by Bethany-Kris
The sound that broke free from her chest was raw—pain-filled, aching, and low. It cut him straight through the bone and into his heart, but he welcomed that pain. He deserved it.
“That’s not going to happen,” he promised.
“Don’t say things that you want, say what is true.”
Dino nodded, and kissed her again. “I’m not going to prison.”
That was going to be his mantra for the next little while.
And no matter what, he was going to make it happen.
Dino
THERE was a side to Karen that no one really got to see, and if they did see it, they couldn’t possibly understand it enough to appreciate it. It had been her bright soul, shining straight through the darkness of Dino’s that had drawn him in—her perpetual happiness, always seeing the good, and never indulging the bad.
Yes, that had drawn him in, but her strength was the part of her that amazed him the most.
He made a great effort never to show his weaknesses, to never appear less than those around him. And yet, in the face of adversary, in the midst of her pain, Karen never blinked a lash. No one would ever know how hard she struggled, or how much her heart hurt, because she just kept going.
Even knowing how her world must have felt like a hurricane because of him and his actions, Dino watched her from the sidelines as she picked their son up from daycare, chatted to the workers like nothing was amiss, and went about her routine with Junior at her side. She played silly games with their son, kept him distracted, and cooked supper while Dino had Junior in his lap. She went about her day without mention of any problem or pain.
She didn’t let her son see their chaos.
She didn’t let the world know her concerns.
That amazed him.
Her strength amazed him.
Dino knew, one day, he was going to sit his son down and explain how incredible the boy’s mother really was. Mothers were so often overlooked—they were the people who wiped faces and tucked babies into beds at night. They were constant figures of love and warmth.
Karen was so much more than just that for Dino and Junior.
He wanted his son to know someday.
He resolved himself with the knowledge that he would be there to tell him.
No matter what it took to do so.
At the same time, for all Karen’s strength and perseverance, Dino was all too aware that underneath the brave face she put on, there was just a woman who needed to breathe, who wanted to feel safe, loved, and needed. He’d seen those parts of her, too, and that was exactly why he knew they existed.
So he grabbed her a bottle of wine from the fridge, a red, deep liquor with just enough sweetness to let her drink it fast if she wanted. He drew her a bath, hot enough to steam the mirrors and with enough bubbles that they were spilling over the edge.
She didn’t question his motives when he pulled her into the bathroom after she’d put their son down to bed. She let him pull her dress off, took the bottle of wine when he offered it, and then she pulled him into the hot bath with her when she was ready.
That was where he found himself, surrounded by the strength of one terribly amazing woman, and he soaked that in for all it was worth.
He didn’t deserve her.
He was still going to keep her.
“I love you,” Dino whispered the words in her ear.
Karen’s profile showcased her soft, knowing smile. “You don’t say it a lot.”
“I show it; you said that to me once.”
“You do.”
“I’ll say it more often,” he promised.
Every day.
Whenever she wanted.
He didn’t mind.
Dino took the dangling wine bottle from Karen’s hand and sat it to the bathroom floor when she asked him to, knowing she would never drink enough that she might not wake up if Junior needed her in the night. She was smart in that way—a good mother, really.
She was still a little tipsy, though, just enough to feel it.
That was good, too.
He kissed the side of her neck when she rested back against his chest, and for a short while, the rest of the world and all the problems in it went away again. He’d been making a special effort to ignore his growing erection—a problem he could never quite solve when Karen was naked and close to him—but he was becoming painfully more aware of it each and every time she shifted in his lap.
Then, without a word, her hand was slipping under the water and between her thighs. She lifted, making the water slosh around the edge of the tub and more bubbles fall down to the floor. The tub was really too small for them to be playing in it together like they were, but he wasn’t about to complain.
Dino felt Karen’s fingers wrap around the base of his cock, and she fitted him right where he needed to be. She lowered back down on his member with a slowness that damn near killed him in the best way. She was so hot from the water, her sex slick and clenching around him as she took him all the way in, until she was seated back in his lap, a perfect fit.
She stayed still like that for a while, a gentle shudder crawling over her skin every so often when his muscles flexed and his cock jerked inside her body.
“That’s better,” Karen murmured.
Dino chuckled, his hands finding the damp strands of her hair to pile high on the top of her head. “Yeah?”
“Been too long.”
On that, he agreed.
It was always too long.
He tugged her head to the side, keeping his hand firmly tangled in her hair, as he kissed a path over the side of her neck. The wetness on her skin tasted heavenly, and he paused over her pulse point, feeling the rapid thrum of her heartbeat against his tongue.
There, he felt her life.
That radiating, beautiful, amazing life.
“Can we just stay like this for a while?” she asked softly.
How would he refuse her that?
“For as long as you want,” he said.
