Page 103 of Waste of Worth

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 called 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.”