Page 77 of Worth of Waste

As he came closer, Dino recognized the fools.

The same agents who had arrested him the first time—yeah, someone definitely had a hard-on for him.

“That a warrant for my arrest?” Dino asked, nodding to the paper in the other man’s hand.

“Good guess,” the agent replied.

Wonderful.

“You don’t seem surprised, DeLuca.”

“You’ve been digging through my businesses and questioning anyone I came in contact with for the last year,” Dino said. “You’ve pulled my tax records, any banking documents you could, and even managed to get one of my accounts frozen just last month. Do you think I’m fucking stupid? I knew what was coming.”

“Good, then let’s make this easy.”

Oh, he would.

For him.

Dino dropped his phone twenty feet from where the agents stood, knowing he’d have more than enough time to destroy it before they could get to it. On a rainy street, he crushed the burner phone under the heel of his boot, ruining it entirely.

Karen only called him from a burner phone he had provided to her.

It was just another failsafe.

He was never going back to prison.

But she’d never go there, either.

Not for him.

Tax evasion. Fraud. Money laundering.

Dino read over the charges, the list substantial.

Twenty-five to life.

That’s what all it would add up to. He knew it without needing to be told. It was every Mafioso’s greatest fear. A lot of made men didn’t fear being put in prison for something like murder, something at least all of them had committed once in their careers, but rather, the details.

After all, the devil was in the details.

No, men like him didn’t fear being caught for the bad, bad shit.

They feared being caught for the details of their lives—the byproducts of being criminals, making money illegally, and hiding it how they needed to in order to be able to actually fucking use it without questions being asked.

Wiring money between countries. Funneling money into businesses that mostly made profits by cash-only. Lying on tax returns because cheating the government was better than paying taxes on dirty money.

Those were the details that almost always put men like Dino away for life.

The charges racked up one after another.

He read down the list again.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

He could almost hear the prison cell closing on him again; the sounds of the chatting inmates so late at night that his fucking ears rang. He could smell the cinderblock walls and barred windows.

No, he wasn’t going back there.