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I don’t know what else to do. I think about screaming, but the music is loud, and I don’t want to draw attention to myself if I don’t have to. Link’s obviously not here yet, and I don’t want to cause him any more trouble than I already have.
This guy can be reasoned with, right? He’s not just going to pick a girl off of the dance floor and drag her upstairs without her going along with it…right?
“I think you got the wrong idea. I don’t work here.”
For a split second, I think it works. He lets go of my bicep—but before I can move away from him, he grabs my wrist instead. Flipping my arm over, he smirks triumphantly when he sees that my forearm is bare. He switches wrists, doing the same to the other.
“You don’t have Devil’s mark on you. In here, that means you’re up for grabs, baby, and you should’ve known that before you walked through the doors.”
I definitelydidn’t.
“Besides, everyone has their price.” He tightens his hold on my right wrist, starting to drag me away from the center of the dance floor. “Let’s see how good you are, and we can talk about yours.”
No!
“You can’t do this,” I gasp out. “I’m married. Look. I’m married and my husband—”
Throwing up my left hand, I go to show him my ring, my stomach twisting when I see that the oversized wedding band that Link slipped on my hand is missing.
The man smirks over his shoulder at me as I stare in horror at my naked ring finger. “Nice try, sweetheart. Even if you were married, that doesn’t mean shit here. Half the guys banging the whores upstairs go home to their wives when they’re done.”
I’m barely listening to the sleaze in his tone. I’m too busy trying to figure out when and where the ring must have slipped off my finger. I had it this morning. I remember shoving it down to the webbing of my hand after I brushed my hair, and I swear I had it on when I talking to Heidi—
“Come on. Time’s ticking, and I plan on getting my money’s worth to—whoa.”
It all happens so fast. One second, he was pulling me toward the stairs that would lead to the second floor of Link’s club. The next? Someone has grabbed him by the collar, so strong that they manage to rip his hand away from my wrist.
He yelps, and I spin around, trying to see who my savior is.
Chest heaving, eyes wild and fierce, his big hand firm on the collar of the other guy’s shirt, isLink.
In the middle of the Devil’s Playground, he looks bigger. Stronger. Darker.
Murderous.
For the first time since I called Link for help, I’m meeting Devil—and I’m frozen in place as he glares as the man in his grasp.
“Devil,” he gasps.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? Laying hands on my wife… do you want me to fucking kill you? Because I think I’m going ”
“She wasn’t marked,” the man starts to explain, voice frantic and high as he realizes that, when I said I was married,thisis my husband. “I thought she was fair game.”
“Yeah?” Link twists his fist in the guy’s shirt, lifting him a good two inches off the ground. “You thought wrong.”
As my hands fly to my mouth, covering it as I watch in horror, Link takes a swing. The guy can’t avoid the punch, and his head snaps over his shoulder as Link’s fist connects with his face.
Blood sprays everywhere, but if I thought Link got his point across with one hit, I waswrong.
I’ve seen him fight before. It was how he made money for us when I was still scrimping and saving and trying to put myself through college, and I couldn’t accept money from him without being there, supporting him during his back alley fights, mopping him up when he was on the losing end of a brawl.
He was alway a hard hit. He didn’t often lose, and even when he did, the other guy looked nearly as bad as he did.
Tonight? It is no contest. Link isn’t fighting for the pot. He’s whaling on the other guy forhonoror some shit like that, and all I can do is whimper into my palm as he hits him again and again until he’s hanging limply in his hold.
He’s not dead. That’s the only thing I can think of as Link drops him to the dance floor. The guy groans as he hits the ground, immediately trying to crawl away.
No one helps him. Whether it’s because they don’t want to get involved, or they know that Link is the Devil of Springfield and this is his place, I don’t know. But not one even offers to help the guy, and Link adds insult to injury by booting him one last time, getting him away from us.
