by Bethany-Kris
Dino had made the mistake of assuming that no one would likely be hurt the day he shot up the Rossi restaurant—he hadn’t considered someone might take a bullet and die, because he couldn’t afford to care at the time.
His actions took away the wife of Riley Conti, the Outfit’s front boss. A bullet to her head had damn near blown off her face.
She was a mother of two.
A mother, like his had been.
Publically, Dino did what he needed to by going to Mia Conti’s funeral, and expressing his condolences. He felt guilty for her grieving children, but he felt very little for her angry, agonized husband.
After all, it had been Riley who had once beaten Theo with a metal chair, nearly killing him. It was Riley who didn’t think twice about turning on his boss after his wife was killed, blaming everyone in the Outfit except Dino, the man who actually did the shooting.
Then again, no one knew it had been him.
So, while he felt guilt over killing a woman who was—for all purposes—an innocent, her death had been to Dino’s advantage. Killing her had, essentially, done what he needed for it to do. No one was looking at him, now. No one cared about Dino DeLuca, with his upcoming trial and the official attention that wouldn’t wane no matter how hard he tried to deflect it.
No one cared about him at all.
He wanted to leave, to keep his promises to Karen and take them away where the judicial system of their country would never be able to touch him so that he never had to see the inside of a prison again, but he wasn’t ready yet.
The job wasn’t done yet.
His brother and sister weren’t safe yet.
“Was it you that got Damian to do the shooting on the Conti bar?” Theo demanded.
Dino ran a hand through his hair and kept walking down the hallway. “Keep your voice down—Lily is sleeping.”
That girl could sleep through a damn hurricane.
What he really wanted was for Theo to stop asking him questions.
“Dino, talk to me!”
He shouldn’t be surprised that his brother had started looking to him for some of the things happening within the Outfit. Dino had needed the tensions to grow—the divide to widen—between the families over the last month. If it had seemed like, for any reason, the people might be coming together, he had purposely thrown a wrench in those plans.
Urging Damian to make his own family appear to pick a side, to irritate the Contis even more than they already were, had done just that.
“How do you even know it was Damian?” Dino asked. “Nobody knows who was in that car. It’s Serena Rossi’s car, Theo.”
Theo snorted. “You’re fucking with me, right?”
“No. I’m asking a serious question.”
“Laurent and Serena drink themselves damn near to death every single night. Everybody knows it, Dino. And the only person in this organization who is even remotely good at breaking into places and stealing things without people knowing it was him is Damian. The only reason he might do this would be for you.”
Theo was too smart for his own good.
Dino wished his brother would just leave it alone.
“Stop worrying about it, Theo,” Dino demanded, turning on his brother and stopping them both in the hallway. “Stay out of it.”
“Are you doing this to the Outfit, to the people?” Theo asked quietly. “Did you start this feud—why, Dino?”
“Would it matter if I had?”
Theo blinked, taking a step back. “What?”
“Exactly what I said, little brother. Would it matter if I was the person who had started this, who had antagonized these already-violent people into a war that they have been two steps away from starting with one another for years? Would it matter if I was the person who had a hand in pushing people along in seeing how truly awful they really are to one another?”
“Dino—”
“All these people, they turned a blind eye to Ben beating the hell out of us for years,” Dino interrupted. “The boss never said a thing about all those black eyes, the broken bones we had. No one thought twice when three kids were orphaned because their mother was murdered simply because she was in the same fucking house as their father!”
Theo swallowed hard, taking yet another step back from his brother. “I don’t want to know for sure what you do because—”
“Plausible deniability,” Dino spat. “Don’t worry, I’ve looked out for you all your fucking life, Theo. I took more hits from Ben for you than I care to count, just so he would leave you the hell alone. Chill, this isn’t any different. I’m only doing what one of us won’t, right?”
Theo didn’t respond that time.
Dino didn’t need him to.
Cherry-red Stingray.
Bumblebee-yellow Maserati.
Dino put the black suburban that he’d picked up off a guy who had wanted it to disappear, due to its involvement with a theft a few weeks earlier into drive. He’d learned his lesson the first time when after shooting up a Conti business, there had been a few people involved who were quite adamant that the car used in the drive-by shooting had been white in color.
He wasn’t about to make that mistake again.
Cherry-red, bumblebee-yellow, Dino repeated silently.
Those were the vehicles belonging to his brother and sister. Those were the vehicles that would be parked, along with several others, somewhere in the Trentini driveway when Dino blew past and shot the place up.
This time, unlike the last time, Dino had targets.
Several targets.
And this time, unlike the last time, Dino had seriously considered the people who might lose their life because of his choices. But he was already knee-deep into this plan, and he couldn’t back down when he was so close to the finish line that he could practically see it right in front of his face.
