Worth of Waste (DeLuca Duet #2)

by Bethany-Kris

  Wasn’t it?

  Damian was a decent guy underneath his dangerous exterior, but he was just like everybody else in the Outfit. For the betterment of themselves, for their family.

  The only difference was Dino had effectively just made Lily and Theo a part of Damian’s family, too.

  He’d have to push the younger hitman along, force his hand, probably, to do what needed to be done, but Damian would do it.

  He was good like that.

  And as long as Lily and Theo had a place to land softly when all of it was said and done, then Dino figured the blood that would stain his hands—and even Damian’s—would be worth it in the end.

  Dino wasn’t going back to prison.

  He was still sticking to that, no matter what.

  No way in hell would he leave his family out to dry at the end, either.

  This was just the beginning.

  “Dino.”

  The call of his name drew Dino’s attention up from the glass of wine he was holding. Terrance stared at him expectantly from the other end of the table, waiting as the boss usually did for his man to speak up when he knew there was news to share.

  After all, Dino couldn’t make all the important calls regarding his family without vetting some of them through the boss.

  The marriage had been just one.

  Terrance had thought it would be good to … announce it.

  Show it off.

  Make it known.

  Dino wasn’t that kind of man, but he did what the boss wanted. That was just how the Outfit worked.

  “Yeah, boss?” Dino asked.

  “I think now is a good time to share the news you have.”

  All eyes in the room turned on him.

  Familiar faces.

  Waiting people.

  Only three or so really mattered to him in some way. Their reactions would be important, and even dangerous.

  Ben was one.

  Theo was another.

  Damian was there as well, though he already knew what was coming.

  Dino lifted his glass, smiling, though it felt odd to do it. “In a couple months, there will be some big changes for the DeLuca family.”

  Ben’s expression hardened as he looked down the table at Dino. “How so, nipote?”

  There it was …

  “This is good,” Terrance said, “you’ll enjoy this, Ben.”

  Dino doubted it, but he kept talking because he had to. “A marriage, between Lily and Damian, near the end of summer. It’s settled—right, boss?”

  He only needed Terrance’s permission, after all.

  Ben wouldn’t matter, then.

  He couldn’t say a thing.

  It still worried Dino.

  “A marriage?” Ben asked quietly. “Between—”

  “It’s fantastic,” Terrance cut in. “They’re a good match.”

  Damian said nothing from where he sat, staring blankly at the wall like he wasn’t even in the room.

  “Yes,” Ben echoed, though his gaze cut to Dino, promising a conversation later that probably wouldn’t be pleasant. “A good match, sure.”

  Thirty minutes later, Dino left the table, ready to leave the dinner. His uncle met him at the door, and he wasn’t even surprised.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Ben hissed.

  Dino had known full and well his uncle would be pissed.

  He expected this.

  “It’s settled,” he said, echoing his earlier words. “You heard the boss, Ben.”

  “I’m the head of DeLuca family,” Ben practically snarled. “I make those kinds of calls. You know I’ve been looking for someone—”

  “You don’t care about Lily, or what she wants. You would marry her off to the first asshole that offered you the best price, regardless of what he was like behind closed doors. If you think I’d let you do that to my sister, think again, Ben. It’s settled. You don’t get a say.”

  Ben glared, his hand twitching at his side.

  Had Dino been a younger man, had they been in a different place, he had no doubt his uncle would have struck him down to the ground right then.

  Old habits were hard to change.

  He knew he had poked a bear—he’d woken up a monster in his uncle.

  It’d been a while since he really feared that monster.

  He figured this time, by the time Ben reacted, it would already be too late.

  Things were already in motion.

  Dino had rolled the ball.

  He just needed to keep it moving and the course would run out for Ben.

  Eventually.

  “You’ll regret making a fool of me like this,” Ben said coldly.

  “I doubt it,” Dino replied.

  His uncle stalked off, leaving him alone in the hallway. Well, it seemed he wasn’t entirely alone. At the other side, he could see his brother standing in the shadows.

  Theo had watched the whole scene unfold.

  Good.

  Dino figured it was time his brother started filling in all those blanks they had left between one another throughout the years.

  Karen

  “HERE, let me help with those,” Dino said as he dropped his overnight bag in the corner of the kitchen.

  Karen didn’t have time to refuse his offer, she really didn’t need help peeling the potatoes or cutting up the rest of the vegetables, but he was already behind her, his large hands slipping the items from her grasp and getting to work.

  Dino’s lips skimmed the back of Karen’s neck before he kissed her right over the same spot. She smiled. Slowly but surely, he went to work peeling the potatoes and dropping them in the colander to be washed.

  He barricaded her against the sink from behind, she realized.

  Karen liked his closeness, and the surprise visit, so she didn’t say a thing, instead resting her head back on his large shoulder while he concentrated on his work.

  “What are we cooking?” Dino asked.

  “Stew.”

  “A little hot for stew.”

  “I need to go grocery shopping,” Karen explained. “I had the ingredients to make this.”