“Is forever too long?”
Dino laughed. “Someone down the hall might not like that when he wakes up wanting food in the morning.”
Karen turned to look at him, pouting. “Damn.”
He kissed her frown away. “I can make it good for now, though.”
That pout turned into a sexy little smile. “Let’s do that, then.”
Always.
His hand stayed in her hair, while his other dipped below the bubbly water between her thighs. He found the softness of her sex with his fingertips, gliding his digits over the folds and the base of his cock where he had her filled. He liked feeling that—he liked seeing it even better—but feeling it was pretty fucking good, too.
Then he traced her clit, measured and slow, small circles that he knew would get her shaking in no time at all. That way, he could hear all her sweet cries and taste more salt on her skin when she came.
Karen sucked in a soft breath, never lifting from his lap but instead, rotating her hips right where she sat, moving in time with his fingers against her clit while her fingernails dug into the muscles of his thighs.
He didn’t think that would do much for him, but it really did. Each tremor of her body, every clench of her muscles, made his spine tingle and his breaths quicken. He kept that tempo up, letting her rotate her pussy into his cock while he played with her clit until she was a shaking, breathless mess in his lap.
“Oh, my God,” Karen mumbled as she came.
So sweet.
So high and pretty.
Dino kissed a path along the delicate line of her jaw as she came back down from that first ride. “I don’t think God had much to do with this here, sweetheart.”
Karen laughed, sounding spun and blissed. “You don’t believe in that sort of thing anyway, do you?”
No, he worshipped someone else entirely.
From the moment Dino had gotten the cuffs taken off him and his proverbial freedom had been given back, a sense of calm and waiting had se
ttled over him.
It was back to business as usual with the Outfit.
His trial date was set a month after his release—the trial was still a few months away, yet.
It didn’t affect him, not like people might think that it should.
He had far too many other things to worry about.
Going back to prison was not one of them.
He’d been so calm, so collected, that when he felt those first wisps of panic well deep in his heart, he had been surprised to feel them at all. He’d been doing so well not entertaining the thought, not bothering with it in any way. It was easier to do that, rather than sit and stew.
Those first wisps of panic came as he sat at the Outfit boss’s table, eating a meal with people he didn’t give less than a shit about. He’d barely partook in the conversation, barely bothered with the people, his boss, or even his family at all.
He realized in those moments, when no one engaged him, either, that whether he was there, in another country somewhere away from the judicial system of America, stuck behind bars, or dead in the ground …
Nothing would change.
These people would still be the same.
The same hateful, greedy, excessive, awful people that they were. They would still hide secrets for one another, still turn a blind eye to the boy with bruises down his back, and pretend like the little girl didn’t cry for her mother after they’d murdered her.
Nothing about him being there or not being there would change.
Dino watched his brother engage with Damian Rossi and the hitman’s cousin, Tommas. He noticed Ben listening in to the conversation, and looking displeased that the friendship between those families was still there.
He considered his brother, and how difficult it would be for Theo to maintain his position and be safe at the same time, if Dino was not there to assert his position and rank on the people around him. Without a doubt, Theo would be left contending with people like Ben and their uncle’s underlings—the Artino family, for example—for control.
And if Theo wasn’t able to assert his position and control, then he would lose it.
At the least.
The more likely scenario was that his brother might find himself in a casket because he was disposable—a way to the top.
Perhaps Dino had been so … caught up in his own world and problems that he’d forgotten the people he’d protected for so many years. His decision had been cemented long ago on the prison thing—he wasn’t going back there. He didn’t care if he had to run, or what it was that he needed to do, but he promised his son to be there for his second birthday, and he was damn well going to be.
But what difference would leaving do?
His loss would be nothing to these people.
It would do nothing for his brother.
And even his estranged sister, Lily, would be left to the wolves with Dino not there to keep her freedom safe from those who might use it to gain something for themselves.
He sat there a while longer, listening to the conversations and hating them all the more because nothing would change for them—they were all puzzle pieces, some pawns, others kings and queens.
He wondered …
What would happen if he started making a few moves of his own?
Dino waved for his brother to come inside his home office before his attention went back to the person on the other end of the call.
“But, Dino—”
“It’s time to come home, Lily,” he told his sister.
She was young, difficult, combative, and stubborn.
She was pretty, smart, different, and soulfully free.
Those were all things he knew held his sister back, but also might let her fly someday. He was going to make sure she had every chance to do that, even if he had to clip her wings to make it happen.
He didn’t expect his sister to understand.
He wasn’t going to explain his motives.
She only had to listen.
“Two months,” he said firmly, “and if you’re not home in Chicago by the end of that time, little one, I will come looking for you. Do you understand that?”
Lily huffed on the other end of the call. “I get it.”
