Worth of Waste (DeLuca Duet #2)

by Bethany-Kris

  Honestly, she didn’t mind.

  His curiosity and excitement were cute.

  She thought her son would have enjoyed the sight of the dressed-up horse pulling the white sleigh down the street, had he been with her, but given it was a work day, Karen was taking her lunch away from the studio, and Junior was at daycare.

  Maybe she could find out about that horse and sleigh another day …

  Karen tugged off her gloves as she walked into the small café, the scent of warm coffee and freshly baked treats drawing her to the waiting server behind the cash. She surveyed what was offered beneath the display glass, settling on cinnamon rolls and coffee. Once she had paid for her items, she took a seat in the corner, getting her laptop set up as she sipped her hot drink.

  She had just got the laptop booted up—ready to do some photo editing on her lunch break—as a figure sat down in the chair across from hers at the small table. The man, dressed in a black suit with a heavy wool coat, looked as though he had come from the outside, and hadn’t even bothered to get himself something to eat.

  Karen couldn’t help but notice how there was lots of other empty tables in the café, and her table was only meant for two people. With her laptop out, and a half of a bite of cinnamon roll in her mouth, it wasn’t as if she looked exactly inviting for company.

  “Can I help you?” Karen asked the man.

  The man stuck his hand out, offering it to Karen to shake.

  She only stared at him, not taking it.

  Pulling his hand back slowly, the man smiled, unaffected at her rejection. “Detective Rubins, ma’am. I was wondering if you had a minute or two to talk about an employer.”

  Karen sat a little straighter in her chair. “The studio—”

  “No, not your current employer, a previous one.”

  A lump grew in her throat the longer she sat there. The eyes of the detective, following her every move, made Karen feel as if she were nothing more than a bug under a microscope.

  “Which employer would that be and how did you know to find me here?”

  Again, the detective smiled. “I went to the studio first—some of your mail from your last employer had been flagged for return to your new workplace. Your boss said I could find you here. If you would rather something else, I could let you have your lunch and we could set up a time to meet at the precinct.”

  Hell no.

  That thought practically screamed inside Karen’s mind.

  On the outside, however, she stayed silent.

  “Which employer?” Karen asked again.

  “A Dino DeLuca—he owns the restaurant you worked at before you moved to your new job.”

  “I’m not very familiar with him, but I do know who you’re talking about.”

  Karen prided herself on not being a liar, and she had definitely never lied to a cop before.

  Detective Rubins nodded. “I’m sure you’re aware your old employer was arrested and spent time in jail—this is unrelated to that, in a way. A task force has been put together with the FBI and Chicago Police Department, and one of our focuses has been the Chicago Outfit, something your employer was involved in. You happened to have access to the books for the one business when you were working for Dino DeLuca—”

  “I made sure the numbers balanced,” Karen said honestly. It was the truth, though she wasn’t about to offer any sort of information that might get Dino in trouble where the restaurant was concerned. Certainly, not how she had often cooked numbers when Dino had asked her to, in order to hide cash he’d funneled into the business as profits. “I have no idea about anything of that other stuff you just said. I met Dino a few times while I worked for him, and that was it.”

  The man didn’t look like he believed her.

  Karen kept her poker face firmly in place.

  “That doesn’t explain a visitation record in the prison with your name on it attached to Dino when he was an inmate,” the man noted.

  Still, Karen refused to crack. “I knew there were legal things happening. I wanted to know if there was something I should worry about because of my previous employment. I thought it might impact my ability to find work if I, too, were being investigated for having worked for Dino before, and felt maybe he would have answers for me. He didn’t, and in fact, he refused to even talk to me. Which isn’t surprising, considering we weren’t friends before he was arrested, and I had quit without giving him notice.”

  “You have answers for everything, Miss.”

  “Honest answers,” Karen replied.

  Or that was the story she was telling.

  “Well, should you remember anything that might help our—”

  “You didn’t even tell me what you were looking for,” Karen pointed out, annoyed.

  The detective laughed. “Trust me, you would know without me needing to tell. Which makes me think I’ve probably wasted both of our times here today. But should you remember anything about working for Dino DeLuca that might help our investigation, please give me a call.”

  He slid a card across the table.

  Karen barely spared it a glance. “Thanks.”

  But she wouldn’t be using that card at all.

  “By the way,” the detective said as he stood, “was there any particular reason why you happened to quit the restaurant around the same time Dino was arrested? Say, perhaps, you noticed things weren’t entirely on the up and up with your employer or his business and you decided to cut tail and run?”

  Karen cleared her throat, trying not to shift in her chair. “That sounds like an accusation.”

  “I certainly didn’t mean for it to.”

  She doubted that.

  “I quit because something better came along.”

  Detective Rubin’s gaze narrowed slightly. “You didn’t start working for your new employer for a couple of months after, correct?”

  How did he know that?

  Had the police been looking into Karen for a while?

  Refusing to let her inner dilemma or concern show, Karen looked the man right in the eye and replied, “I never said it was the studio, did I?”

