Page 17 of Worth of Waste

He just didn’t have to like them all that much.

Dino only waited another two minutes before the door buzzed and opened, Mike strolling in with a briefcase in hand and a smile on his face. The lawyer almost always smiled, though Dino wasn’t quite sure what he had to be happy about, given where he currently was.

“Dino,” Mike greeted, setting his case to the table and taking the seat across from Dino’s. “Beautiful day outside.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Dino replied, half-joking.

His seat, unlike Dino’s, wasn’t bolted down to the floor. Even the table was bolted down. It seemed like a bit much, but apparently it was all done in the name of safety. Who was he to make a fuss about something he barely had to be bothered with, anyway?

“How’ve you been?” the lawyer asked.

Dino shrugged, resting back in his chair as much as his shackles would allow. “Can’t complain. They feed me. My cellmate doesn’t talk me to death. The ceiling is keeping me entertained enough.”

Mike cracked another smile. “You have jokes today.”

“Not really a joke.”

He’d only told the truth, after all.

Mike didn’t have to know everything.

“Well, you’re not shouting at me and threatening to feed me my teeth like the last time I was here, so I will take that as a good sign.”

Dino didn’t reply to that, but only because this time, it was Mike who was speaking truths.

Three times, Mike had come to visit Dino at the prison, and one of those times had been five months earlier, just a week and a half after Karen’s surprise visit. For whatever reason, Dino had thought maybe—somehow—Mike had been involved in Karen showing up without warning. He threatened Mike with just about everything except throwing him in the ocean, to make sure Karen didn’t show up like that again.

It could be a very costly mistake.

With visitors other than his lawyer, Dino’s every single move was monitored. Someone was always watching. He didn’t need the officials getting ahold of any sort of information that might lead them to Karen asking questions.

And then there was the other side of that equation, too.

His family, that was.

Ben, specifically.

It caused a striking pain to grow in his chest at the thought of something as simple as Karen coming to visit him in the prison. That her innocent gesture might put her on his uncle’s fucking radar. Dino couldn’t afford for that to happen.

Honestly, neither could Karen.

She just didn’t know that was the case.

Dino knew how he must have seemed to her, all those months ago when she came to see him—cold, distant, and unaffected at her presence.

That wasn’t the case at all, at least, not on the inside.

It had taken every single ounce of willpower he had in his very being not to sit down at that visiting station and talk with her for as long as he possibly could; he’d wanted to apologize for everything that had happened, and for the shit he had put her through.

Dino had so very much to say to Karen.

He had a hell of a lot to apologize for.

Another year, he told himself.

He had one more year and then he would get every opportunity to fix the problems he had left hanging in the wind with Karen. He refused to even consider the fact that by the time he was out, she might not want a thing to do with him.

Dino would handle that when—or if—that came about.