Page 2 of Waste of Worth

The soulless brown gaze, emotionless expression, and silence were more than enough to make him look away.

Except he couldn’t.

Under the right edge of his strong jaw was a three-inch scar that started three-quarters of the way up his throat and stopped just before his ear. The broad slope of his nose had the slightest crook in the middle. Sometimes the left side of his jaw ached when it rained.

Those were the obvious things—marks, scars, and reminders he could pick out instantly when faced with his reflection. The longer he stared at himself, the more he would find.

It was—without meaning to be—the most dangerous game he could play with himself.

Church, he told himself. You need to be seen at church.

It was only the ringing of his phone that finally drove his gaze away from the rearview mirror, making him check the caller ID, and breaking his cycle of self-loathing.

Dino was grateful for that.

Not so much the caller that interrupted him.

Sighing, he connected the call through Bluetooth as he pulled out onto the road.

“DeLuca here,” Dino answered.

“Why the fuck is Riley Conti calling me with demands about you, Dino?”

Dino silently counted back from five before he answered his younger brother. “Theo, good morning to you, too. Are you at church? I’m headed that way. We can talk then.”

“Dino—”

“Church, man.”

Dino let the call drop.

Theo wouldn’t say two words to Dino at the church and he knew it for a fact. When it came to the public, Theo and Dino were constantly apart from one another—on opposite sides of the room where they didn’t have to speak.

It was the easiest way for Dino to handle Theo DeLuca.

Maybe that made him a coward.

The brothers’ history together was not an easy one, not when it had been shadowed by the death of their parents, and then the events that followed the murders. Unlike Dino, who learned quickly that trust was a beautiful myth in their lifestyle and in the Chicago Outfit, Theo was of a more stubborn mindset.

And so, the two were distant.

Dino tried with Theo, but it never really seemed to help the relationship.

He was all too aware that his younger brother blamed him for things that had been out of his control, though Theo thought his older sibling could have handled the past far better.

He probably could have—should have.

Dino thought he had, honestly. He’d taken years of abuse from the hands of their uncle Ben after their parents’ deaths. He’d lived separately from the family, sure, but he was not exempt from the beatings or the manipulation.

Of course, that was a story for another day.

If Dino got his wish, that day would never come.

Another call rang through to Dino’s cell phone.

He checked the caller ID again.

Ben DeLuca, it read.