by Bethany-Kris
“A half hour there.”
And a half hour back, she knew.
Shit.
“Could I follow you? Just in case I have to come back early and you need to stay behind or whatever. Daycare for the baby, remember?”
Mike shrugged like it didn’t make a difference to him. “Sure.”
Nearly a half hour later, Karen almost missed when Mike turned his blinker on to signal he was turning off the highway to leave the outskirts of the city when an exit ramp came up. She’d been following behind him for so long that the radio and the passing cars had put her into a trance of sorts.
This was why Karen hated driving, though it was a necessary evil.
She didn’t recognize the rural area Mike directed them through, as she hadn’t visited outside of Chicago on this side of the city, but it looked quiet … and certainly private.
It was only when Mike had put on his blinker again, turning off onto a long, paved driveway that seemed to go on and on with no end in sight that Karen really did stop to take notice of where they were. She didn’t have time to take in the beautiful driveway and trees lining either side before a large, Victorian-style home came into view, taking all of her attention.
Karen parked her car, still staring at the house.
Mike had already gotten out of his vehicle, and he patiently waited for her to do the same. She hadn’t taken her eyes off the large entrance with its massive pillars once as she came to stand at the lawyer’s side.
“Well, what do you think?” Mike asked. “Thirty acres, private, three-level home with attached garage.”
Karen just gaped.
Had Dino done what she thought he had done?
How?
“It’s … beautiful,” Karen admitted.
“He thought you might like it,” Mike said with a smile. “‘Homey,’ he said. You appreciate that kind of thing, apparently.”
Karen still wasn’t sure she knew what was happening. “Did he buy this?”
“Signed the final papers yesterday, actually. Only a few of his accounts haven’t been frozen, and those were ones related to businesses the feds haven’t touched yet. We assume they will after he’s released, because they’ll be opening up everything in an attempt to get him pinned down again.”
All Karen had heard in those statements was that Dino might be going back to prison after he was out.
She really didn’t want to think about that.
“I can’t take this,” Karen said, more to herself than to Mike. “This is too much.”
“He thought you might feel that way, and if you want, you can wait. You don’t have to take it right now. After all, his name is on the deed, not yours. Dino just wanted to show you, in a way he was capable of, that he is trying to plan beyond his current situation—that he does want to be … well, a family, I suppose.”
Yeah, Karen got that.
“I don’t think I could just move in here without …”
She didn’t finish her sentence, letting it hang in the wind.
Mike nodded like he didn’t need her to continue. “I get it. There’s one other thing, though.”
Karen looked to the lawyer, warier than ever. “What’s that?”
“The cabin on the lake he owns—he said you would know what he was talking about without me needing to go into details.”
Her mouth went dry.
Of course she knew.
It was where she had fallen in love with Dino.
“What about it?” Karen dared to ask.
Mike pulled a large envelope from the inside pocket of his blazer, handing it over to Karen with a smirk. “Non-negotiable, the property is signed over to you. He’s not arguing about it, it’s an asset he doesn’t want claimed—the papers make it look like it was sold to someone else, who then put it into an auction, where you’ve then purchased the home and property. It’s all yours, Karen, just sign before we leave.”
Karen was thunderstruck.
“But—”
Mike gave her a look, quieting her. “This one is already done, and he’s not changing anything about it. He’s going to take care of his son in one way or another, whether you want to be with him or you don’t. This is one way he’s chosen to do that. Sign and the lake property is yours.”
How in the hell was she supposed to say no to that?
Dino
ONCE again, Dino found himself sitting across a table he was shackled to as he listened to his lawyer chatter away about the events of the week before. Mike was a temporary reprieve to the quiet hell that he would need to return to in a few short minutes.
Dino tried to savor the conversation as much as he could before it was over.
“She signed the papers for the lake property,” Mike said, “but she had a few choice words to say to me as she did it.”
Dino chuckled, unable to hold it back. “Is that so?”
“She doesn’t seem like the type to just grin and bear it.”
“She isn’t.”
Karen was far from that type of woman.
She also wasn’t the type to let a man take care of her, even if the reason why Dino had done what he did regarding the lake house was to her and his son’s best benefit. He had already figured Karen wouldn’t be pleased at first about it all, but like she usually did, she would find out a way to work through it.
She loved that property.
He remembered the way she had lit up the night they had arrived.
Amazement and joy all rolled into one.
Dino smiled to himself at the memory, pleased that Karen had taken the property off his hands without too much of a fight. She deserved it—the place was perfect for her, even if it was a little further from the inner parts of the city than she would have liked.
She needed a home—his son needed a home.
The other home he had purchased was one he hoped Karen would eventually warm up to, if maybe they could one day be an actual family together. He’d bought it on a whim, but knew it was more than likely something she would refuse.
So, he’d given her a second option.
Even if it wasn’t really an option at all.
