Waste of Worth (DeLuca Duet Book 1)

by Bethany-Kris

  He had a while yet to go, though.

  “It’ll be a year and a half if you plead guilty on the gun charges and the possession charges they added on for the five ounces of weed they picked up in your office,” Mike explained.

  “Five ounces they planted,” Dino muttered.

  All the drugs had been cleared out.

  Theo made sure of it the week before the raid.

  No matter, what was done was done.

  “Plead on these now, and they’ll drop the fraud, laundering, and tax evasion charges,” the public defender added, not that Dino needed him to.

  He was already well aware of the deal that had been put on the table.

  “If nothing else, it’ll offer you a bit of time outside prison before they build that case,” Mike said, glancing to Dino.

  “Is it that they don’t have the evidence they need yet to get the verdict on those charges, or they just want to play keep-away with my freedom?” Dino asked.

  Mike shrugged. “Both?”

  “Fucking fantastic.”

  “You can be out in a year—maybe—on good behavior.”

  Dino glanced out the barred window as he said, “Yeah, I got it, Mike.”

  “You ready to make that deal?”

  No.

  No, he was not.

  It was one thing for a made man to plead no contest in court, but it was another thing for him to be found guilty, or plead guilty. It just didn’t look good for his reputation with the family. Not that being arrested looked good as it was, because that was just a whole other mess to deal with once a man was free.

  Thankfully, it looked like Dino would have some time to consider all of that.

  That time would be spent in a very small cell.

  Dino knew he really didn’t have a choice but to take the deal that was offered—he was a small fish, to be sure, but all the original charges had been stacked against him, even the fraud, tax evasion, and laundering, and the prosecution had done just what he knew they would and argued he was a flight risk.

  So there he was, denied bail on a goddamn drug and weapons charges because now they were going to drop the other charges that had actually been the point in context for his denied freedom while he awaited trial. In doing so, he was now being given a deal that would immediately put his plea in, speed up his court dates which would not offer him another bail hearing, and he’d be looking at his new jail cell within the week.

  That was how fast they wanted him put away.

  Dino could do nothing about it.

  Fuck the people who had done this to him.

  Fuck them all.

  “Give me the papers,” Dino said gruffly, not wanting to stay lost in his thoughts for too long lest he let them overwhelm his apathy. Once he got angry, it seemed like lately that was all he could feel when it came on. And shit, he wanted to feed it something bad. “I’ll sign right now—get this fucking shit over with.”

  “You’ll have some time out of prison before they bring the second round,” Mike said again, “and it’ll give you time to plan.”

  “Also gives them time to royally screw me over more than they already have.”

  Mike didn’t deny it.

  “Then why sign?” his lawyer asked as he handed the papers over.

  For a single second, as Dino’s hand hovered over the deal the prosecution had painstakingly detailed in twenty printed pages back and front, he hesitated in signing.

  No, that wasn’t entirely truthful.

  He hesitated in answering Mike’s question and answering it honestly.

  Staring across the metal table, Dino met his lawyer’s gaze. “Let me ask you a question.”

  “Shoot. We’ve got all the time in the world.”

  Unfortunately.

  “Have you been approached by anyone yet?” Dino asked.

  Mike instantly leaned back in his seat, his fingers steepling as he considered Dino’s question. “You know, I’ve been good, Dino, as far as you’re concerned. I didn’t ask if you were guilty, I didn’t question you on your involvement with the mafia or your connections in that regard—none of it.”

  “But you want to,” Dino pressed.

  “Is it going to let me defend you any better than I can now?”

  “No.”

  Mike pointed at him. “Exactly—no. And that’s why I haven’t asked. I might be just a public defender, bottom of the barrel to some, but there’s a reason why you picked a public defender. I was just the lucky fucker that got appointed to your case, it could have just as easily been Margie in the next office, but no, it was me that got the draw. There’s a reason you went with a public defender, my friend, but I haven’t asked.”

  “You’re not on a payroll,” Dino said honestly.

  “I’m not. And no, Dino, I haven’t been approached or threatened or sent a message, to answer that for you, too. Might as well get it out of the way.”

  That was music to Dino’s ears.

  “Good.”

  “So tell me,” Mike said, leaning forward, “why sign?”

  “They’re going to draw this out,” Dino said, “they’ve already got me on a denied bail, and if I don’t sign, I might get another bail hearing whenever the hell the judge feels like signing off on a date for another hearing, but it could be a month or more for that. By then, they’ll refile the other charges, and that’ll be yet another argument on why I can’t get bail because I have every resource at my fingertips to run.”

  “But they might not have a strong enough case on the other charges,” Mike suggested.

  “Might,” Dino agreed, “but that’s not a risk I’m willing to take. Look at it like this, they can draw this out for a good six months, maybe more, before any real movement is going to happen. Or I can take this deal, do my year and a half—maybe a year if I’m lucky—get out, and resume my life for a bit. It’ll give me a chance to explain myself, to do what I should have done before I got put in here like this.”

