by Bethany-Kris
Dino knew Ben’s flippant demeanor was a lie.
“She could have called me,” Dino replied.
It was the best he could come up with at the moment.
Ben didn’t seem like he cared. “She’s been in Germany for a while.”
Shit.
“I said ‘the last time.’”
“How long has it been since the last time, Dino?” Ben asked, not even giving Dino a chance to respond before he continued on speaking. “Apparently long enough that you don’t even realize your sister has changed countries. I’ve had quite enough of this—her traveling unchaperoned and freely, for that matter. Bring her home.”
“Ben—”
His uncle pushed away from the wall, giving Dino a cold look over his shoulder that said this was not up for discussion between them. “You’ll bring her home, or I’ll force her back.”
The threat hung heavily between the two men.
Dino’s grip on his glass tightened enough that he feared it might shatter in his palm.
Still, he stood his ground. “I’m not bringing her home yet.”
Ben’s gaze narrowed. “Repeat that again, Dino.”
“She doesn’t need to be here. She’s fine where she is. I’m not bringing her home.”
“Are you sure that is the road you want to travel with me?”
Not at all.
Dino was more than certain this wasn’t going to end well for him.
Anytime in the past that he had refused Ben’s wishes had almost always ended rather violently for Dino. Broken bones. A battered, bloody body. His mind in tatters, much like his mental health.
There was a reason Dino was so shut off from the world and often debilitated by the nightmares living inside his head.
Ben was every single one of those reasons.
His uncle’s way of making sure Dino learned his lesson the first time, as to ensure the next time he would get what he wanted, was to beat the lesson into him. Quite literally.
It didn’t even matter to Dino.
Not now.
He was more than willing to take a lesson from Ben as long as the end result was the same. Lily stayed where she was because Dino allowed it, whether Ben liked it or not. His sister was not going to be fodder for Ben’s games. She had always been free and safe from their uncle and aunt’s abuse—she would remain free and safe from it as long as Dino had his say.
This was his say.
“Let me tell you something,” Ben said as he turned to face Dino, leaving his back to the crowd.
Dino pushed away from the wall, stopping only a half of a foot from his uncle’s frame. Despite Ben’s age, he was still a rather intimidating man in height and stature. His dark eyes could quickly shut someone up without ever having to speak a word. It was almost as though the man could promise violence with a look, and Dino knew what was promised, was always gifted.
He still didn’t care.
Not on this.
This, he wouldn’t move even an inch.
“No, let me tell you something,” Dino replied, never once looking away from his uncle. “I know a few things where Lily is concerned, things that you are not aware of. Like the fact she won’t be easy to find because she doesn’t stay in one town for long. Or the fact that the only time you might get a hit off of her is when her passport gets dinged from traveling into a new country because the accounts I set up for her to use have fuck all to do with the accounts you have access to. That is, when she happens to use accounts at all, because she likes cash far more, and we both know how damned hard it is to track cash, Ben.”
Ben’s glare burned, but Dino didn’t back down.
He couldn’t.
“I let her go because she wanted to, because she deserved to have her time,” Dino said firmly, never allowing even the hint of his nerves to show in his tone. If he did, Ben was liable to pick up on it and use it to hurt Dino with in some way. They’d done this before—many times. Very rarely did it end to Dino’s favor, but he had to at least try. For Lily. “And when she is done with having that time for herself, or when I am ready to call her back, then I will do just that. But not one fucking second before, Ben.”
“That feels like a challenge,” Ben murmured.
Dino’s jaw ached from clenching so hard. “I’m not budging on this.”
“Seems there’s a lot you won’t budge on lately, Dino.”
He didn’t grace that with a response.
It didn’t seem to matter all that much to Ben.
“No matter,” Ben said, tossing one hand high as if to wave the whole conversation away. “Seems interesting to me how you’ve forgotten what denying me will earn you, Dino. Haven’t I gotten that stubborn trait of yours disposed of already?”
Dino’s throat thickened at the veiled threat. “Beaten out of me.”
Ben smiled. “Call it what you want, Dino.”
“I call it what it is.”
“So be it. Fact is, you still haven’t learned.”
Dino pushed past Ben, the threat hanging over his shoulder as he moved in and out of people. He could feel Ben’s words biting at his back, looking for a chunk to rip out.
Words were nothing.
Words meant nothing.
Except when it was Ben saying them.
Dino was all too aware, given the number of scars he sported under his clothes and the aches in his bones on rainy days, of just how powerful Ben’s words could be.
Ignoring the faces and waving hands trying to draw Dino into conversations, he kept walking, making his way to the front of the mansion where he picked his jacket out of the coat room and pulled his car keys from the pocket. He was just walking out the front door when his shoulder rammed into a solid form.
Dino was stuck too far inside his own head to care.
He needed to get out of there.
He needed to prepare for the hell that was about to come his way.
It was inevitable …
It always came.
“Shit, Dino,” Theo grumbled. “Watch where you’re going.”
