Devil's Plaything (Playthings, #1) Read Online Free Page A

“You know. Places.”
    Despite himself, D’yavol laughed again. “Get a better suit.”
    “Thanks for the advice, Tom Ford,” Demon mumbled as they walked across the plant to the sub-building located on the back of the property.
    When the recycling plant was idle, D’yavol had free rein over the place and it was his playground. He unlocked the door and pulled it open, happy to be back in the sanctuary he’d found here. After spending time with Julie, he needed the reminder of who and what he was, and, outside of a particularly brutal fight, nothing brought that message home better than this sparring arena.
    Sparsely furnished, the place had two main features: a nicked, polished-concrete floor and huge, high ceilings. D’yavol didn’t really know what it had been used for before, but it was a perfect place to train. The slick, hard floor forced him to stay mindful of his footwork or face a painful encounter with concrete. High ceilings captured sound and helped recreate the thunderous, ringing noise the spectators would produce even at the smaller sites.
    He was surprised to see four other guys, Tony, Mark, Daniel, and Joey, already running through drills. D’yavol didn’t pay attention to fights he wasn’t in, but Demon, with his eye for talent and insatiable need for advancement, had seen these guys and thought they had potential, and after much pestering, D’yavol had relented and allowed them to train at the facility with him. He was not a coach, had no interest in being one, but he corrected their forms, gave them tips, and they’d fallen into reproducing his training routine. It hadn’t hurt that after a month of ribbing and insinuating that they could take the “old man,” as they called him, he’d challenged them to a four-on-one spar and beaten the crap out of all of them without breaking a sweat. Now their grudging respect boarded on idolization, but D’yavol did his best to shut that down.
    He should be nobody’s idol.
    “Tony, that jab is leaving you open. You always have to protect the flank,” he said as he walked across the floor. He had no formal training, but he was literally a graduate of the school of hard knocks, and there was nothing he hadn’t seen.
    “What’d you find?” Demon asked as he plopped down in the chair behind the desk after they entered the room that Demon called his office but which was actually more of a makeshift locker room.
    “Nothing specifically,” he said carefully. He was usually honest with Demon. Their years of friendship and Demon’s unwavering support deserved that much, but he hadn’t any shared details about Julie, only the vaguest description of their first meeting, and he intended to keep it that way though he wasn’t quite sure why. Even so, as far as Demon knew, D’yavol’s disdain for the Steel Hearts was strictly professional.
    “No run-ins? Nothing?” Demon asked as he settled his large frame into the office chair, seemingly distractedly as he fiddled with his hideous tie, though D’yavol knew him too well to believe that for a moment. His friend didn’t miss anything.
    “No. It’s quiet. Too quiet, if you ask me.”
    D’yavol had lived in the city his whole life and been involved in its fighting circuit for longer than he cared to remember, and he knew well the rhythms of both. If people weren’t where they were supposed to be and matches didn’t happen when and where they were supposed to, it made him antsy. Over the last year, the Steel Hearts had been an increasing nuisance, with rowdy parties and in-fighting ratcheting up to petty and more serious crime. He figured that could account for the quieter streets, as sane people, those unlike him, tried to avoid trouble. But that was just a guess and something with which he was mostly unconcerned. The change in the fights, though, that was definitely a concern.
    “You heard anything?” he asked Demon.
    “Rumblings here and there. The Steel Hearts are looking to get in on the