He’d done all of this, started a war within his own family and within an organization he had called home for years, because it had never been home to him, but rather, a prison that wouldn’t let him go. A gilded cage that had promised to take away his freedom, and did little to pay him back for the loyalty and devotion he had given to it over the many years of his life.
He supposed he should care more about what he had done.
He didn’t.
That was what the Outfit did to the people inside it.
It killed them slowly from the inside, and no one cared to notice.
No one cared to help.
Three homemade Molotov cocktails rested in his lap, something else to make a good show of what he was about to do. Dino’s window rolled down quickly as he approached the gated entrance to the Trentini mansion, and he could see the iron gate already opening to allow the guests to yet another Outfit dinner leave the home.
People were swarming the driveway.
Dino only focused on the things he needed to make sure didn’t get any bullets that might kill—cherry red, and bumblebee yellow.
It was a risk, one he probably shouldn’t be willing to take, but he was going to do it anyway. He didn’t bother to throw the vehicle in park as his gun was pointed out the window, but rather, stuck his foot down hard on the brake pedal to keep the Suburban from rolling ahead as he finished the final details to a plan he had never thought would work out like it had.
The trigger of the assault rifle pulled easily under the weight of his finger.
He watched bullets plow into pavement, into the stone pillars of the Trentini gate, and into the cars in the driveway. He took the shots he needed to, the ones he had planned for. Bullets flew into the back of his brother’s cherry-red Stingray, and then more burrowed into the back window of Lily’s bumblebee-yellow Maserati.
Damian would keep Lily safe, and Theo knew to keep down to the ground when bullets shredded the air.
Or at least, that’s what Dino was hoping for.
His aim narrowed on the large white doors of the mansion and the people fleeing on the steps. Screams sliced through the a
ir, but he wasn’t focusing on those sounds. He couldn’t, not if he wanted to finish this once and for all.
He let more bullets fly, recognizing the shapes of people falling on the steps, and knowing who was probably standing there.
It was always the same people who stood on those steps at the end of an Outfit gathering to say goodbye.
The boss. His family. Ben. His wife.
They liked to be above everyone else, looking down.
Dino hadn’t thought this day would be any different.
“Ben made it through surgery,” Theo said on the other end of the call.
Dino tried to feign interest, and failed. “Huh.”
“They’re putting him in a coma to give him a chance to heal without stress, but he’s going to be paralyzed, and bedridden for a long time.”
Dino attempted to find some sense of guilt within himself, and yet he found nothing.
It just wasn’t there.
“Thanks for the heads-up,” Dino said before hanging up the call.
Then, just as quickly, he called someone else.
Someone who could finish the job he thought he had done.
Damian Rossi picked up on the second ring. “Rossi speaking.”
“I’m going to make it easy on you,” Dino said, “and say you won’t have to do very damn much except show up and pull the plugs.”
“What—Dino?”
“Who else calls you from this number?”
Damian sighed. “It’s … ten at night, man. I just got Lily to go to bed.”
Dino managed a smile, happy his sister had finally opened up a little to her soon-to-be husband. The two were getting along much better.
“Where are you?” Damian asked. “You didn’t come back to the house after—”
“I don’t talk about that,” Dino interrupted.
Damian had known about Dino’s attack before it happened, but only because Lily had been expected to show at that stupid dinner at the mansion, and he needed her to be safe.
“I’m doing things tonight,” Dino added. “Work.”
Or not.
“What do you want?” Damian asked.
“Ben—I want him gone. That deal we made; your end of the bargain was to keep Lily safe at all costs, so do that, and finish the job I started.”
“I heard he is—”
“Do what you need to do.”
With that, Dino hung up the phone.
The fact was simple, no matter if he liked it or not.
Ben DeLuca could not be trusted, he could not be allowed to live. The power of his manipulation and control over the DeLuca siblings had been years in the making, and just because he was injured, or wheelchair-bound for the rest of his life, did not and would never undermine his ability to hurt Dino, his brother, or his sister.
Dino couldn’t let that happen.
He wouldn’t give Ben the chance to hurt the people he cared about one more time.
It was the last piece to his puzzle.
Once Ben was gone, then Dino could be finally be free.
He could live.
Dino tried to clear his mind as he pulled up to a familiar, tucked-away cabin that felt far more like home than anything else ever had. Karen had stayed there, no questions asked. She never argued with him when he said she might need to stay a while longer.
She liked it there, too.
He liked that she was safe with his son.
Dino parked his car and wasted no time making his way inside. He found his son sleeping in the upstairs loft, tucked into Karen’s side with his little thumb stuck firmly in his mouth. Junior usually slept by himself, but Dino didn’t mind.
He undressed down to his T-shirt and boxer-briefs, crawling into bed to be closer to his heart and soul.
He no longer held onto those things.
He’d given them to people much more worthy of them than he had ever been.
Dino
THE wedding—one of the final things Dino was waiting for—was only days away. Maybe that was why Dino’s mind was so distracted, instead of focused on the song Junior was singing that Karen had taken a whole week to teach him.
