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He nods at the sigh of relief I can’t keep back. “Exactly. I want loyal soldiers who do what they’re told, not idiots who think for themselves.” He huffs. “And, honestly, if there’s anyone to blame, it’s your husband. He was the one who put out word through the streets that Ava…hisAva was untouchable. Good guys got a pass, but the rest of us… we all knew that he was watching you from the shadows, making sure everyone treated you right. Maglione did… until he fucked up after he got his dragonfly. Even with shit for brains, it didn’t take long for him to realize his ex-girlfriend and Devil’s Madonna were the same.”
Most of what Damien said is like an angry buzz in the back of my woozy mind. Most it, except for the part about Link.
My mouth goes dry. I try to swallow to get some moisture, but it doesn’t work.
Untouchable? Link made me untouchable? He watched me?
He never forgot about me at all?
What?
“Don’t you wonder where you got the name from, dear? For as long as I’ve known him, Devil has worshiped you. And that is precisely why you’re the leverage I need.”
I ignored him before when it came to that.
This time, I don’t.
“Leverage?” I repeat. “Leverage for what?”
He doesn’t answer me. He doesn’t get the chance.
All of a sudden, the door inches open. I almost expect it to be Heidi again, but it isn’t. Instead, a young man wearing a suit a little too small for him, tiptoes into the room.
Damien quirks an eyebrow. “Yes?”
“We just got the call. It’s a green. Sixty, boss.”
“Ah.” Damien brushes the younger man off, sending him scurrying back out of the room. Then, shifting his suit jacket, pulling out the gun I knew was there, he smiles at me before dropping his gaze, checking to see how many rounds are in it. “Time to go, Mrs. Crewes.”
He must have understood something in that coded message that I didn’t.
“Go?” I echo. “Where?”
“It seems as if your husband has agreed to my terms. We don’t want to leave him waiting, do we?”
Oh, no.
Link.
TWENTY-ONE
DEAL WITH THE DEVIL
LINCOLN
If you asked me this morning, I would have said the most significant phone call in my entire life was when I was sitting at the Playground and saw Ava’s digits pop up on the screen.
It’s still up there, but the call I got from Burns about fifteen minutes ago tops it.
I always knew that the crooked cops of the Springfield PD double-dipped. For the right price, anyone could buy Mason Burns especially. Like me, he only has loyalty to one person—his wife, Angela—and he treats the rest of the world as disposable.
Even so, we have a good enough working relationship that I’m not surprised Damien Libellula got wind of it. Why else would he have picked Burns to pass his message along to me?
Damien wouldn’t call himself. That’s not his style. He has a tendency to delegate in a way that I never got the hang of, and what made us good partners before we split up and each started our own crime ring.
In the beginning, we worked a lot of jobs together. But fifteen years is a long time, and money does strange things to people. The Sinners Syndicate took over our turf on the West Side, the Libellula Family claimed the East End, and so long as we stayed apart, we could coexist.
Of course, then Royce was blamed when a Dragonfly’s sister was killed, and friendly rivals turned into enemies in the middle of a turf war.
