by Bethany-Kris
They didn’t need to bother.
He’d tell them it was his. It came from inside his goddamn office.
It wasn’t news who it belonged to.
The agents—the same ones who had accosted him outside of his club, Courtly and Stanely—murmured back and forth between one another too low for Dino to hear. He was pretty sure they should have got their act together before they came in to question him, but he didn’t care either way.
Finally, Agent Courtly looked to Dino with a smile. “Glad to see they took the cuffs off you.”
“I want my lawyer,” Dino replied unbothered.
“He’s on his way.”
“I have nothing to say until he gets here.”
“We don’t need you to,” the agent stated matter-of-fact.
Wonderful.
“As you can see,” Agent Stanley said, waving at the cold, gray room, “we’ve been lucky enough to have been included in a special task force with the Chicago PD in an effort to lower, if not irradiate, the crime problem in Chicago.”
Dino scoffed. “That bullshit again?”
The agent barely even blinked. “Yeah, this again.”
Agent Courtly patted his partner on the shoulder as he stepped closer to the table. “Fact is, Chicago has been home to the Outfit organization for over eighty years, and over sixty percent of the crime, drug trade, and illegal weapons dealing in this city can be attributed straight back to the mob.”
Dino didn’t like where this was going.
“Let me guess,” he said, glancing up at the ceiling as he placed his hands behind his head, “why bother fidget-fucking with the little guys on the streets when you could take out the big guys and cut the whole problem off at the knees?”
The agent smiled at Dino. “There you go. You’re getting it now.”
He was, unfortunately.
He liked it even less than he thought he would.
After all, it was him in that interrogation room, not another Outfit man, or for that matter, more Outfit men.
Dino had been targeted for a reason. He had been pulled in because they had shit—dirt—on him to put him away. It was how these people worked. They wanted an informant, someone to put on the inside and get them the information they wanted, then they picked out the weakest fucking fool in the joint and went after them in whatever way they could.
Usually jail time was a good threat to use.
No man wanted his freedom taken away.
Dino, in that moment, was more concerned with protecting his life.
“So,” Dino continued, sitting straight in the chair and resting his arms to the table, “let me get this straight. You have some shit on me that you mean to scare me with—some charges you might be able to trump up for a few years’ worth of time behind bars, if you’re lucky, though I think it’s probably a year at most. See, I know what you likely found in my office and home, which was very fucking little. Let me save you the time and get all of this out of the way.”
“Dino,” Agent Stanley started to say.
Dino leaned forward in his seat, staring the men in the faces and sneering. “Put me away—file your fucking charges. Get me into arraignment. I’ll do general population for a year. Fuck off.”
Quick as a whip, Agent Courtly hit the corner of the small metal garbage can, letting it topple over across the table. A plume of black ashes wafted out, blowing over Dino’s prone form, the table, and the floor. By the time it had settled, he’d breathed in a good dose of the shit, and was covered in it too.
It took every ounce of fucking willpower Dino had not to get up from the table and beat the living hell out of the agent. He decided against the desire, if only because he knew that would earn him a few assault charges.
“Get my lawyer,” Dino uttered through clenched teeth.
Neither agent moved an inch.
In fact, the one tossed the file he’d been holding down to the table. Then, he reached over and opened it up fast, causing more ashes to blow all over the place.
How long was Dino going to have to sit through this entire shit show?
Because he was over it.
“We warned you last week, didn’t we?” Agent Courtly asked quietly.
Dino’s brow furrowed, and he clenched his hands under the table in an effort to hide his frustrations. If he didn’t do something with his hands, he was going to beat them into the skulls of these idiots. “How many times am I going to have to ask for my—”
“He’s coming,” the agent barked. “Shut up and listen, DeLuca.”
“You’ve got about ten seconds to talk before I earn myself a few assault charges to go along with whatever other filings you’ve got ready for me,” Dino responded in kind.
He figured the least he could do was warn the fools.
Let them do with it what they wanted.
The agent pulled a piece of paper—one single document—from the opened file on the table, and then tossed it in Dino’s general direction. He didn’t bother to grab for the paper, instead letting it fall off to the side, sparing it a glance before he looked back to the agents.
“Will you get to the damn point?” Dino demanded.
Agent Stanley passed his partner a look, one that was filled with both exasperation and confusion, before going back to Dino. “We told you last week that someone was out to make a mess for you—we made it very clear that you had an option, Dino. All you needed to do was talk, as we were already in the process of digging deeper into the info that had been mailed into our taskforce.”
Dino blinked.
Mailed in?
Finally, he looked down to the paper, recognizing it immediately as one of the several documents from his club office that had gone missing over the last few months. It wasn’t exactly damning—a bank statement from an offshore account that showed money being withdrawn from the offshore account into one of Dino’s American bank accounts.
But still, funneling money was illegal.
