Page 105 of Waste of Worth

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.