Waste of Worth: Part One
Ask anyone and they will all say the same thing about just who Dino DeLuca is. A criminal, the son of a traitor, and a mafia Capo who can’t be trusted. His past has shaped his life, creating demons he can’t escape from that live in his mind day and night.
He is all too aware of just how people see him.
Closed off.
Cold.
Different.
He doesn’t care—keeping people out means no one can get close enough to hurt him again, and he already has one too many monsters with their claws stuck in his back that he’s still fighting off. His walls are so high, no one is climbing over them. Or so he thinks …
Karen came into his life like a spring shower, her light shining through the darkness and making him see something other than the hell that surrounded him for so long. She doesn’t know who he is or what he has done to become the man he is today. If he can help it, she’ll never know, and his monsters will never hurt her.
She sees his differences as beauty.
She never asks for more.
She is perfect.
The problem with happiness for Dino DeLuca is that his monsters don’t mind taking away what makes him happy. After all, what isn’t given cannot be kept.
These lessons will be the hardest he has ever learned.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The DeLuca Duet is a two book tale following the same couple through their journey. It is a standalone Duet that can be read independently with a HEA ending.
He is all too aware of just how people see him.
Closed off.
Cold.
Different.
He doesn’t care—keeping people out means no one can get close enough to hurt him again, and he already has one too many monsters with their claws stuck in his back that he’s still fighting off. His walls are so high, no one is climbing over them. Or so he thinks …
Karen came into his life like a spring shower, her light shining through the darkness and making him see something other than the hell that surrounded him for so long. She doesn’t know who he is or what he has done to become the man he is today. If he can help it, she’ll never know, and his monsters will never hurt her.
She sees his differences as beauty.
She never asks for more.
She is perfect.
The problem with happiness for Dino DeLuca is that his monsters don’t mind taking away what makes him happy. After all, what isn’t given cannot be kept.
These lessons will be the hardest he has ever learned.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The DeLuca Duet is a two book tale following the same couple through their journey. It is a standalone Duet that can be read independently with a HEA ending.
Click any image to enlarge.
Read Chapter One
MEMORIES could make a monster out of a man.
There were times that seemed harder to deal with than others; passing moments that could make Dino DeLuca’s chest tighten in pain, or his fists clench in anger.
The sound of metal being dropped was one of the worst. He swore he could feel his back bruising and bleeding all over again at the simple tinging tone.
Whispered words made him jumpy--paranoid. Whispers were good for nothing but taunting, and he didn’t want to hear those mocking words anymore.
Had enough yet?
Learn to follow directions, Dino.
It should fucking hurt, kid.
The stench of vomit, clinging to the air and seemingly never letting go, would make his panic rush into overdrive, overwhelming him with an almost-sense of itchiness all over his skin. As if the vomit was still soaked and dripping off his clothes in the darkness as he sobbed in a dank basement, curled in a corner and fighting off another round of sickness.
The reactions always came so swiftly that they surprised him, no matter the time or place. His memories weren’t much different when it came right down to it.
These times were the most difficult for Dino.
Those times came at night.
When the lights were off …
When the apartment was quiet …
When it was just him and his monsters …
When he was alone.
The most frightening thing about monsters was the fact that they could be anybody. The old man sitting outside the pizzeria, tipping his hat at the ladies passing by. The young woman on the city bus with her hair bleached white and her gaze distant, staring at anything but anyone. The mother pushing a stroller down the street, oblivious but focused.
Or a monster could be the man dressed in three-piece suit stepping out of the restaurant he owns, the ring of the key fob for his white Bentley spinning circles as he whistled Ave Maria on his way to church.
Dino caught sight of the lower portion of his reflection in the darkly tinted glass of his Bentley’s window.
He managed a smile.
It was more like a smirk.
Fact was, the expression he wore was neither. Dino found it incredibly hard to smile—something that came so easy for others was foreign to him. When he did try, it came off as a grimacing grin and that worked its way into a sneer.
Or a smirk.
He liked that better.
It was manageable.
The monster was definitely the man wearing the three-piece suit with the key fob in his hand, staring at himself in the window, Dino knew.
Slipping into the SUV, the noise of the busy Chicago city street was instantly silenced. Dino turned on his vehicle and checked his rearview mirror before he pulled out onto the road.
He regretted choosing the rearview almost immediately.
While his reflection in the window of his car had been partly obscured by the shadows of trees providing shade to the sidewalk, it was not concealed at all in the rearview mirror.