“You don’t like it, though.”
“I’ve done everything you wanted. I followed the rules. I don’t under—”
“It’s time for you to come home,” he repeated simply.
Another frustrated sigh answered him back before the phone call ended. Dino didn’t bother to call his sister back, she probably wouldn’t pick up anyway. She was troubled in that way, and she’d been using her trip to backpack across Europe as a way to run from her past and the problems she didn’t want to face.
Problems like the Outfit and their murdered parents.
He hated bringing her back down to reality, but he didn’t have a choice.
He had things to do—people to care for when he wouldn’t be able to.
Lily was one of those people.
Another one of those people was sitting in the chair on the other side of his desk.
Theo cocked a brow when Dino slammed the phone down. “You’re calling Lily back home?”
“My right to do so.”
“Never said it wasn’t. Why now?”
Dino shrugged. “Seems like the right time.”
“Does Ben know?”
“No. He’ll go looking for a man to marry her to the moment her feet hit Chicago soil. That isn’t going to happen—not the way he wants it to, anyway.”
Theo’s gaze narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Dino didn’t bother to explain it.
He wasn’t required to explain himself.
He never had, anyway.
“What are you doing here?” Dino asked.
Theo rested back into the chair, his aloof disposition becoming all the more apparent as he watched Dino in that silent way of his. The two brothers were far too alike for their own good, although neither of them would admit it.
“Stopped by to make sure everything was good while you were waiting on bail,” Theo said.
Dino nodded. “Thanks.”
“Mailed some of the stuff you had sitting on your desk.”
“Great.”
“Ran into Karen outside of the jail and stopped her from making the mistake of going inside and getting her name put on a record of visitation for you.”
Dino froze in his chair, his gaze sliding from the clock on the wall to his brother’s stone-cold features. “Theo—”
“Do you not trust me, Dino? Is that why you’ve never told me about them?”
His throat felt so fucking tight.
A part of him wanted to distract Theo—to piss him off and get him out of his face, even if it burned more bridges between them, but stopped him from asking questions that Dino had no intention of ever answering.
Still, he answered.
“It’s not about trust,” Dino admitted.
“Then what is it?”
“They’re not a part of this—they’ve never been a part of this. They’re mine, and I won’t ever put them at risk like everything else in my life is, Theo. It’s not about whether or not I trust you. It’s everyone else around us, it’s the people who’ve hurt me and you and Lily over and over again, just because they could. Don’t ask me if it’s because I don’t trust you, when you know the monsters that live inside my head. You live with the same monsters I do, we just deal with them in different ways, Theo.”
Theo stayed silent for a long while, then he leaned forward in the chair and nodded at the phone. “So when is Lily coming home?”
And just like that, the conversation was over.
It was the DeLuca way.
Karen
“HE’S too little to go on any of these rides,” Karen said, looking around the carnival at the Pier.
“Not all,” Dino replied, shifting his son on his hip. “And some he can go on with us.”
“Sure, but—”
“It’s a fun night for him. He’ll be so tired by the time we get him home. He’ll sleep all night and you won’t hear a thing. Maybe you’ll even get to sleep in tomorrow.”
Well, Karen did like the sound of that.
J was an odd child sometimes. He would wake up at the very crack of dawn, ready and revving to go. Sometimes it didn’t seem like it mattered when he went to bed, either. Seven at night, or much later, he still woke up far too early for it to be normal.
Karen’s normal, anyway.
“Not sure that’ll make much of a difference, Dino,” Karen admitted.
“We’ll see. Let’s find something to do. You hungry?”
She nodded, as it was well past supper and Dino’s visit had been a surprise. Not that surprise visits were anything particularly new for him—he did it all the time. That night, however, she had just got home and was about to start cooking something when he walked in the door talking about a date night.
Date night?
Karen and Dino had never been on a proper date, and she didn’t think their occasional late nights with popcorn, wine, and movies on the couch really constituted what was a proper date. She liked those nights with him, sure, she loved them even, but they weren’t actually dates.
And being out and about in a very bustling, public place with Dino felt almost … strange.
“Is everything okay?” Karen asked as they approached a food truck.
The lights of the pier and the carnival lit up the sky, making their son distracted at every little turn. Little J kept trying to climb higher on his father’s shoulders to see more. Dino eventually just shifted the boy around so he was sitting on his father’s shoulders before he turned to answer Karen.
“Everything is fine, sweetheart.” Dino stepped up to order. “What do you want?”
Karen looked over the menu and settled for something that would fill her up, but not make her stomach too heavy. If they were going to take the baby on rides—even child rides—she needed to be careful.
She had never done well with motion sickness.
After she’d given Dino her order, he placed his own, something for the baby, and then paid. They stepped off to the side to wait for their order to be filled.
