Page 48 of The Devil's Bargain
No. I think he’s saying what he thinks his wife wants to hear.
When I don’t answer him, he gives a gentle tug on my hair. “I don’t lie. Not to you, Ava. Never to you. You have to know that.”
Only… I don’t.
And that’s not all.
I want to ask him what we’re doing. Whathe’sdoing. In this room—in thisbed—I know that he’s as much mine as I’m his… but what happens when he inevitably leaves it in an hour or two to return to his business?
I don’t, though. It would only be a waste of breath. Because Link? He means it when he says he won’t lie to me. He never has.
But that doesn’t mean he always tells me the truth.
So I stay quiet, my head leaning against his right pec, my finger tracing the cross that covers his left side, following the twists and curves of the script dashes right over his heart while I still have him here with me.
If someone handed me a pen and told me to close my eyes, then slipped a sheet of paper in front of me before telling me to draw this particular tattoo of his, I could do it. That’s how much it’s imprinted on me in the time since I’ve got to enjoy Link’s naked body.
It’s a reminder that I so often need. Scrawled in the middle of the cross, written in an elegant script as though it’s the most important thing in his world, are two words:the life. Despite the different designs he has inked all over his body, they’re the only written tattoos, and it’s clear to me what it means.
It’s a tribute to being in organized crime, and Link’s way to show anyone who might see his cross that he’s devoted to being the head Sinner.
They come first, and I have to remember that.
EIGHTEEN
LOUISE’S FLORALS
AVA
My admittedly impressive blow job skills buy me two days with Link returning to the overbearing, overprotective, neanderthal of a husband that he was shortly after our marriage.
But then, as I hoped it wouldn’t, things go right back to the way they were. Link, finding any excuse to leave the penthouse. Me, wondering how I’m going to spend the rest of my life as his pretty little trophy wife, tucked out of sight until he decides to get serious about that heir of his.
Instead of spending time with me, he really amps up the gifts. It’s like he’s trying to use material things to make up for his distance. After the third package is handed off to me by one of him men, I finally tell Link over dinner that it’s too much.
Of course, his only answer is, “I’ve worked hard to be able to spoil my wife,” and I feel like a bitch for trying to stop him.
I don’t need to be spoiled, though. Even when we were two stupid eighteen-year-olds, playing house in a dump of an apartment, he would promise me that, one day, he’d have enough money to buy me whatever I wanted. He never understood that all I wanted washim.
Those days, when I had to bandage Link up after another brawl in the back alleys that brought in just enough for groceries for the week, I was happy if he found a flower for me in the concrete jungle we lived in.
Feeling vulnerable one night, I remind him of that. It’s not about the money. It’s about the thought. The effort.
The affection.
No surprise that he shuts down the conversation, using his masterful touch and claiming kiss to distract me from feeling like we’re miles apart, even when we were sitting on the same couch together. And whether he understood what I was trying to say or not, the packages stopped.
The flowers didn’t.
Every day, like clockwork, an elaborate bouquet arrives for me. There’s always a single card, written in a delicate script that has to belong to the florist. It says,To my wifeand it’s signedLincoln, with the florist’s logo—a place called Louise’s Florals in downtown Springfield—stamped on the bottom.
It’s a different bouquet every time. They each come with a glass vase, overflowing with every single type of flower you can think off… but there’s always one that looks like it’s been plucked from the local park. Whether it’s a dandelion or a different wildflower, it’s tucked inside, and though I know it has to be an order he gave to the florist, I can’t help but get butterflies in my belly whenever I find it.
I keep them. I keep all the flowers, with Mona beaming whenever I ask her to find a home for the latest vase, but the wildflowers? They’re special to me, and I keep them pressed between the pages of the first edition copy ofLittle WomenLink bought for me.
Because of small things like that, I can look past a lot of things that Link does, blaming it on his position in the syndicate.
The late hours. How he seems to spend more time in meetings at the Devil’s Playground than with me. The way he insists on my having a bodyguard in the penthouse—and at least three when I want to step foot outside of it.