Page 94 of Worth of Waste

“Dino,” Karen pressed.

“If I wanted to send you away for a while, just to be safe, would you do it for me, no questions asked?”

She would.

“I’d want a reason,” Karen said.

Dino nodded once. “I’m not going back to prison.”

“You keep saying that—the media coverage on your case thinks differently.”

He didn’t look like he particularly cared.

“I’m not going back there,” he said firmly. “But I also can’t just leave, either. Things need to be right—good—for the people I might have to leave behind.”

Karen blinked. “Leave?”

“Not you,” he murmured.

“Leave,” she repeated, not posing it as a question that time.

“Not J, either.”

“Leave where?”

Dino didn’t answer that one. “Would you go for me if I asked you to?”

“How long?”

“A couple months.”

“I only have a couple of weeks of vacation to use. I’ll lose my job.”

Dino reached for his blazer he’d left hanging over the back of the couch, and pulled out a manila envelope from the inner pocket. The last time she had seen a package like that, it had been bursting with money.

“Dino …”

“Junior always comes first, right?” Dino asked. “You don’t need to work, and you don’t have to like it, but you do need to use this and whatever else I give. It’s for him, it’s not for you.”

Fuck.

He had her there.

And he knew it.

“What’s going to happen, Dino, that you need to send us away?” Karen dared to ask.

“I’m not entirely sure yet.”

For some reason, maybe it was because of the tenor his voice took on, she believed him.

Dino

IT was such a warm May day that Dino wanted to enjoy it outside, but the chilly attitude of his company was making the nice weather less than pleasant.

“If you’re going to sit there and glare at me all goddamn day, go find something else to do, little one,” Dino muttered.

Lily, his younger sister, continued to glower at him from her position on the porch bench. Dino tried to act like her mood wasn’t bothering him all that much by resting further into his reclining lawn chair and staring up at the near cloudless sky.