Dino didn’t like mirrors.
He didn’t like the face staring back at him.
The soulless brown gaze, emotionless expression, and silence were more than enough to make him look away.
Except he couldn’t.
Under the right edge of his strong jaw was a three-inch scar that started three-quarters of the way up his throat and stopped just before his ear. The broad slope of his nose had the slightest crook in the middle. Sometimes the left side of his jaw ached when it rained.
Those were the obvious things—marks, scars, and reminders he could pick out instantly when faced with his reflection. The longer he stared at himself, the more he would find.
It was—without meaning to be—the most dangerous game he could play with himself.
Church, he told himself. You need to be seen at church.
It was only the ringing of his phone that finally drove his gaze away from the rearview mirror, making him check the caller ID, and breaking his cycle of self-loathing.
Dino was grateful for that.
Not so much the caller that interrupted him.
Sighing, he connected the call through Bluetooth as he pulled out onto the road.
“DeLuca here,” Dino answered.
“Why the fuck is Riley Conti calling me with demands about you, Dino?”
Dino silently counted back from five before he answered his younger brother. “Theo, good morning to you, too. Are you at church? I’m headed that way. We can talk then.”
“Dino—”
“Church, man.”
Dino let the call drop.
Theo wouldn’t say two words to Dino at the church and he knew it for a fact. When it came to the public, Theo and Dino were constantly apart from one another—on opposite sides of the room where they didn’t have to speak.
It was the easiest way for Dino to handle Theo DeLuca.
Maybe that made him a coward.
The brothers’ history together was not an easy one, not when it had been shadowed by the death of their parents, and then the events that followed the murders. Unlike Dino, who learned quickly that trust was a beautiful myth in their lifestyle and in the Chicago Outfit, Theo was of a more stubborn mindset.
And so, the two were distant.
Dino tried with Theo, but it never really seemed to help the relationship.
He was all too aware that his younger brother blamed him for things that had been out of his control, though Theo thought his older sibling could have handled the past far better.
He probably could have--should have.
Dino thought he had, honestly. He’d taken years of abuse from the hands of their uncle Ben after their parents’ deaths. He’d lived separately from the family, sure, but he was not exempt from the beatings or the manipulation.
Of course, that was a story for another day.
If Dino got his wish, that day would never come.
Another call rang through to Dino’s cell phone.
He checked the caller ID again.
Ben DeLuca, it read.
Dino didn’t pick up the call, still driving toward the church.
He would see Ben soon enough.
Without even being told, Dino was already aware he would suffer for not picking up the call.
Years had passed since he’d suffered some form of physical harm from his uncle’s hard hand.
Years.
Dino’s chest tightened at the thought.
Truth was, he still wasn’t exempt from the manipulation.
Not when he was constantly haunted with it all.
He still wasn’t free.
***
Dino slid quietly into the church pew less than five minutes after Mass had started for the parishioners. He avoided meeting the gazes of those he recognized, uninterested in a whispered conversation while the priest was preaching respect from behind his pulpit at the altar.
Of course, his hope didn’t last long before Ben DeLuca made his way over, sitting just a seat behind Dino.
Church was supposed to be Dino’s safe place.
It was meant for God—not men.
Ben had never been very good at following those rules.
“You’re late,” Ben said.
The priest continued on from the front, his sermon about respect likely being lost on the majority listening.
Dino was not one of those people.
He understood respect far better than most.
So, even though he hated his uncle—while he despised the man and the hell he’d caused in Dino’s life from the murder of his parents to the abuse of himself and his siblings—he didn’t shun Ben when he spoke.
He answered back.
He followed the rules.
Always.
“Traffic,” Dino lied.
Knowing Ben wouldn’t see it, Dino glanced up at the vaulted ceiling, sending off a silent apology to God. It had to be double the sin to lie in church, surely.
It wasn’t the first time.
“You didn’t answer my call earlier,” Ben said.
Dino stiffened slightly, but managed to hide the action by shifting a bit in the pew to make it seem as though he were searching for a better position. “I was on another call—Theo, actually. By the time I was done, I was practically here.”
Ben seemed to let it pass.
Seemed being the keyword.
“Yes, your brother is in a fit, though he didn’t want to talk about why,” Ben muttered more to himself than Dino.
“Riley.”
That was all Dino really needed to say, and he knew his uncle would get the hint. Theo, a young, made soldier in their mafia family—much like Dino had been before getting his Capo title—sometimes had a problem with authority. Although he knew to follow the rules. Mostly, he did that well.