“The feds still might seize the house,” Mike said quietly.
Dino nodded. “But they might not. A few of my accounts are still open. That all looks good. I haven’t had another visit from an agent wanting to talk, so that’s a bonus point for me. I’ll have time before I’ll have to worry about it all.”
“Don’t stick your head too far in the clouds, Dino.”
Oh, he wasn’t stuck up there.
Dino was firmly shackled right to the goddamn ground.
“Probably better she didn’t take the house and signed the lake property deed,” he admitted after a stretch of silence passed between him and his lawyer.
“Why not?” Mike asked.
“The feds can’t seize something that isn’t mine to begin with, I suppose.”
“That’s true, but I don’t think that’s the only reason you brought it up.”
Mike was astute.
Dino had to give the lawyer that credit.
“I don’t trust that some of the documents that were stolen from me a year ago aren’t going to be used again at some point,” Dino said, resting back as far as he could in the chair. “And since I know my uncle took the paperwork, that means he’s got eyes on me and my shit. He probably just picked up on the fact—or he soon will—that I bought a house.”
Dino hadn’t even thought of this stuff before purchasing the house. He’d only focused in on the fact he wanted—needed—to do something for Karen and his son so that they could be taken care of in some small way. He also wanted to show Karen that he was planning ahead, for her, him, their child, and whatever she might want in the future.
She made the calls.
She always would.
It was only now that he realized it might not have been a good thing to make such a large purchase—a house worth three quarters of a million dollars—and p
ossibly raise the suspicions of his uncle if by chance Ben was watching Dino’s financials.
It certainly hadn’t been an easy thing to do while locked up.
Mike had helped a lot, and had done most everything Dino needed him to do, as long as he could do so in a legal way. The guy was a great lawyer, even if he was just a public defender. Dino thought Mike was wasting his time in that regard, and he needed to get himself in somewhere he could shine.
Although, none of that was important at the moment.
“She won’t be anywhere near that house,” Mike assured.
Dino didn’t know if that was enough, though. “She might not need to be.”
“The lake property isn’t attached to you, and it does look like it was just auctioned off, and that she was the one who happened to put in the right bid. Don’t sweat the small stuff.”
That was the problem.
Dino didn’t think this was small at all.
And to be safe …
“Keep a distance from her,” Dino said, “just in case. She’s signed the paperwork and it’s all changed over now, you’ve been paid, so there’s no reason to keep contact, right?”
“She’s not my client, Dino.”
“That’s not what I said, Mike.”
Mike sighed. “She wants me to let her know when your official release date is.”
Dino shrugged. “It’ll be in the news.”
The lawyer didn’t disagree.
That was that.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
Dino’s eyes popped open to the annoying sound of metal hitting metal just outside of his cell. He barely had time to roll over before the sound started up again.
Fucking guards.
“Up and at ‘em, boys,” the guard shouted. “Showers for block A in ten minutes, breakfast for block B in fifteen minutes.”
The guard shouted a few more things, but Dino wasn’t paying the man any mind. The routine didn’t change, and it wasn’t about to start changing any time soon. Of that, he was positive. Routine and three meals a day was just about the only things the prison guaranteed its inmates.
Dino pushed off his bunk to stand just as the guard came into view of his cell door. Under his arm, the guard held a newspaper, and stopped to peer in at Dino and a still-sleeping Todd.
“Wake your cellmate up,” the guard said.
“I’m not a babysitter.”
The man just scowled. “He’ll miss the showers.”
What a sad fucking thing that would be.
Cold water, soaps that stank and hurt the skin, and thirty other inmates plus ten guards watching you clean yourself with no privacy in sight?
Yeah, that’d be a fucking shame.
“Oh, and I got something for you, DeLuca,” the guard said. “Somebody asked me to pass it along in the breakroom.”
Dino’s brow lifted in curiosity, but he didn’t move from his position. While most of the guards treated the inmates okay, there were a few that just rubbed him the wrong way. A man of his sort—that lived the life he had led for many years—could pick up that sort of thing from another man without needing much confirmation.
Some of these guards were not to be trusted.
They could be bought if needed, from the outside or the inside.
Dino didn’t need to be told to know.
“Here,” the guard said, sticking the newspaper he’d been holding through the bars of the cell. “Well, fucking take it.”
He still didn’t move.
With a harsh sigh, the guard dropped the newspaper to the cell floor, and started off again, moving onto the next cell without a look back.
Dino eyed the paper on the floor, wondering what in the hell that show was all about. Todd had finally started to grumble and shift on the bottom bunk behind Dino, and it was only when the kid was fully awake and standing did he, too, notice the newspaper.
“What’s that?” Todd asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Shouldn’t you check it?”
“For what?”
Todd’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know—the news?”
