start to push my way through the crowd.

It doesn’t take more than two bodies stumbling away before the Playground recognizes that Devil’s on the move. They clear a path for me, all while I’m muttering, “Shit, shit, shit,” under my breath, hoping like hell that the phone keeps ringing.

I have two missed calls by the time I stalk past the guys at the door. Nodding at them, I step out into the night. There’s still a line of wallets and fresh meat waiting to get in, but they all seem to have something else to look at when I turn my dark glare on them.

Four steps away from the club is all I can spare before I jab my thumb at the screen, dialing the number back. If she doesn’t answer… if I missed talking to Ava for the first time in years because I couldn’t fucking hear myself think over the pulsing music, I might put a bullet through the DJ just to get out my frustration.

Ava doesn’t know it, but she saved his life tonight by answering on the second ring, because the moment I hear that it’s her, she has all of my attention.

Her voice is shaky and breathy as she gasps out, “Hello? Link? Is that you?”

Link…

A lump lodges in my throat. I swallow it roughly. “Yeah. It’s me.”

“Oh God, it’s Ava. Ava Monroe. I… I don’t know if you remember me—”

Remember her? The woman I’ve obsessed over for nearly half my damn life? Who haunts my dreams, stars in my nightmares, and is the closest thing I get to finding any pleasure in this fucked-up world when I stand outside of her place, watching her through the window, knowing that so long as she’s safe, everything I’ve ever done—everything I’ve ever lost—is worth it?

“I remember you, Ava.” It comes out short. I don’t mean for it to, but I can’t help myself as I demand in my gruff voice, “What is it you need?”

Because one thing for sure: if she’s calling me now, she needs something. Whether it’s from Lincoln Crewes or the Devil of Springfield, I don’t know—and I couldn’t give a shit. Whatever she wants, it’s hers.

And then she says, in a voice that’s closer to a broken sob, “I need your help,” and nothing else in the world matters.

You don’t rise up through the ranks of an organized crime family before starting—and leading—your own syndicate without having a knack for taking control. Forcing myself to set aside the fact that this is Ava… my Ava… on the phone, I go right into ‘boss’ mode.

Keeping my questions to the point, I get as much information from Ava as possible before she dissolves into sobs that have my trigger finger itching. I promise her that I’ll be right there, then wait until she hiccups “okay” before I kill the call and pocket the phone.

There are no contacts in that one. I’ve held onto it for the last fifteen years in case Ava ever needed me, and now that she has, I switch to my business phone.

In that one? When it comes to contacts, I have hundreds.

Most of the cops on my payroll are stored in my phone under nicknames. Call me paranoid if you want, but you don’t stay on top for long if you don’t see enemies everywhere you look.

If you go under the ‘P’ section, you’d find quite a few, though they might currently be retained on my dime. The nicknames are self-explanatory, too. Unless they have a specific use to me, I keep them pretty simple.

Pig 1.

Pig 2.

Pig – bald.

Pig – tiny dick energy…

Officer Burns, however, is different. If I ever thought I could sway him away from the benefits his badge and his uniform give him, I’d snap him up for the syndicate in a heartbeat. There’s something dark in the steely-eyed cop I recognize, and if there’s a single pig in all of Springfield I’d use for something like this, it’s him.

I keep his number stored under ‘W’. Wildfire. Nearly impossible to contain, and easily set off with something as simple as a spark, it suits the cop, and not only because of his last name.

It’s closing in on eleven. He usually patrols at night, though I haven’t seen him around lately. Either way, if he sees my number popping up on his phone, he’ll answer it if he wants his weekly deposits to keep on coming.

Three rings. It takes three rings, and then—

“This is Burns.”

“It’s me,” I rumble.

“Devil. Haven’t heard from you in a while. You okay?”

Better than I would’ve ever guessed a couple of minutes ago. “Just fine.”

“Glad to hear it. What’s up?”

“Remember how I got you that shot you were asking for a couple of months back?”

He should. Burns came to me because he needed a potent sedative loaded in an injector-driven syringe. Small enough to conceal in his palm, and strong enough to knock an average-sized woman on her ass.

I don’t know why he wanted me to do it. Burns has his own way of seeing things, and while we both know that drugs are Damien’s domain, he either couldn’t get what he wanted from Libellula, or he got his kicks seeing if I could get my hands on it.

Of course I could. There isn’t a damn thing I can’t get in Springfield, no questions asked for the right buyer, and I proved that when I handed over his sedative.

Burns is quiet for a moment, before he says, “Yeah. I remember.”

“Good. ‘Cause now I need something from you.”

“From Mace,” he asks, “or from Officer Burns?”

“From the officer. And I need it tonight. You can do that?”

“Sarge has got me doing an overnight. I’m on duty ‘til five, then I need to get my ass home. That good with you, Devil?”

