Page 29 of Worth of Waste

“Oh, and I got something for you, DeLuca,” the guard said. “Somebody asked me to pass it along in the breakroom.”

Dino’s brow lifted in curiosity, but he didn’t move from his position. While most of the guards treated the inmates okay, there were a few that just rubbed him the wrong way. A man of his sort—that lived the life he had led for many years—could pick up that sort of thing from another man without needing much confirmation.

Some of these guards were not to be trusted.

They could be bought if needed, from the outside or the inside.

Dino didn’t need to be told to know.

“Here,” the guard said, sticking the newspaper he’d been holding through the bars of the cell. “Well, fucking take it.”

He still didn’t move.

With a harsh sigh, the guard dropped the newspaper to the cell floor, and started off again, moving onto the next cell without a look back.

Dino eyed the paper on the floor, wondering what in the hell that show was all about. Todd had finally started to grumble and shift on the bottom bunk behind Dino, and it was only when the kid was fully awake and standing did he, too, notice the newspaper.

“What’s that?” Todd asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Shouldn’t you check it?”

“For what?”

Todd’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know—the news?”

Dino didn’t trust a fucking soul, his life had taught him not to. And he didn’t think the guard dropping that stupid newspaper off like nothing was amiss was just random happenstance, either. He wasn’t sure he was ready to find out just what might be inside the paper that someone had wanted him to see.

And just who was that someone, anyway?

It wasn’t like Dino had made friends with any of the guards.

“Jesus, you’re strange,” Todd mumbled before he scooped up the paper and slammed it into Dino’s chest.

He caught the item before it could fall from his grasp. Unfolding the paper in his hands had been a mistake, because as soon as he did, he saw the headline and understood exactly why the guard had dropped the paper off to him.

Someone wanted him to know something important …

Someone thought he should see …

Dino read the headline again and again, desperately trying to find the error that would tell him he wasn’t actually reading it right at all.

The headline remained the very same.

Public Defender Mike Hardy Murdered Outside Office!

Dino blinked again.

The headline didn’t change.

“Thirty minutes,” the guard told Dino.

“Yeah, got it.”

He sat down in the hard chair, facing the Plexiglas wall and staring down a man he wished he never had to see again.

Ben DeLuca looked entirely too comfortable sitting in his own chair, a slight smile curving his lips and his suit and tie a pristine black. Much like his eyes—coal black and unfeeling. So fucking cold.