Page 104 of Worth of Waste

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.