Page 36 of Worth of Waste

And then Karen had come into his life like a spring shower—fresh, new, and revitalizing. A spectacular life, the most beautiful soul. She was so entirely innocent to the things he was and the actions he committed. So, he had held on to that innocence, liking how the brightness of her life colored up the darkness of his own.

She wasn’t like him.

She was so much better than him.

Dino couldn’t ever let her go.

Not when she was as perfect as she was.

“You didn’t even let me answer your first question,” Karen whispered.

Dino shrugged. “We’ve got some time.”

“Do we?”

“A couple of days, maybe.”

Karen frowned. “And then what?”

He’d spent a lot of time lying to her before. And not necessarily purposeful lies meant to hurt her, but he’d omitted facts, simply to keep her naive to the other side of his life and the mafia business he didn’t want her getting mixed up in.

Dino knew that probably wouldn’t fly with Karen this time around.

That was, if she gave him another round.

“Then I have to make face with the important people in my business and get back to life,” he explained honestly.

Karen folded her hands onto her lap, but not before Dino saw the tiny tremor rocking through them. “And what about us? Aren’t we important people to you?”

“Hey.”

She didn’t look at him.

In fact, she turned a bit, angling her body farther from him.

Dino couldn’t have that. “Karen, hey. Look at me.”

Not waiting for permission, Dino slipped his hand around her clenched fists. Silently, he worked through the knot her hands had become, until he had her palm pressed to his and their fingers woven tightly together. The warmth and softness of her skin soaked into the rough coldness of his, another one of their stark contrasts that he adored.

She warmed him.

She made him feel alive.

“You’re the most important people to me,” he assured firmly.

“But you just said you have to go back—get back to life, right?”

A bitterness coated her words.

Dino didn’t begrudge Karen her feelings.

“This is for life,” he told her, trying to convey the suffocating expectations and rules of the life he lived without putting her front row and center for it. It was a hard thing to do when the person who needed to understand had never lived in that sort of way before. “I’m always going to be the man affiliated to the mafia—the criminal with a fucking target on his back.”

“But—”

“That doesn’t mean I wanted this, Karen.”

She stilled, her fingers clenching tight around his. “But here you are.”