It was only the sound of his brother’s annoyance that stopped Dino from going to his car and getting the hell out of there. Ben would never do something in such a public way that attention would be drawn to him. No, he’d wait for when night fell, when Dino was alone, and then he would strike.
Or send someone to do his dirty business for him.
Still, when it came to Theo, he had to stop.
Like his sister, Dino protected his brother.
He tried, anyway. As much as he could. Theo often didn’t know that’s what Dino was doing, but that was fine, too.
Turning to face his brother, Dino schooled his features. He didn’t want Theo picking up on the fact something was wrong, or that anything had happened. He wanted to keep Theo out of his business with Ben as much as possible.
God knew Theo had taken his shit, too.
He’d been through hell, too.
“If Ben asks about Lily, you don’t know a goddamn thing,” Dino said.
Theo’s brow furrowed, and he let the mansion door close, blocking their conversation from being overheard by anyone inside. “I don’t know anything about Lily. I haven’t talked to her in—shit, months, maybe?”
“She’s going to call. Don’t answer. Don’t get information that Ben can use. If you don’t know something, you can’t tell him something.”
“Why—”
“Do as I said.”
Theo’s features hardened, his annoyance back in a blink. “She doesn’t call me anyway. There’s nothing for me to know to tell him. What is your fucking problem?”
“This whole fucking family.”
“What?”
Dino couldn’t be bothered to explain it.
His whole damn life was the problem.
Theo should understand, but he wasn’t like Dino. He’d never been like his brother.
Dino took care of them all, watching out for his siblings even when it was to the de
triment of his own self. He’d never once expected them to look out for him.
That was his job.
“Just … do what I said,” Dino told his brother one last time. “And next week, lay low. You could use the break, right? I’ve put a lot on you. Take a break.”
That would keep Theo out of harm’s way.
Surely.
He heard Theo’s confirmation behind him, but he was already walking away.
FOR the next week, Dino bounced from business to business, never staying in one place for very long. During the daytime hours, he’d make use of one of the back offices in his three restaurants, and later in the evening, he’d travel to the strip club to close out his day.
As time passed, without Ben’s warning coming to any kind of fruition, Dino started to get paranoid. It was unlike his uncle to sit so long on his anger without some kind of action.
It didn’t bode well for Dino.
That, or Ben was simply waiting for when Dino was not looking over his shoulder.
The fact that Dino was an adult—a grown man capable of making his own decisions—did not factor to Ben at all. His uncle’s only goal where his family was concerned was the same goal it had always been: to control.
Ben controlled his family by whatever means necessary.
Usually, by violence and fear.
Dino had grown accustomed to the lessons his uncle provided over the years. He was never surprised to walk out of his office or apartment to find a man with a baseball bat waiting before waking up confused and bloody.
It was why he didn’t understand the lack of action now.
Ben wouldn’t stand for disobedience of any sort—certainly not a refusal of his wants.
Dino had done that, and blatantly so.
To his uncle, he’d probably earned whatever was coming.
He just didn’t understand why it hadn’t come yet.
“You okay?”
Dino’s head popped up at Karen’s soft voice. Leaning against the brick wall of the restaurant’s alleyway, he’d found a quiet place to think. He took a final drag from his cigarette, and then tossed it to the wet pavement, giving Karen a fleeting smile.
“Fine. Aren’t you supposed to be working?”
Karen cocked a brow at him. “I do get breaks, don’t I?”
Dino chuckled. “You know you do.”
“Well, I’m using this one to check on you. You’ve been quiet today.”
“I’m always quiet, Karen.”
“True, but you talk to me.”
She had him there.
Dino didn’t want her worrying over him, though, so he deflected her questions in the best way he could. “Something was off in the Accounts Receivable for last month. The numbers didn’t add up. I need you to go back over the ledgers again before the numbers get logged in.”
Karen sighed. “You know my numbers are good, Dino.”
They were.
She was damn good at keeping the books.
Or cooking them to hide shit, for that matter.
Still, he was the boss.
Her lover, sure, but the boss just the same.
“Look over them again,” he said with a shrug. “Maybe it was just my eyes that saw something that wasn’t there.”
Karen gave him another one of her looks, then finally nodded. “All right.”
Dino checked his watch, noting the time. He had been trying to stay away from this particular restaurant as much as possible this week, just in case, but that hadn’t worked out very well for him that morning when he’d woken up with an ache in his chest. An ache he couldn’t really explain, but left him feeling cold and lonely in a way he hadn’t experienced before.
He knew instantly what it was.
He missed Karen.
It was almost too easy for him to get in his car and decide he’d work out of the restaurant where she worked for the day. It was almost strange the way the ache calmed the very second he was driving in her direction, knowing he was just minutes from seeing her.
Dino had a pretty good grasp on how messed up he was, but when he put Karen into the picture, it was almost as if all of that craziness went away for a time. He didn’t have to be the Outfit man, the no nonsense Capo, or the brother trying to keep his siblings safe and clear of pain and manipulation.