  Dino chuckled. “Ah.”

  “Since when do you visit on a Monday night?”

  For the last few weeks that she had been staying at the cabin, Dino had come to visit on a fairly regular basis. Almost always on the weekend, and usually closer to the evening. He didn’t stay much longer than a day, maybe a day and a half, but it was enough to keep their son happy, and Karen was enjoying her time away from the city and life.

  Truthfully, she was considering not going back at all.

  But that was another thing to deal with at another time.

  “Since I decided to get away from the woman in my house driving me crazy,” Dino muttered.

  Karen turned into a block of ice in his arms. “I beg your pardon?”

  There was a woman in his house?

  Jealousy flared to life like a raging inferno determined to devastate Karen’s insides. She never questioned Dino on his fidelity to her, if only because he seemed to have so little interest in others—especially women—and he’d never given her any indication that he was seeing other people.

  Why would he give her that indication?

  He made damn sure to mention she wasn’t to see anyone else but him.

  She expected the same.

  “Wow, I can feel you wanting to kill me right now,” Dino said, chuckling.

  Karen spun slowly in his arms to face him, and Dino let her, dropping the knife and potato in his hands. She came to a stop, never breaking eye contact once she held his gaze. He reached behind her, turned the tab on, and washed his hands and all the while, she continued to glare at him, silently wishing for him to feel all the anger about to spew from her mouth.

  “I beg your pardon?” she repeated.

  It came out a heck of a lot calmer the second time around.

  Dino didn’t look the least bit fazed. If anything, he looked amused. Karen w
as two seconds away from smacking that infuriating smirk off of his face.

  “My sister—Lily—is at my place until her wedding,” Dino said, his grin growing as Karen’s stiff shoulders began to deflate. “We don’t get along. Think how I’ve mentioned my brother and me to be, but ten times worse. She’s young, stubborn, and spoiled. I did that last one by letting her do whatever the hell she wanted for years, so I have no one to blame but myself.”

  Karen took a deep breath. “Your sister.”

  “She’s not happy, but she wasn’t ever going to be anyway. Although, I have to say, she is happier.”

  Wait, what?

  “She’s getting married but she’s not happy?” Karen asked, her brow furrowing. “Why would she get married if—”

  “The wedding is coming right up—I’m hoping she gets her shit sorted and whatever issues she’s got with her fiancé put to bed before it gets here.”

  Karen just stared at him. “She’s got issues with her fiancé?”

  That didn’t sound like a very good relationship.

  Dino shrugged. “All women who are told to marry a man they don’t know very well aren’t going to be very pleasant to deal with for a while. At least, that’s what someone told me.”

  “What?”

  Her remark came out so damned sharp that even Dino froze and glanced down at her.

  “Shit, forgot to mention that, huh?”

  Karen didn’t quite know how to respond. “You’re making your sister marry someone?”

  “To be fair, they’ve got history. It’s just old—like when they were kids, old—history.”

  “Is that … normal?”

  She’d posed the question so vaguely that she wasn’t sure if Dino would even know what she was asking, but thankfully, he seemed to pick up on her intent.

  “In the Outfit, it’s more common than you would care to know,” Dino admitted.

  “That’s awful. No wonder she’s unhappy, Dino!”

  He shrugged again.

  “Dino!” Karen exclaimed at his lack of concern or care.

  “If I don’t do this for my sister, then someone else will, and they won’t think about her at all,” Dino explained quietly.

  “But—”

  “I picked someone she can’t hate, and someone who has history with her that’s sure to influence his side of things. It might take a little while, but it’ll all work itself out, I’m sure.”

  Karen felt like she had entered an alternate universe. “I don’t like this.”

  “You don’t have to, really.”

  Well, then …

  “Where’s the baby?” he asked when Karen stayed quiet.

  “Having his afternoon nap.”

  Dino smiled. “Good, good.”

  Then, his strong, warm hands started traveling up her bare thighs under the skirt of the flimsy summer dress she was wearing. His brown gaze held hers as his hands moved between her thighs, finding the sweet spot between her legs and stroking her through her thong. It was hot, and dresses were easy, but this wasn’t quite what she had in mind when she pulled it on that morning.

  “Dino—”

  “How long as he been asleep?” Dino interrupted, his brow raising curiously.

  “About twenty minutes.”

  “Good, we have time.”

  “I’d like to keep talking about—”

  “There’s nothing to talk about, Karen.”

  Well, she disagreed there, but it seemed like Dino wasn’t going to give her much of a choice but to rest back and enjoy what he was about to do to her.

  “You’re trying to distract me,” Karen murmured when his fingers slid under her thong.

  “Is it working?”

  “You tell me.”

  His digits swept her sex, dragging the wetness of her arousal up to her clit where he stayed for a moment, circling the nub with firm strokes. It took very little for Karen’s body to start reacting to Dino’s touch—it knew what it wanted, even if it was betraying her at the same damn time.

  Dino smirked. “I think it is.”

  Asshole.

  He was too smug for his own good.