Given the fact that Riley Conti was the front boss for the Chicago Outfit, he often got the majority say where the Capos and the business were concerned on the streets. While the main boss, Terrance Trentini, and the underboss, Dino’s uncle, made the calls for the family as a whole.
It was all a delicate business, really.
Four factions of Capos made up the crews, with Dino heading the DeLuca side of things. The Rossis handled business at the top of Chicago, working alongside the Trentini family, while the DeLucas were at the bottom of Chicago, running business against the territory lines of the Conti family.
Delicate, yes.
Sometimes, the families—the Capos, really—didn’t work well together.
Sometimes they were a breath away from killing each other.
Sometimes Theo had to work with people he would rather bury.
It didn’t help that Theo didn’t particularly care for Riley Conti and hadn’t for quite a while. And for good reason. Who would care for a man who once nearly beat him to death with a metal chair over a simple disagreement?
That had been years ago, but it still happened.
Theo didn’t let shit go.
Not that Dino blamed him.
“Well, handle that,” Ben finally said, bringing Dino from his thoughts. “We have a meeting coming up and the last thing I want to do is listen to Theo and Riley bark at one another again.”
Dino nodded, his gaze sweeping through the people in the pews to find his younger brother. He didn’t bother to explain that Riley was actually bothering Theo about him, because Ben wouldn’t give a shit about that fact. He didn’t care that Riley enjoyed bothering Theo, simply because he could, or that he took shots at the young soldier’s age like he didn’t deserve to be where he was—or the button into the family that he had earned—if only because he was younger than most in the position.
Theo was good at his job. He worked under his older brother with the goal of having the actual Capo title. He helped to manage the DeLuca crew, and other than the bosses above them, the only person he really had to answer to now was Dino.
He fucking deserved the credit for that.
But …
Outfit men were bastards.
Each and every single one of them.
“I’ll get whatever little dispute they’re having handled,” Dino assured, never once giving his uncle his full attention.
It was easier this way.
Easier for him to pretend like all he had time for where Ben was concerned were passing moments and a quick, quiet conversation.
That way, he wasn’t letting Ben in.
Not close enough to hurt him again, or to find something to take from him.
Ben liked that too much.
He’d already taken enough.
“Oh, and before I forget,” Ben said as he stood.
Dino grinded his molars when he felt Ben’s hand land on his shoulder. The older man’s fingers squeezed tightly, and while it didn’t hurt, it certainly make every muscle in Dino’s body freeze like blocks of ice.
The touch was meant to be affectionate.
A nice gesture between an uncle and a nephew.
It only made Dino sick.
“What is it?” Dino asked.
Ben released his hold, but patted Dino’s shoulder. “Happy birthday. I nearly forgot—Carmela reminded me. You should celebrate tonight, but not too much, Dino. Business first, my boy. Business always comes first.”
Dino didn’t thank Ben for the well wishes, but his uncle was already walking away, heading back for his own pew where his wife was sitting with a bible open in her hands.
It was a little strange. Maybe even sad.
He hadn’t necessarily forgotten his birthday, but he didn’t care to remember it, either. It was just another year of life—twenty-nine all together.
Dino didn’t understand why he should celebrate his life when he was barely fucking living it.
There were times that seemed harder to deal with than others; passing moments that could make Dino DeLuca’s chest tighten in pain, or his fists clench in anger.
The sound of metal being dropped was one of the worst. He swore he could feel his back bruising and bleeding all over again at the simple tinging tone.
Whispered words made him jumpy--paranoid. Whispers were good for nothing but taunting, and he didn’t want to hear those mocking words anymore.
Had enough yet?
Learn to follow directions, Dino.
It should fucking hurt, kid.
The stench of vomit, clinging to the air and seemingly never letting go, would make his panic rush into overdrive, overwhelming him with an almost-sense of itchiness all over his skin. As if the vomit was still soaked and dripping off his clothes in the darkness as he sobbed in a dank basement, curled in a corner and fighting off another round of sickness.
The reactions always came so swiftly that they surprised him, no matter the time or place. His memories weren’t much different when it came right down to it.
These times were the most difficult for Dino.
Those times came at night.
When the lights were off …
When the apartment was quiet …
When it was just him and his monsters …
When he was alone.