He just had to be him.
That was all Karen knew.
It was all she asked for.
Dino liked that a lot.
Problem was, he didn’t know how to deal with the way it left him feeling.
Like maybe he was going to have to end whatever he had going on with her because getting too close could be dangerous—but he wasn’t sure if it was too dangerous for her, or him.
He was just a mess.
“Do you want to do dinner later?” Karen asked, still hanging out the back exit door.
Dino didn’t think on that offer for long, because despite how much he wanted to agree to it, he knew that he couldn’t. Not with Ben in a fit and liable to send someone after Dino. Thankfully, no one had ever gotten in the way of one of Ben’s lessons, as far as Dino knew, and he didn’t want to start now.
Especially not with Karen.
“Raincheck,” Dino said, glancing away from Karen’s crestfallen face.
He didn’t want to see her sadness.
He didn’t want her to see his lies.
“Soon, though,” he added.
“You sure?”
Dino forced back the stinging sensation prickling at his throat, the words trying to take back what he had said and grab onto what she was offering. It wasn’t a good time.
“Soon,” Dino repeated.
He frowned at the sight of Karen’s back as she disappeared inside the restaurant.
She hadn’t even said goodbye.
Dino couldn’t blame her, really. How fun could it be to find yourself stuck in a relationship with someone like him who took a great deal from you, but rarely offered the same in return? It wasn’t that he meant to be like he was—distant and seemingly selfish—but he didn’t know how to be anything else.
And hadn’t he told her once that all she needed to do was tell him to leave and he would go?
Karen still hadn’t told him that yet.
Somewhere deep inside, covered by years of old scar tissue and buried beneath the memories of those wounds, Dino knew the truth was beating hard in his heart.
He seriously hoped she never told him that.
Even if it ended up killing him.
Dino considered going back inside the restaurant and apologizing to Karen before leaving for the strip club to finish business for the day, but he decided against it.
Why?
Because he was a fucking coward.
No other explanation was needed.
Strolling down the alleyway toward the mouth of the parking lot, Dino fished in his pocket for the car keys that should be in there. He pulled the keyring out, the jangling keys clamped tightly in his fist as he walked out of the alley.
And looked up to find the butt of a handgun coming straight for his face.
Dino didn’t even have time to react before the hard butt of the gun cracked him straight in the mouth, sending him sprawling to the ground with a shout. The taste of blood—tangy and metallic—bloomed in his mouth, making him gag.
It always did.
It reminded him of too many things.
The taste was like a hundred memories swarming his brain all at once.
Overwhelming him …
Choking him …
The second he froze was his biggest mistake. It gave his attacker the extra time he needed to hit again, a foot coming down hard on Dino’s rib as the gun slammed into his bloody face once more.
It was unlike Ben to send only one person.
Usually it was group of his uncle’s enforcers coming to do the dirty work.
It was only when Dino started fighting back did he realize there was more men, they had simply been waiting for him to
actually do something before deciding whether or not they needed to jump in.
He was dragged back into the alley, hidden from view of the parking lot and the day light. Arms and hands barricaded his limbs, pinning him to the cold, wet ground as feet and fists pounded into him again and again.
Pain flared to life in old spots.
… and new ones.
A gloved hand covered his mouth as a fist drove into his eye, blurring his vision and muddying up his mind with the force of the hit.
The whack of something solid against his side made Dino lose his breath.
Jesus.
Ben was not playing around this time.
Dino waited for the inevitable to come. That blissfully beautiful moment when the blackness finally took over and he didn’t feel anything. He almost always woke up from the blackness in the same spot he’d been attacked, but sometimes he woke up in a basement if the beating had been particularly bad. If Ben wasn’t sure his victim would survive, then he liked to leave them to die in a place where the cleanup would be easy.
Still, Dino struggled with the men his uncle had sent, trying uselessly to protect his face and head through the attack, though it did very little when he was still being held in place.
Through his blurry vision, he couldn’t quite make out the faces of the men.
It wouldn’t matter, he knew.
Sometimes Ben used his men connected to the Outfit.
Sometimes he used men outside of his connection.
They were paid to do a job.
Nothing more.
Dino was that job.
The worst part was that Dino was more than capable of protecting himself in a fight or attack. He boxed as a teen, and got into more than enough street fights to know how to take care of his shit. He wasn’t a small man by any means, and he worked out more than enough to have strength, power, and a quickness about his own attack that most people couldn’t see coming until it was too late.
It all meant very little when something like this happened.
Ben knew Dino was capable.
He liked proving that when Dino couldn’t be capable, he was also weak.
Therein lied the game.
Or rather, the lesson.
Even knowing all of this didn’t help Dino to stop struggling. It didn’t stop him from fighting back against the attack, despite knowing that if he just blacked out, if the men could see they had done their job, that it would all come to an end. That was all Ben wanted to do.