  Then, before she could even blink, his fingers were back down at the entrance of her pussy and thrusting in. Two fingers filled her full, while he used his thumb to put pressure down on her clit at the same time. Karen’s legs widened for Dino and she couldn’t help but fall right into his trap.

  She liked it there, anyway.

  He dropped down to his knees, his free hand bunching up the skirt of her dress and holding it high to her waist. For a little while, he simply watched his fingers fucking her under her thong before he leaned forward and then he was all there.

  His mouth was hot against her sex—the textured plains of his tongue driving into her clit had her head falling back. His rhythm, his intent, was brutal, determined to get her off quick and harsh, whether she fought the orgasm or not.

  Karen’s fingers found their way into Dino’s hair, holding him closer to her sex as he ate her like he was starved, and she felt her peak rising.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Karen mumbled.

  Almost there …

  Dino pulled away just as her orgasm had really started to peak, and she almost wanted to kill him for stopping.

  He looked up at her. “Don’t watch the news for the next little while, okay?”

  Karen shook her head a bit. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “You had to tell me that now?”

  Dino smiled.

  Then, he went back to fucking her beautifully with his mouth until she was a shaking, panting mess against the cupboard.

  She realized his intent as she came.

  Of course, he had told her that then.

  It was just more distractions.

  Dino

  DINO read over the text message again as he pulled into an alleyway next to the restaurant owned by the head Capo of the Rossi family.

  You wanted to know when I was bringing Lily home. We’re leaving in a few.

  That was it. That was all Damian Rossi’s message had said.

  Dino was grateful the guy had followed his orders and let him know that Lily was safely out of the restaurant. He hadn’t planned for her to be inside at all, having dinner with the boss of the Outfit, their uncle Ben, and a variety of others that had been invited to dine with Terrance that day.

  When he had gotten the call that Damian was invited to the dinner, and he had been asked to bring Lily along, Dino damn near refused to allow his sister to go.

  Except he couldn’t.

  No one, not even a woman, was allowed to shun a boss.

  It seriously fucked Dino’s plans up, but he fixed that easily enough by demanding Damian send him a message to let him know when they would be leaving the place. Dino had been waiting for that message for an hour, just a block away from the restaurant, and now he finally had it. He’d taken his sweet time driving down the block and into an alleyway directly beside the street that would take him right by the large floor-to-ceiling windows where the Outfit people were dining.

  He hadn’t wanted to do this, not really.

  But someone hadn’t given him much of a choice.

  Seems Damian was going to need a little push to make him follow through on his side of Dino’s plans regarding the Outfit, as Dino had expected the guy would. He was all too aware that Damian was the kind of man who waited and waited, only striking when he thought it was best.

  Dino didn’t have time for that kind of lag.

  So, what he had planned today would get shit moving in the right direction, no doubt. If not for Damian to make his moves, then for others to make theirs, which would likely force the hand of other families in the Outfit.

  That was just how this shit worked.

  And damn, maybe if he was lucky, Dino might get one of the three people he was gunning for today. Then, he wouldn’t have to worry about doing much after that.

  The families of the Outf
it were predictable.

  Dino had known for a long time that it wouldn’t take much to make them turn on one another like they had done so many times in the past. They only needed someone to blame, or a way to climb higher in the organization, and all hell would break loose.

  He fully believed that was what would happen after today.

  Once the families were in the thick of fighting amongst one another; once his uncle was dead in the ground and the men who might look to him for Ben’s death were also gone; once the attention was on everyone else but him, Dino was free to go.

  He could leave.

  Or that was the plan.

  He still needed to fill Karen in on it, but he would … soon.

  Dino pulled on his black leather riding gloves, and reached for the rapid-fire assault weapon he had sat in the passenger seat. He double-checked the safety, and then the clip just to be extra careful.

  He needed this attack on the families to go off without a hitch.

  He didn’t have time to consider who else was sitting at the table with his uncle, the boss, and the front boss for the Outfit.

  If he aimed high, he’d pepper the ceiling, break the windows, and make a scene. As much as he wanted to direct the shots right at his uncle, Dino knew he couldn’t do that and safely miss everyone else sitting at the table.

  He figured making a scene was enough to cause suspicion to brew in the family.

  That was always enough to cause a war.

  Dino pulled his car out onto the quiet street, rolling his window down as he went and resting the rifle out the window, pointed high and ready to go. He had to do the attack fast, and he wouldn’t have much time from the moment the bullets started firing to the second he would need to get the hell out of there.

  His finger pulled back the trigger the moment the windows of the restaurant were in his view and he was able to see the people sitting in the private dining area.

  They didn’t even see him coming.

  It happened so fast …

  They probably didn’t even see his white Bentley leave.

  Dino watched the days crawl into weeks, and then a month had passed, seemingly before he even had the chance to blink and watch it go.

  All the while, tensions grew in the four families that made up the Outfit. What had once seemed like such a strong foundation of people within an organization that had managed to control the city of Chicago for the better part of almost a century, had now started to crumble under the weight of suspicion and anger.