Dino would need to show where that money came from, where it went to, and where it came out from to show that everything was as legit as it could possibly be. That there was no fraudulent activity to be found in his accounts. That his money was not being made from illegal activities and then pillowed in by legal ventures to hide where it came from.
It was messy.
But it was enough for warrants, he knew. It was enough to open his books.
It was enough to start a very long and shitty process that would put him under a microscope for a very long time.
“Do you think he’s getting it yet?” one of the agents asked the other.
Still, Dino only stared at the document.
Someone had gone into his office, taken his documents, and mailed at least one into a taskforce with some kind of information to start an investigation on him.
Deep down, he knew exactly who had done it.
Ben.
His only question with no answer was why.
“I get it,” Dino said gruffly, never looking away from the paper.
“Then how about we have a serious discussion about where you can go from here, Dino?” Agent Stanley asked, leaning down on the table with his palms curled around the edge. “We can get you put in a safe position, sweep all of this under the rug—hell, if you need a bit of time behind bars to make it look really good, we can do that, too—and then get you out clean once it is all said and done and we have what we need to kill the Outfit organization if you just help us out a little bit.
“We’re not asking for much, and we’re offering you a pretty good deal. Your father took it once—took it without even thinking about it, or so we were told—once he realized how easy it would be without the mafia running his life.”
“My father was killed because of what he did,” Dino countered.
Partly, he added silently.
“That was a mistake,” one of the two assured, his voice too calm to belie the truth Dino knew was hidden beneath the words.
They cal
led it a mistake.
Fact was, no one, not the mafia or the officials, had ever cared that Dino’s father had been killed for turning rat all those years ago. No one gave a single fuck that his mother had been caught up in the end, and killed as well. Not a soul in the world had stopped to look at the three DeLuca children left as orphans because of what everyone liked to say was nothing more than a mistake.
“No,” Dino murmured firmly.
His answer for that would always be the same.
“Dino, now—”
Dino shook his head. “If the sentiment wasn’t heard before, it’s not going to change, so let me give you a reminder. It’ll be the last thing I have to say to you without my lawyer present. Fuck off.”
That finally seemed to do the trick.
Both agents’ faces clouded in their anger and frustration, with Courtly being the first agent to stalk back out of the room, slamming the door loudly behind him as he left.
Stanley, on the other hand, stayed behind.
“Can I do something for you?” Dino asked, letting his irritation bleed through in his tone.
“You’re really going to take the hell this is going to bring your way, huh?” the agent asked quieter than he had spoken before. “Your whole life is going to be upended, Dino. As of this moment, we have you on two illegal weapons charges due to what we found in your home, and another set of charges we’ve yet to file for the cooked books related to your club.
“That’s going to be a year, at least, but shit, we might get you for two, depending on what judge we can pull out of our asses. We’re going to make your life a living hell when we tear into each and every single one of your businesses. How many homes do you have—apartments, vacation places? What will we find in those?”
Dino refused to speak or even look at the agent as he talked. He let the man rant on, because he had fuck all to say, or at least, nothing that would do him any good at the moment.
The agent honestly didn’t seem to mind.
“I bet we’ll find enough,” the agent continued on, calm as ever, “it might take a while, no doubt. A couple of years of digging, of going through financials and out of country records, freezing each and every one of your accounts that we can while you’re locked away on these first set of charges, but we’ll get it done eventually. We will have a stack of charges waiting for you when you get out this time around, a whole new round of shit to put you away with, and my bet, Dino, is it won’t be for a year or two.”
Dino swallowed hard, knowing the agent had yet to speak even one lie.
He figured confidence was better than fear at the moment.
Even if it wasn’t real.
“My bet,” the agent said, turning to leave but looking over his shoulder at Dino as he spoke, “is that we’ll put you away for life.”
“I welcome your efforts,” Dino said, staring the man right in the eye.
“I doubt that, Dino. I believe you already know where you’re going in, due time.”
He did know, but that didn’t mean he had to show it.
“I’ve already been through hell. Trust me when I say, prison isn’t it. Not even a life sentence can compare to the hell I have already lived. Don’t try to scare me with that tactic, it’s a worthless effort.”
Much like his life, sadly.
The agent barely gave a reaction to that, instead, shaking his head with a profound understanding coloring his older features. “I have never fully understood the hold the mafia has on its members, or at least, those we couldn’t entice enough with a free, good life.”
“I don’t need you to give me anything,” Dino said, shrugging, “I can get the good life all on my own, thanks.”
“Take the deal—we’ll give you forty-eight hours to decide.”
His answer was still the same as it had been minutes before.
It wasn’t going to change.
“Fuck off.”
THOSE forty-eight hours passed by at a crawling snail’s pace. Forty-eight hours of being shuffled from one cell to another in the county jail, of looking new incomers in the eye, and avoiding the splatters of vomit when the drunks finally awoke from their stupors.