  “That you didn’t. Again, should you remember anything …”

  “I’ll call.”

  “And if we learn anything new that we think you might be able to help with,” the man continued, “you will be seeing me again, Miss Martin.”

  The detective left the café without a single look back.

  Karen made sure to toss that goddamn card in the garbage as she left the café, and she didn’t bother going back to work, either. She called in sick, saying something hadn’t agreed with her and she would be back tomorrow if all was well in the morning. Thankfully, her boss didn’t question her on the sudden call.

  She picked Junior up from daycare, no longer appreciating the snow or the festive decorations lining the streets.

  Her mind was somewhere else entirely.

  The taste of fear hung heavily on the back of her tongue.

  It was only when she was back at home, her son was sleeping soundly in his crib, that Karen finally felt like she could take a breath. Not a good one, though. No, that only came after she had called Dino.

  As was the usual for him, the call went to voicemail. Since his release a little over a month before, he made every attempt to visit her and the baby a few times a week if he could, and he always brought something along for Junior to have when he came.

  Karen let him into her bed every time, too.

  She wanted something normal with Dino. She needed stability.

  And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to ask, for fear of how he might respond to her. She didn’t want to tell him that she needed more than someone who just came and went, just in case he stopped coming altogether.

  That … that would kill her.

  So, she took what he gave.

  She didn’t ask for more.

  When Dino’s name lit up the screen of her phone, signaling he was finally calling her back twenty minutes after s
he had called him, Karen took a huge breath in that didn’t hurt.

  No, it felt like relief.

  And that was every reason why she didn’t ask for more.

  Even getting as little as she did from him, he was still giving her something.

  Something that felt like home.

  More could wait.

  For now.

  Dino arrived at Karen’s apartment less than an hour after hanging up the phone. He didn’t even knock, just used the spare key she had given him to get in, shrugged his coat off, and found her in the living room. She had found a comfortable spot sitting in front of the bay window beside the lit up Christmas tree, watching snow fall outside on the walkway in front of the apartment building.

  “I didn’t see you park,” Karen said.

  Dino came to stand in front of her, kneeling down and placing his hands on her thighs. For a long moment, he stayed like that, touching her softly and being silent as he did so. It was enough to ground the anxiety that had been rushing her nerves like a tidal wave for the last hour.

  “I parked a couple blocks away and came in the back,” Dino explained. “Just to be safe—seems you’re on someone’s radar, now.”

  Karen frowned. “Am I?”

  “You did say it was a detective, right? Not an agent.”

  “That’s what he said.”

  Dino’s expression gave nothing away. “Okay, tell me everything that happened. Don’t leave anything out, huh?”

  Karen did as he wanted, going over the strange encounter with the detective and how it had seemed as though it came right out of the blue. Dino waited her explanation out, never speaking until she was finally done.

  “You haven’t been approached at all before this?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “And no one around you has mentioned that someone might be asking about you?”

  “No,” Karen repeated dully.

  Dino sighed, standing. “Then it might be just what the detective said. They’re looking into my businesses, the restaurant happened to be one of them, and you were an employee on their list to talk to. Nothing to worry about.”

  He’d said that so flippantly, and she knew he had probably meant to calm whatever fears she was feeling, but it didn’t help.

  Something just didn’t feel right.

  “But what if—”

  Dino quieted Karen’s statement by leaning down and pressing a soft kiss to her mouth. When he finally pulled away, his thumb stroked her cheek gently, reassuring her silently. “This isn’t about you—it’s about me. I haven’t had any officials come my way since my release, but I knew it was only a matter of time. This tells me they are building something against me, or maybe they’re getting everything ready before they do come my way. Either way, I know now.”

  “And what about me?” Karen asked, looking up at him. “Or J, Dino. What about us?”

  He stilled, turning into a cold statue right in front of her eyes.

  Karen had the distinct feeling that Dino had not given them much thought, but maybe he hadn’t meant for it to be that way. He considered his legal troubles as his, for him to deal with alone, but he forgot to factor in that they were still a part of his picture, too.

  “I don’t want to be left alone again,” Karen said softly.

  Dino was kneeling down in front of her again in a flash. “You won’t, I promise.”

  “Don’t make—”

  “I’ll make this one and mean it, Karen. Whatever it takes, I will make it happen, I promise. I know it probably seems like you’re some dirty secret of mine that I keep hidden away, but you’re not. You’re so far from that—you and that baby are everything to me. I’m sorry that I can’t tell you more sometimes or give you more, but someday I will. I just don’t know when or how yet. What is more important is that I keep doing whatever you need to make you happy.”

  “I am.”

  “But you could be happier.”

  Karen didn’t deny it. “I don’t want to be alone.”

  She didn’t want to be heartbroken at the end of whatever this was. She didn’t want to wake up one morning to find out Dino was going to be taken away from her again. She didn’t want to be afraid and alone.

  She hated how nothing had really happened except for a stupid fucking reminder.

