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I’ve watched it happen as I sat on the couch in the living room, either watching TV or reading a book I nabbed from the library. The men always seem to talk in code—something Link has a tendency to do, too, as if I’m too delicate to hear about all the awful thing the Devil does—but I get the gist they’re talking about me.
They are now, only this time? It’s not in code.
They probably think they don’t have to since I’m not in the living room to overhear them.
Oh, no. I’m in the kitchen with Mona, and I can hear every word.
“Hey, Twig.” It sounds like the guard who’s been here all morning. “You up next?”
“Oh, yeah,” comes a second, more nasal voice. “I pissed off my handler and he decided it was my turn to spend an evening with the boss’s bitch. What about you? How’d you get stuck with the job?”
“Me? Oh. I offered.”
“Yeah?”
The first man chuckles. “Yeah. She’s easy on the eyes and stays to herself. Quiet, too. I don’t mind watching her for the boss.”
“Hey. You never know. WIth a girl like that, you might have a chance when he’s done with her. I’ve heard that he’s never been seen with a chick before. Like some of the fellas started thinking he was a fag, right? Not anymore. He proved us wrong.”
I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Link told me that there hasn’t been anyone but me since we broke up—and I still have a hard time believingthat—and that he was too busy to find a wife, but that it was expected of him. Is this why? Because rumors run that he’s gay?
He’s not. Not completely, at any rate. For all I know, he could’ve been with a hundred guys and still mean it that I was the only girl. There’s no faking his attraction to me. That’s one thing that’s never been in doubt. That man lives to fuck me, but why are these two talking about me like I might be up for grabs eventually?
Mona is still stirring the stew, back to the threshold. I can’t tell if she’s oblivious to the conversation—or if she’s pretending not to hear it.
I should do the same… but I don’t.
Ican’t.
“I guess,” continues the first guy. “He seems attached to this one, but if he changes his mind… I like ‘em sweet.”
“A sweet whore,” Twig sneers. “Ain’t that an oxymoron or some shit.”
“Twig…”
“What? To be honest, I still can’t believe Devil finally took one of the whores home with him. I mean, shit. It’s one thing to pick one out and fuck ‘em upstairs. But the move ‘em into his place and act like she’s better than the rest… she must be a fucking amazing lay, that’s all I’m gonna say.”
Oh my God. They’re still talking about me, aren’t they?
Mona stops stirring the stew.
“You know something,” says the first guy. “I heard hemarriedher.”
“Bullshit.” That’s Twig again. “Sinners fuck whores, they don’t marry ‘em.”
I look at my ring finger. It took days of wearing the ointment Cross left with Link before the swelling went down and the tattoo healed enough that the script—Lincoln—was legible.
He married me. In the dead of night, with only a judge to witness it, he married me… and two of his employees are debating it as if they have no idea that it’s true.
But he told me. He told me that he needed a wife to run the syndicate. He needed a wife and… and anheir.
Hetoldme.
He didn’t tell the Sinners.
I wrap my arms around my middle, wishing that the floor would just open up and swallow me whole. I’d put fifty bucks down that these two think I’m in a totally different part of the penthouse and that they had no idea I heard everything they just said. I can’t bring myself to leave the kitchen in case I run into them and have to see their distaste for me on their face.
I can’t.
