Page 89 of Worth of Waste

“I’ve done everything you wanted. I followed the rules. I don’t under—”

“It’s time for you to come home,” he repeated simply.

Another frustrated sigh answered him back before the phone call ended. Dino didn’t bother to call his sister back, she probably wouldn’t pick up anyway. She was troubled in that way, and she’d been using her trip to backpack across Europe as a way to run from her past and the problems she didn’t want to face.

Problems like the Outfit and their murdered parents.

He hated bringing her back down to reality, but he didn’t have a choice.

He had things to do—people to care for when he wouldn’t be able to.

Lily was one of those people.

Another one of those people was sitting in the chair on the other side of his desk.

Theo cocked a brow when Dino slammed the phone down. “You’re calling Lily back home?”

“My right to do so.”

“Never said it wasn’t. Why now?”

Dino shrugged. “Seems like the right time.”

“Does Ben know?”

“No. He’ll go looking for a man to marry her to the moment her feet hit Chicago soil. That isn’t going to happen—not the way he wants it to, anyway.”

Theo’s gaze narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

Dino didn’t bother to explain it.

He wasn’t required to explain himself.

He never had, anyway.

“What are you doing here?” Dino asked.

Theo rested back into the chair, his aloof disposition becoming all the more apparent as he watched Dino in that silent way of his. The two brothers were far too alike for their own good, although neither of them would admit it.

“Stopped by to make sure everything was good while you were waiting on bail,” Theo said.

Dino nodded. “Thanks.”

“Mailed some of the stuff you had sitting on your desk.”

“Great.”

“Ran into Karen outside of the jail and stopped her from making the mistake of going inside and getting her name put on a record of visitation for you.”

Dino froze in his chair, his gaze sliding from the clock on the wall to his brother’s stone-cold features. “Theo—”

“Do you not trust me, Dino? Is that why you’ve never told me about them?”

His throat felt so fucking tight.

A part of him wanted to distract Theo—to piss him off and get him out of his face, even if it burned more bridges between them, but stopped him from asking questions that Dino had no intention of ever answering.

Still, he answered.