“Yeah.”

“You want flashy, or do you want quiet?”

Thinking about what Ava told me, I add, “Bring the cruiser and the uniform, but don’t turn the sirens on. I don’t want to wake up her neighborhood.”

“Got it.” That’s the best thing about Burns. I don’t have to spell out that I need him for cover-up, and a crew of guys for clean-up. He just knows. “Text me the address and I’m on my way.”

In my experience, working with the SPD is pretty fucking easy. With enough money, even the most righteous cop will look the other way when they have to. And maybe Burns has a cocky attitude that rubs me wrong, but even I sense there’s something off about him.

He reminds me of myself, and God only knows that’s not a compliment.

“And I’ll meet you there.”

When we were still kids with an idyllic view of the future, Ava always said she wanted to get out of Springfield. We’d have a two-story house together, white picket fence, dog in the backyard… we’d be best friends who shared a house because ten-year-old Ava couldn’t comprehend the idea that she’d be my wife one day.

Ten-year-old Lincoln? I knew. I’ve known since the pretty little girl with pigtails and an impish grin joined my kindergarten class that she was mine. At sixteen, she finally realized what I always expected, giving me her heart, her virginity, and her promise that we would never break up.

At eighteen, she was still determined to get out of Springfield, and we started talking about marriage. About a family. About that same two-story house, with a room for just the two of us, where we could leave the city life behind.

At twenty, I fucked up. I fucked up so bad that I walked out of our apartment and never went back. Ava stayed for a few months, waiting for me to return, and when I couldn’t, I thought I’d finally done enough to lose the only woman I’d ever love. But while she moved out of the apartment, she never left Springfield.

Like me, our roots are too deep. Sometimes, I think about what I would do if she finally left. Would I sacrifice everything I’ve built over the last fifteen years and follow her, even knowing that I destroyed all we had the night I was called Devil for the first time?

As I pull the nondescript black car I use whenever I want to stay under the radar, I know the answer to that. I built my entire empire—from fighting for money, acting as a runner before I created the Sinners Syndicate, turning Jimmy’s into the Devil’s Playground—in the delusional hope that, one day, I might be good enough to beg Ava for a second chance.

There isn’t a fucking thing I wouldn’t do for this woman. If staying in the shadows, spying on her from the darkness, torturing myself by watching her date unworthy fuckers while I obsessed over her from just outside of her window, it didn’t matter that I was suffering if Ava was safe.

She moved on as much as she could. While I was working over my competition, she went to college and got a respectable job as a first-grade teacher at Springfield Elementary. I traded my shitty apartment for the penthouse at Paradise Suites, and she scrimped and saved until she was able to

She still lives there today. Alone for now, since her last serious relationship ended about five years ago. She’s had a couple of flings since—and it’s taken every last bit of my resolve not to interfere—but, as far as I can tell, she’s single these days.

Especially since she just killed one of her exes.

That’s what I got out of her. In between gasps of air and half-sobs, Ava called me because she actually fired the gun I sent for her protection when she first moved into this house. Part of her fear had to do with me. Sweet, innocent thing, she actually thought I’d send her a pistol that could be traced back to Lincoln Crewes. She shot it, but what if the gun was in my name?

I couldn’t care less about that. Any serials have been removed from all guns that passes through the syndicate, but what had me speeding from the West Side of Springfield to the southern border is the realization that my Ava was in a position where she felt like she had to shoot to kill a man, ex or not.

I didn’t ask her why she did it. At the time, it didn’t matter. He was dead, Ava shot him, and he could’ve been the fucking Pope and I’d believe that she has a good reason to.

Now, as I fling open the driver’s side door, climbing out of the car before easing it shut with my palm, I’m furious that Ava was in danger—and I wasn’t there to protect her.

I know I can’t always be. I got a business to run, the syndicate I’m responsible for, and it’s not like Ava has any idea that I’ve kept tabs on her for longer than any sane man would. But that’s the thing. I’m not sane. When it comes to Ava Monroe, I never have been.

It’s quarter to midnight. The street is empty, a few lampposts dotting the residential area. Fireflies flicker in the patches of darkness. My hands curl into fists at my side as a memory slaps me upside the head.

There was a small grassy field located in a lot between the apartment building we both lived in when we were kids and the skid row line-up with our favorite corner store, the 24-hour topless bar, liquor store, and laundromat. Ava’s mom never wanted her to go past the lot, and with a little imagination, it was the closest thing we had to a park.

In the Julys of our childhood, that was the only spot in all of downtown Springfield where you’d see the faint green glow of the bugs winking on and off. There aren’t any on the West Side, but seeing them on a muggy summer night like tonight…

I give my head a rough jerk and, stepping onto the curb, I turn right toward Ava’s house.