Page 118 of Worth of Waste

Two broken toes.

A nasty gash under his jawline.

Two black eyes.

Busted blood vessels in his eyes and nose.

Internal bruising.

A concussion.

But he was alive.

Dino was alive.

He vaguely remembered the minutes after the bomb had blown, and he’d woken up in the graveyard, on the other side of the high stone fence. He’d stumbled away from the smoke and fire filling up the sky on the other side of the fence, confusion muddling his thoughts and his brain functions. He’d fallen again and again, his ears ringing, his vomit spilling to the grass as he fought to stay awake long enough to make it to the other side of the graveyard.

It’d been a long walk.

The longest fucking walk of his life.

Some driver passing by when he’d exited the other side of the graveyard had picked him up, and taken him to a nearby walk-in clinic. He’d passed out—they labeled him a John Doe, and no one came to claim him.

Lucky, he supposed.

Dino pretended like he didn’t know who he was when the doctors and nurses asked, and one day, when he heard them mention that an officer would be in to question him, he snuck out of his room, and left the hospital without another look back.

Funny, he thought.

All those injuries.

The burns, the pain, the nightmares …

He had survived worse. Ben had put him through far worse, which he kept telling Karen each and every time he woke up from another dream about the bomb, and yet it hadn’t killed him.

It should have.

He should have been dead, burned to a fucking crisp like everyone thought he had been, and buried beside his parents’ graves.

Yet, he wasn’t.

A fucking bomb hadn’t killed him.

But a few stray bullets damn near killed his brother.

Dino stared across the hospital parking lot, watching as his brother stood from a wheelchair, helped by Lily on his one side and Evelina Conti on his other. He stayed hidden in his car, the dark windows keeping him from being seen, as the scene played out at the hospital entrance. It killed him inside to see his brother struggle—to see the pain flicker in Theo’s face as he picked up a bag, and then gave Evelina a quick kiss on her cheek.

That—his brother’s relationship—was not something Dino expected.

It wasn’t a bad thing, though.

Lily fretted, moving all around Theo, her lips moving fast as they walked toward a waiting car. Their little sister was doing better, she’d accepted their life, she was moving forward. Dino couldn’t ask for more, and the small swell of her stomach made him smile, though his heart broke a little at the knowledge he probably wouldn’t ever get to meet her first child.

After all, if he wanted to be free, going back was not an option.

Their life had always been a prison to him.

They were doing just fine, now. Without him, they’d learned how to take care of themselves, how to make shit work, and how to survive. Theo had gone after each and every monster that Dino had left behind, and put them in a grave one by one until none were left to haunt the DeLuca siblings still living with their demons.