Guilt climbed up his spine with punishing steps when Junior stopped singing, glanced up at his father expectantly, and Dino couldn’t even remember what song his son had sang.
His distraction was not missed by Karen who shot him with a curious but concerned look. He shook his head, wanting to brush off whatever concern she might be feeling, but knew at the same time, it probably wouldn’t do him very much good.
She was too smart for her own good.
She knew him too well.
“Itsy Bitsy Spider,” Karen mouthed.
“Thanks,” he said back.
“Daddy, do you like Junior’s song?” his toddler asked again.
Dino nodded, amused that his son had taken to talking about himself in the third person again. It was something he did on and off, depending on Karen’s tolerance for it. Sometimes she let it slide, other times she corrected him on it. Dino went with whatever Karen was doing about it that day.
“I loved it,” Dino said.
Junior smiled widely.
Always so proud.
Always so grateful.
“Here, J, go take a cookie and play in the sunroom,” Karen said quietly.
Junior took the chocolate chip cookie his mother offered, and off he went without question, though he did toss a look over his shoulder to see if anyone was following him. Specifically, he looked to Dino.
Dino would follow along soon.
He had a feeling Karen wanted to talk.
He wasn’t wrong.
“What’s up?” Karen asked.
Dino reached for her hand, and once he had a hold of it, he tugged gently, pulling her down to his side on the couch. Closer was better—she calmed him like she always had. “Busy week, lots of things are happening next week.”
“Like what?”
“My sister’s wedding.”
Karen’s eyes grew wider. “Oh. But that’s good, right?”
Dino nodded. “Sure.”
“Then why do you sound like someone kicked your dog?”
“Do I?”
“Yes,” Karen said, laughing softly.
“I just …” Dino trailed off, looking back in the direction his son had gone. “I guess I just realized today that I’m almost at the end and I haven’t really considered what I’m going to do when I get there.”
Karen sat up a little straighter on the couch, and she avoided his gaze. “You mean the trial?”
“No.”
“I thought—”
“I’m not going back to prison, Karen.”
That stance of his hadn’t changed, and it wasn’t going to.
Not now.
Not ever.
His lawyer did his thing. His trial was scheduled to happen pretty soon, which was why he demanded Lily’s wedding happen so quickly as well. But he wasn’t going to make it that far—he wasn’t making a home in a prison block.
“I don’t … understand,” Karen said lamely.
“Morocco, Nepal, Russia, Vatican. Pick one.”
Karen blinked. “Pardon?”
“Pick one, Karen. Any one of those countries—there are more, actually, but those are a few that come to mind.”
“Aren’t those countries that don’t have extradition treaties with the United States?”
Dino nodded once. “Pick one and I’ll get us there before you can even blink.”
“But—”
“That’s the only plan I have. Otherwise, it’s trial, prison, and visitation for the next twenty or so years. Do you understand?”
“Of course. I just hadn’t thought about …”
“Leaving,” Dino finished for her.
“Exactly.”
“But would you?” he asked quietly. “Would you leave with me when I go?”
For a long while, Karen simply stared at Dino, saying nothing. The longer she staye
d silent, the more his anxiety grew. Chicago had become like a home for her, and her parents still lived across the country, waiting on her yearly visits that she’d tried to make every year since Junior was born.
He didn’t want to take her away.
He didn’t want to force her.
But …
“I don’t want to leave you behind,” Dino said, shrugging. “We’ve got years doing this together—trying to figure this out. You would do fine without me, I know you would, but it kills me to think about it. I wonder if you want more children someday with me; do you think you could be happy with me every day and not just a couple of days a week? I’m still trying to figure out who I am without all of this shit hanging over my shoulder. What kind of man am I, who could I have been? I want to have the chance to find out who he is.”
Karen’s eyes glazed with tears before the wetness dampened her lashes, and then fell, making slow tracks down her cheeks. Dino didn’t reach out to wipe the moisture from her cheeks like he usually would, but only because she was due her emotions. He never wanted to take them from her.
“I know who he is,” Karen said, “but I thought you had already figured that out, too.”
“Not by a long shot.”
Karen frowned. “Don’t you already know without needing to ask me, Dino?”
“I don’t know anything anymore.”
“I’ll go wherever with you. You only have to ask.”
Because she loved him, he realized.
Karen had never cared much about the details, or the parts of him he kept tucked away. She didn’t ask to see the monsters biting at his back day and night, she just cared for the man sitting beside her when he allowed her to. She didn’t want to be a part of the life that suffocated him, and maybe that was what kept her so perfect away from it all. She never talked about the funerals he had gone to over the last month, but he suspected she thought he might have had a hand in at least one of them.
His uncle’s, to be specific.
No, Karen didn’t care.
She just loved him—loved the fuck out of him.