Dino didn’t trust a fucking soul, his life had taught him not to. And he didn’t think the guard dropping that stupid newspaper off like nothing was amiss was just random happenstance, either. He wasn’t sure he was ready to find out just what might be inside the paper that someone had wanted him to see.
And just who was that someone, anyway?
It wasn’t like Dino had made friends with any of the guards.
“Jesus, you’re strange,” Todd mumbled before he scooped up the paper and slammed it into Dino’s chest.
He caught the item before it could fall from his grasp. Unfolding the paper in his hands had been a mistake, because as soon as he did, he saw the headline and understood exactly why the guard had dropped the paper off to him.
Someone wanted him to know something important …
Someone thought he should see …
Dino read the headline again and again, desperately trying to find the error that would tell him he wasn’t actually reading it right at all.
The headline remained the very same.
Public Defender Mike Hardy Murdered Outside Office!
Dino blinked again.
The headline didn’t change.
“Thirty minutes,” the guard told Dino.
“Yeah, got it.”
He sat down in the hard chair, facing the Plexiglas wall and staring down a man he wished he never had to see again.
Ben DeLuca looked entirely too comfortable sitting in his own chair, a slight smile curving his lips and his suit and tie a pristine black. Much like his eyes—coal black and unfeeling. So fucking cold.
Dino might have been surprised to see his uncle sitting there requesting a visitation with him, but he wasn’t. Not at all.
It’d been only a week since Mike had been killed, and in that time, Dino had lots of quiet moments to think everything through and put more than enough together to prepare for this. Because he had known it would come.
With Ben, things like this always came.
Ben waved at the phone, and though the last thing he wanted to do was have any sort of conversation with Ben DeLuca, Dino grabbed his phone and put it to his head. The sound of his uncle’s breaths crackling through the speakers just pissed him off.
He had no doubt Ben had been the one to kill Mike.
He didn’t know why, but he figured that information would come in due time.
So, yeah, it pissed him off to hear the breaths of a man who wasn’t worthy enough to shine the shoes of the man he’d killed, no matter the reason.
“You look well,” his uncle said into the phone.
Dino shrugged, refusing to give his uncle any hint to his anger or even the fear he felt that Ben might know something about Karen or his son. “It’s prison—all we can do is eat, work out, and sleep. It’s good for the soul, you know.”
Ben chuckled drily. “I’m sure.”
“What do you want, Ben? You haven’t come to visit me since that day in the jail. Say what you’ve come to say and leave me alone to finish this sentence out.”
“Punishment,” his uncle corrected swiftly. “Your punishment.”
No, Dino wasn’t going to play that game with his uncle.
He’d worry about that when he was out of his current hell.
“Quite a little friend you made in that lawyer, hmm?” Ben asked.
Dino didn’t blink.
He kept his expression unreadable, cold like his uncle’s.
Ben had done this to him, after all.
He’d wanted this for a nephew, not one that cared.
“You know you can’t have outsiders doing business for you,” Ben went on, seemingly unbothered by Dino’s lack of silence. “Playing in your accounts and seeing things they shouldn’t be seeing. It’s unacceptable.”
“Or was it the fact I was doing something without you getting to dig all through it?” Dino asked
coolly.
Ben smiled again, cruel and violet in a flash. “Same thing, isn’t it?”
“I had him buy me a house and sell another.”
“But why not use someone we both know and trust? You didn’t want me to know you were doing it, you’re still under some sort of impression that you’re free to do whatever you want to do,” Ben said, glancing down at his watch. “This was a reminder, Dino, and nothing more, just in case you needed one, and it certainly seemed like you did.”
“A reminder of what?”
“I am always watching. Remember that.”
How was he supposed to forget it?
Every one of his monsters was sitting just two feet away behind a Plexiglas window wearing a pleased smile and a three-thousand-dollar suit.
Dino wasn’t about to forget any of that.
Ben, however, hadn’t mentioned a thing about Karen or Dino’s son. He acted like he didn’t know about them. Dino would take that as a battle won. He was sorry that Mike had needed to die for it, though.
Sometimes that was just how shit worked.
They didn’t get any say in that at all.
Karen
“HERE, you take the cake,” Corrine said, handing the platter over to Karen.
Somehow, she managed to get the camera in her hands sat down on the table, and balanced the cake at the same time, without losing it all over the studio floor. Her boss—Corrine—did one last check of the cake to make sure it still looked perfect. The face of Junior’s favorite cartoon character had been piped with colorful icing while the words “Happy Birthday, J!” had been written in fancy scrawl across the bottom.
“Ready?”
Karen nodded. “Light the candles and I’ll take it in.”
“I’ll get lots of pictures, promise.”
She almost laughed.
Getting enough pictures was not her concern today. She had two wonderful photographers she worked with that she was lucky enough to also call her friends. And when the week before, Karen had admitted she hadn’t planned anything for Junior’s first birthday, the women took control of the situation and promised to do something for both Karen and her son that would be memorable.