  A reminder from a detective that nothing was as it should be.

  “Ruined my whole day,” Karen mumbled to herself.

  Dino chuckled, a small smile splitting his lips. “Maybe I can make it up to you. I can afford to take a night away—I was at the house alone, anyway.”

  “It’s a pretty big house to be alone in, isn’t it?”

  “It’s cold and quiet,” he admitted. “I like being here a lot more.”

  “Stay tonight?”

  Dino’s arms circled Karen’s waist and pulled her from the chair before sitting back down and holding her tight in his lap. His chin rested on her shoulder, and Karen relaxed in his hold.

  “Yeah, I’ll stay.”

  She hadn’t expected anything different.

  Dino

  CHRISTMAS, Dino had learned, was a carefully planned event on his part. On the eve of the big day, he juggled his time between dinners and making sure he was where he was supposed to be, no questions asked. After all, he didn’t want to be questioned on Christmas when he didn’t show up somewhere else.

  He could easily say he had been there the day before, and wouldn’t be bothered further on it.

  The busyness of the season, and the very fact he had been trying to play catch up every single day since his release with business and his responsibilities as a Capo to the Outfit, meant he hadn’t gotten very much free time to shop as he had wanted to for presents for his son.

  He took a couple of extra hours he had on Christmas Eve to join the last minute shoppers in the mall and small boutiques, and found it wasn’t a fun place to be. Claustrophobic and suffocating, yes, but certainly not fun.

  But with the presents safely stored in the backseat of his car, and wrapped up beautifully, thanks to the gift-wrapping centers in the store, Dino was satisfied he had done his job.

  So when Christmas morning rolled around, the anxiety he had been feeling leading up to the day seemed to drift away. He got up earlier than he normally would; he wanted to be at Karen’s place before Junior woke up, and sometimes the kid cracked his eyes open at the first sight of the sun rising in his bedroom windows.

  The sky was still dark when Dino pulled into Karen’s place. He parked in a lot directly across from her building, one that was meant for another apartment complex, and gathered up the presents in a large sack he had brought along, and entered through the back of the building.

  Even though the officials had yet to approach him, Dino couldn’t be too careful.

  He didn’t want Karen to be connected to him on a personal level. The professional connection was more than enough to get her in trouble if the wrong thing was found, or if someone happened to say the wrong thing.

  Yeah, careful.

  Thankfully, the apartment was still dark and quiet when Dino let himself in. Karen had decorated the place with all the trimmings of Christmas, and the sight made him smile. He’d seen it before now, but with the rooms dark except for the brightly twinkling Christmas lights and the sparkling ornaments, he saw it with new eyes.

  It was such a stark contrast to his own house.

  One he hadn’t bothered to decorate. A place he had only started to fill the rooms with furniture because his uncle felt the need to point out how empty it was and how uninviting it seemed to be.

  Dino lived there, sure.

  But he didn’t want to be there.

  And therein was the difference.

  He didn’t even have a Christmas tree at his own house, not wanting to be bothered with the time he would need to take to get one, set it up, buy decorations, and then trim the tree.

  It all seemed like a waste, really.

  He didn’t have anyone to bri
ng over to share it with.

  Someday, he wanted to fill that big house with the sounds of little feet. He wanted handprints on the windows, and to stuff the halls with all sorts of decorations during the holidays. He wanted shouts to echo, for toys to be strewn, and for a warmth to spread throughout the rooms that couldn’t quite be duplicated with manmade heat.

  It didn’t seem to matter how high he turned the heat on.

  The place the always fucking cold.

  Dino knew a lot of that was a figment of his own unhappiness when he was there. His loneliness manifested itself in the strangest of ways, making him feel even more swallowed by the white walls and wood floors of the large house.

  That, in a nutshell, was the problem.

  The house was just a house.

  He had yet to make it a home.

  Someday, he told himself, soon.

  Dino quickly dropped the sack of presents in front of the Christmas tree, making sure to carefully set all the gifts in with the ones Karen had already wrapped. He thought he heard the creak of a floorboard coming from the back bedrooms, but he continued his work, adding a few chocolates to J’s Christmas sock hanging from the windowsill.

  It was only after he had finished, and when he went toward the kitchen to make a coffee, did he hear the shower turn on down the hall. Apparently, he hadn’t been imagining things.

  Karen had woken up, she just hadn’t heard him.

  Dino filled up the electric kettle, turned it on, and then went in search of his lover. She had left the bathroom door cracked open a couple of inches—she liked to be able to hear Junior if he woke up before she had finished with her morning routine.

  Pushing the door open a little more, Dino found Karen had already stepped inside the shower and the curtain had been pulled closed, keeping her from view.

  But the soft humming … low and sweet … made Dino smile.

  Karen didn’t sing in the shower.

  No, she hummed.

  She had always called him strange, but to him, Karen was one of the most beautifully different creatures to have ever crossed his path. It was the little things—like her humming melodies in the shower—that he liked the most.