The most frightening thing about monsters was the fact that they could be anybody. The old man sitting outside the pizzeria, tipping his hat at the ladies passing by. The young woman on the city bus with her hair bleached white and her gaze distant, staring at anything but anyone. The mother pushing a stroller down the street, oblivious but focused.
Or a monster could be the man dressed in three-piece suit stepping out of the restaurant he owns, the ring of the key fob for his white Bentley spinning circles as he whistled Ave Maria on his way to church.
Dino caught sight of the lower portion of his reflection in the darkly tinted glass of his Bentley’s window.
He managed a smile.
It was more like a smirk.
Fact was, the expression he wore was neither. Dino found it incredibly hard to smile—something that came so easy for others was foreign to him. When he did try, it came off as a grimacing grin and that worked its way into a sneer.
Or a smirk.
He liked that better.
It was manageable.
The monster was definitely the man wearing the three-piece suit with the key fob in his hand, staring at himself in the window, Dino knew.
Slipping into the SUV, the noise of the busy Chicago city street was instantly silenced. Dino turned on his vehicle and checked his rearview mirror before he pulled out onto the road.
He regretted choosing the rearview almost immediately.
While his reflection in the window of his car had been partly obscured by the shadows of trees providing shade to the sidewalk, it was not concealed at all in the rearview mirror.
Dino didn’t like mirrors.
He didn’t like the face staring back at him.
The soulless brown gaze, emotionless expression, and silence were more than enough to make him look away.
Except he couldn’t.
Under the right edge of his strong jaw was a three-inch scar that started three-quarters of the way up his throat and stopped just before his ear. The broad slope of his nose had the slightest crook in the middle. Sometimes the left side of his jaw ached when it rained.
Those were the obvious things—marks, scars, and reminders he could pick out instantly when faced with his reflection. The longer he stared at himself, the more he would find.
It was—without meaning to be—the most dangerous game he could play with himself.
Church, he told himself. You need to be seen at church.
It was only the ringing of his phone that finally drove his gaze away from the rearview mirror, making him check the caller ID, and breaking his cycle of self-loathing.
Dino was grateful for that.
Not so much the caller that interrupted him.
Sighing, he connected the call through Bluetooth as he pulled out onto the road.
“DeLuca here,” Dino answered.
“Why the fuck is Riley Conti calling me with demands about you, Dino?”
Dino silently counted back from five before he answered his younger brother. “Theo, good morning to you, too. Are you at church? I’m headed that way. We can talk then.”
“Dino—”
“Church, man.”
Dino let the call drop.
Theo wouldn’t say two words to Dino at the church and he knew it for a fact. When it came to the public, Theo and Dino were constantly apart from one another—on opposite sides of the room where they didn’t have to speak.
It was the easiest way for Dino to handle Theo DeLuca.
Maybe that made him a coward.
The brothers’ history together was not an easy one, not when it had been shadowed by the death of their parents, and then the events that followed the murders. Unlike Dino, who learned quickly that trust was a beautiful myth in their lifestyle and in the Chicago Outfit, Theo was of a more stubborn mindset.
And so, the two were distant.
Dino tried with Theo, but it never really seemed to help the relationship.
He was all too aware that his younger brother blamed him for things that had been out of his control, though Theo thought his older sibling could have handled the past far better.
He probably could have--should have.
Dino thought he had, honestly. He’d taken years of abuse from the hands of their uncle Ben after their parents’ deaths. He’d lived separately from the family, sure, but he was not exempt from the beatings or the manipulation.
Of course, that was a story for another day.
If Dino got his wish, that day would never come.
Another call rang through to Dino’s cell phone.
He checked the caller ID again.
Ben DeLuca, it read.
Dino didn’t pick up the call, still driving toward the church.
He would see Ben soon enough.
Without even being told, Dino was already aware he would suffer for not picking up the call.
Years had passed since he’d suffered some form of physical harm from his uncle’s hard hand.
Years.
Dino’s chest tightened at the thought.
Truth was, he still wasn’t exempt from the manipulation.
Not when he was constantly haunted with it all.
He still wasn’t free.
***
Dino slid quietly into the church pew less than five minutes after Mass had started for the parishioners. He avoided meeting the gazes of those he recognized, uninterested in a whispered conversation while the priest was preaching respect from behind his pulpit at the altar.
Of course, his hope didn’t last long before Ben DeLuca made his way over, sitting just a seat behind Dino.
Church was supposed to be Dino’s safe place.
It was meant for God—not men.
Ben had never been very good at following those rules.
“You’re late,” Ben said.