  “They’re going to put you back in, though.”

  Dino nodded once. “But it’ll give me time, Mike. I only need time.”

  For Karen.

  For his unborn child.

  For his siblings.

  For the Outfit.

  Dino only needed just a small bit of time on his side to do what he needed to do, and he’d do it damn well.

  “Take the deal, then?” Mike asked.

  Dino signed his name across the dotted line, flipped a page, and signed another piece. He continued this until each and every page had his name written on it, signaling he fully understood what he was agreeing to, and would make every effort to do as the prosecution wanted him to when he was brought back into the courts.

  When he had finished, Dino pushed the papers back over to Mike who took them with a sad smile.

  “One other thing,” Mike said as he stood from the table.

  Dino crossed his arms, staring out at the door where he knew a guard would come to get him to return him to a cell as soon as Mike was gone. “What’s that, man?”

  “They tell me you’re not using a phone and you’ve had no visitors.”

  All true.

  “What about it?” Dino asked.

  “You don’t have someone you want to call or talk to? Someone you’d like to see?”

  Dino frowned before he could stop himself.

  His answer to those questions were an absolutely empathetic yes.

  Every day, he thought of Karen. Every day, he hurt.

  Every day, he reminded himself of why he was doing what he was doing, and that while it would hurt her—while she would probably never understand—he was doing it so that she was safe, and she would remain so.

  It barely helped.

  His heart still felt blackened, burned, and ruined.

  He was reduced back to that worthless, black existence that had become a faithful friend before Karen came along.

  “Is this like the public defender thing?” Mike asked, clearly choosing his w
ords carefully.

  Dino appreciated the effort. “Sort of, but—”

  “I can do whatever you want or ask me to do as long as it’s not illegal, Dino.”

  “Shit, some lawyers will even do the illegal stuff for you.”

  Mike smirked at his joke. “Not me, though.”

  “This isn’t that.”

  “What is it?” the lawyer asked.

  Dino took a breath in, wishing his chest didn’t feel so heavy but empty at the same time. “It’s complicated, is all.”

  “You were a complicated case.”

  “It’s not entirely over yet,” he reminded the lawyer.

  Mike agreed to that statement. “But what about this—whatever it is?”

  Dino looked over to the door again—it was still closed as Mike hadn’t pressed the buzzer yet. There were no cameras or wires in the room recording their conversation because of attorney and client privilege prevented the jail from doing so.

  It was a small gift, if nothing else.

  “Dino,” Mike pressed gently, “I was only given an hour.”

  Dino was aware.

  “Her name is Karen,” Dino said quietly, “and she’s another reason I needed to settle this out now, because her name is on a few things I don’t want them digging into, and it might give my guys some time to wash away what might come up for her on one of my businesses that they haven’t dug into yet.”

  Mike’s head cocked to the side, his confusion evident. “What does she have—”

  “She’s pregnant with my child, and I’ve kept her presence a secret from people in my family who might do her harm. Because that’s exactly what they would do to her if they knew—harm her.”

  The lawyer took his seat again, not saying a word as he did so.

  Dino sympathized with the man. It was a lot to take in, but he thought maybe—God, maybe—this was one more way for him to keep Karen. If only he could explain … talk to her, even if it was through someone else … if only …

  It was selfish. Purely for his own wants. He should let her go, let her mend whatever heartbreak he’d caused her and hope that she would do better—be better—without him. She could be better, he knew, but he was that selfish.

  “I don’t know how much, if anything, she knows about my legal problems,” Dino said, “as we didn’t end this on good terms, and I basically left her hanging in the wind. She’s going to have the baby before I even get out—if I get the full year and a half, the baby will be a year old by the time I even get to meet him or her.”

  Mike cleared his throat and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Huh.”

  “If I get to meet the baby,” Dino corrected quieter, “because who the fuck knows if she’ll even want a part in this mess, right?”

  “So what do you want me to do to help you with her exactly?” Mike asked.

  Dino had kept his shaking hands hidden under the table, or tucked under his crossed arms throughout the whole conversation, as he didn’t like to show his weaknesses like they were simply cards for someone else to pick up and use whenever they wanted.

  Yet, when Mike asked him—no further explanations needed—what he could do to help, Dino showed his shaking hands, reaching into the pocket of his jail appointed uniform to pull out a stack of papers he’d kept folded up and hidden there. It was only a few, but it was a few pages worth of his soul—blackened, burned, and ruined—scribbled there for Karen.

  If she wanted to read.

  If she would even care.

  “There on the top—that’s her address,” Dino said, handing it over. “I just need you to mail it, no return sender.”

  Mike took the folded up papers. “That’s it?”

  Dino shrugged. “The words inside will do the rest.”

  He hoped …

  Time would tell.

  It was looking as if he would have a lot of time while he waited.