Forty-eight hours of asking for his lawyer.
Forty-eight hours of being denied phone calls.
Forty-eight hours of having his rights ignored.
Dino was sure there was some other shit at play with the police, the FBI agents, and even others that he couldn’t see, but that didn’t make it easier. Each time he approached the row of bars and called out to the guard that he again, wanted his lawyer, and again, wanted his phone calls, he only got a disinterested grunt for a response.
Those forty-eight hours ticked down like a fucking time bomb in the back of Dino’s brain. Prison wouldn’t be like jail, he knew. He’d have a cell mate, not a half a dozen drunks and a few male prostitutes shoved into the same barred quarters. There would be lights out and yard time, plus that three-meal-a-day guarantee.
It wasn’t any of that nonsense that gave Dino cause to pause.
No, it was being locked up that bothered him.
His freedom being taken away.
The inability to up and go when he wanted just because he could. The feeling of being caged crawling over his nervous system one minute, and the anxiety of knowing he couldn’t get out was slamming into him like a wrecking ball the next minute.
That was the shit that made him pause.
Made him … consider.
Still, he knew better; knew that taking any sort of deal to turn informant for the FBI or any officials would not end well for him, and so he stopped allowing himself to consider it at all. He didn’t sleep those forty-eight hours, not when doing so could mean he’d wake up in the midst of a nightmare and anyone within hearing distance would witness one of his many weaknesses in action.
He focused on staying awake, on planning, and a hell of a lot more about Karen.
Had his package arrived yet?
He doubted it, given he’d dropped it in the chute on a Friday, and it was only Sunday evening now. Tomorrow, probably.
He wondered if his face had been splashed across the news, and thought it was likely that it had been, if only because when shit went down in the mafia, the media loved to run with it, spinning the story wildly out of control just to stir up interest and ratings.
Had she seen any of it?
Would she even care if she had?
Scrubbing a hand over his face, Dino leaned against the cinderblock wall and willed away his exhaustion and frustrations. It would do him no good to get lost in that mess, and he sure as hell couldn’t afford to sit down if he wanted to stay awake for as long as possible.
He needed to catch bail after he was properly arraigned, but how long was that going to take?
Dino was painfully aware of the fact he had too much negatives stacked up in his favor. He was going to be the victim of his own circumstance when it was all said and done.
He would have no one to blame but himself.
The squeak of Italian leather dress shoes finally made Dino look up from the floor and drop his hand from his face. Throughout his time in the jail, he’d spent far more energy than he wanted to admit paying attention to stupid things just to pass time and keep awake, and one of those things happened to be the sounds of footsteps walking through the halls and outside of the general cells.
Italian leather made a distinct squeak on cheap tiles.
It couldn’t be missed.
Not once since he had been brought in had he heard that sound. No one with a government salary inside the building could afford the Italian leather his family—even himself—wore daily. Not to mention, the guards all wore the same shoes, compliments of a shitty, ugly uniform they were provided with when given the job.
Sure enough, when Dino looked up, he found a familiar sight standing just beyond the cell. Ben DeLuca looked rather smug—and somehow, a little disgusted—peering over the people that shared the space with his nephew
.
At the sight of his uncle, Dino’s rage only grew from a small fire to a goddamned inferno inside his chest. It only proved his paranoid thinking was probably right, and that Ben likely did have something to do with Dino’s current predicament.
If nothing else, simply by lending some kind of hand to the officials.
“You look tired, Dino,” Ben said. “You’ve found yourself in a … cosa triste, nipote.”
Dino had all he could do to temper his response, his teeth grinding in an effort to hold back what he really wanted to say. “Yes, a sad thing, indeed. But did I find myself here, Ben, or was I helped?”
Ben didn’t answer that.
Dino wasn’t the least bit surprised.
“Where is my lawyer?” Dino asked, his patience lessening. “I’ve asked for Tony fifty times today. You’re not Tony.”
Ben lifted a single finger high, waving it as if to chide Dino without actually saying something to rebuke him. It was purely instinct and nothing more for Dino to react to that movement, if only because his uncle had used it on more than one occasion before using some sort of violent action toward him. This time was no exception for Dino’s reaction as he moved slightly to the side, putting more of his back toward his uncle.
It didn’t factor into him at all that they were separated by bars and cement.
It didn’t matter that Ben couldn’t get inside the cell, not that he would if he were even able.
Dino couldn’t help his reactions. They were involuntary.
It was lesson after lesson, literally beaten into his body and mind.
He couldn’t wake up one day and forget them.
“Tony works for me, of course,” Ben said, smiling slightly and tipping his hand as if to wave off Dino’s concerns. “And he doesn’t work on weekends.”
Dino’s jaw clenched. “I pay him.”
“That doesn’t make you his boss, Dino.”
And that, he knew, was the biggest problem of all.
Even his goddamn lawyer couldn’t be trusted.