The priest continued on from the front, his sermon about respect likely being lost on the majority listening.
Dino was not one of those people.
He understood respect far better than most.
So, even though he hated his uncle—while he despised the man and the hell he’d caused in Dino’s life from the murder of his parents to the abuse of himself and his siblings—he didn’t shun Ben when he spoke.
He answered back.
He followed the rules.
Always.
“Traffic,” Dino lied.
Knowing Ben wouldn’t see it, Dino glanced up at the vaulted ceiling, sending off a silent apology to God. It had to be double the sin to lie in church, surely.
It wasn’t the first time.
“You didn’t answer my call earlier,” Ben said.
Dino stiffened slightly, but managed to hide the action by shifting a bit in the pew to make it seem as though he were searching for a better position. “I was on another call—Theo, actually. By the time I was done, I was practically here.”
Ben seemed to let it pass.
Seemed being the keyword.
“Yes, your brother is in a fit, though he didn’t want to talk about why,” Ben muttered more to himself than Dino.
“Riley.”
That was all Dino really needed to say, and he knew his uncle would get the hint. Theo, a young, made soldier in their mafia family—much like Dino had been before getting his Capo title—sometimes had a problem with authority. Although he knew to follow the rules. Mostly, he did that well.
Given the fact that Riley Conti was the front boss for the Chicago Outfit, he often got the majority say where the Capos and the business were concerned on the streets. While the main boss, Terrance Trentini, and the underboss, Dino’s uncle, made the calls for the family as a whole.
It was all a delicate business, really.
Four factions of Capos made up the crews, with Dino heading the DeLuca side of things. The Rossis handled business at the top of Chicago, working alongside the Trentini family, while the DeLucas were at the bottom of Chicago, running business against the territory lines of the Conti family.
Delicate, yes.
Sometimes, the families—the Capos, really—didn’t work well together.
Sometimes they were a breath away from killing each other.
Sometimes Theo had to work with people he would rather bury.
It didn’t help that Theo didn’t particularly care for Riley Conti and hadn’t for quite a while. And for good reason. Who would care for a man who once nearly beat him to death with a metal chair over a simple disagreement?
That had been years ago, but it still happened.
Theo didn’t let shit go.
Not that Dino blamed him.
“Well, handle that,” Ben finally said, bringing Dino from his thoughts. “We have a meeting coming up and the last thing I want to do is listen to Theo and Riley bark at one another again.”
Dino nodded, his gaze sweeping through the people in the pews to find his younger brother. He didn’t bother to explain that Riley was actually bothering Theo about him, because Ben wouldn’t give a shit about that fact. He didn’t care that Riley enjoyed bothering Theo, simply because he could, or that he took shots at the young soldier’s age like he didn’t deserve to be where he was—or the button into the family that he had earned—if only because he was younger than most in the position.
Theo was good at his job. He worked under his older brother with the goal of having the actual Capo title. He helped to manage the DeLuca crew, and other than the bosses above them, the only person he really had to answer to now was Dino.
He fucking deserved the credit for that.
But …
Outfit men were bastards.
Each and every single one of them.
“I’ll get whatever little dispute they’re having handled,” Dino assured, never once giving his uncle his full attention.
It was easier this way.
Easier for him to pretend like all he had time for where Ben was concerned were passing moments and a quick, quiet conversation.
That way, he wasn’t letting Ben in.
Not close enough to hurt him again, or to find something to take from him.
Ben liked that too much.
He’d already taken enough.
“Oh, and before I forget,” Ben said as he stood.
Dino grinded his molars when he felt Ben’s hand land on his shoulder. The older man’s fingers squeezed tightly, and while it didn’t hurt, it certainly make every muscle in Dino’s body freeze like blocks of ice.
The touch was meant to be affectionate.
A nice gesture between an uncle and a nephew.
It only made Dino sick.
“What is it?” Dino asked.
Ben released his hold, but patted Dino’s shoulder. “Happy birthday. I nearly forgot—Carmela reminded me. You should celebrate tonight, but not too much, Dino. Business first, my boy. Business always comes first.”
Dino didn’t thank Ben for the well wishes, but his uncle was already walking away, heading back for his own pew where his wife was sitting with a bible open in her hands.
It was a little strange. Maybe even sad.
He hadn’t necessarily forgotten his birthday, but he didn’t care to remember it, either. It was just another year of life—twenty-nine all together.
Dino didn’t understand why he should celebrate his life when he was barely fucking living it.