  Bethany-Kris is a Canadian author, lover of much, and mother to three very young sons, one cat, and two dogs. A small town in Eastern Canada where she was born and raised is where she has always called home. With her boys under her feet, a snuggling cat, barking dogs, and a spouse calling over his shoulder, she is nearly always writing something ... when she can find the time.

  Find Bethany-Kris at:

  Her website www.bethanykris.com,

  or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bethanykriswrites,

  on her blog at www.bethanykris.com/blog,

  or on Twitter - @BethanyKris.

  Sign up to Bethany-Kris’s New Release Newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/bf9lzD.

  Worth of Waste

  DeLuca Duet, Part Two

  Releasing February 6th, 2017

  The Chicago Mob is the same as it has always been—violent, greedy, and excessive. The Outfit families have turned their backs when they were needed the most one too many times, but Dino DeLuca didn’t expect anything different.

  His whole life has been lived for the Outfit—for his family.

  He has a whole new set of reasons to live and fight now.

  Karen Martin makes Dino change all the rules.

  He’s finally ready to show everyone just how much waste is truly worth in the mafia, and just how far one will go for freedom from it all.

  He’s learned these lessons well.

  Too well.

  Author’s Note: The DeLuca Duet is a standalone duet with a HEA ending that can be read independently.

  Chapter One

  Karen

  Who are you?

  Karen Martin woke up each and every day asking herself that same question.

  Who are you? How did you get here? Why did you do this to yourself?

  She didn’t have the right answers to tell her reflection in the mirror, certainly none that would explain her current situation, or the hell she had found herself living in. She also knew she had no one else to blame—mostly—other than her reflection staring back at her.

  Maybe that was the worst part, the fact that she didn’t have someone else to blame.

  How could she when she was alone?

  Today was a harder day than normal, and those questions she always asked came with a little more force than normal, if only because the first thing she saw on the small television as she sat down with a cup of decaffeinated tea in her hands was his face.

  The first thought that came to her mind?

  That’s a better picture than the mugshot.

  A shot of Dino DeLuca sitting in the courtroom, suit and tie perfectly in place, standing as he handed his ‘guilty’ plea over. And then he was gone, the image fading away as the anchor room flashed back on the television where the anchors had already moved onto another story.

  Karen had only caught the very tail end of the news story, but what she had seen was more than enough to know Dino wouldn’t be coming back out anytime soon.

  A sickness climbed from her sensitive stomach, and she set the tea aside, not daring to take another drink. She could have blamed it on the pregnancy—blamed her warring emotions on the little life just barely beginning—but it would have been an excuse.

  She didn’t know what to do.

  She was alone.

  She was pregnant.

  She was scared.

  An item caught her attention out of the corner of her eye, and for a second, those fears bled away and were then replaced by a heated anger swelling in her chest. The thick manila envelope, filled with stacks of cash and topped with a note Karen couldn’t begin to understand, sat on the very edge of her coffee table.

  She’d recognized Dino’s handwriting on the package the second the mail man banged on her door and shoved it into her hands, pissed off because it was too big to put in her mailbox downstairs. She hadn’t known what was happening to him at the time she got the package—that early Monday morning had just been another day for her, although a sadder, bleaker morning given she had been convinced Dino’s lack of presence was yet another sign that she would just have to move forward alon
e.

  How stupid she had been …

  How crazy …

  Karen glared at the cash again, hating that she hadn’t just taken it somewhere and handed it off to get it out of her hands. A charity, maybe.

  The police, even.

  She sighed.

  No doubt, the police would be happy to get a package like that from Karen, especially if she could say it was from Dino. Something stopped her from doing both—the charity or the police.

  Her pregnancy.

  Dino’s child.

  The unborn life was the one and only thing that stopped Karen’s anger from making her do something she might regret one day. She knew Dino didn’t mean harm by sending her the money, and his note inside the package had only confirmed that fact, while the last few sentences of the scribbled mess had just left her more confused.

  Don’t give the child my names, it had read.

  Karen tried not to dwell on that as much as she could, but it was becoming more and more impossible as the days went on. Especially on a day like today when she happened to see something like the news broadcast on the television, yet she still felt so far removed from the entire scene.

  Because she didn’t know.

  She didn’t know anything about the legal problems, what Dino faced, when or if he might be out, or even how she could find out more without stepping foot into his business and making her presence known.

  If nothing else, Karen had figured that one thing out all by herself and without any help.

  Dino did not want Karen involved.

  Not with his people.

  Not with his life.

  Not with the … mafia.

  It all felt a little surreal.

  She met a man one day, a sad, frowning man who seemed so cold from afar, so entirely unapproachable on that foggy, damp morning. She’d watched him from nearby as he talked to a gravestone, his large hands being so very careful as they wiped off the stone with a pristine white napkin from his jacket pocket.

  Karen had thought about how lonely he looked crouched down in front of the grave, how alone he seemed in his distant gaze that looked right passed her at one moment in time, not even noticing she was standing there by a tree watching him.