Live For It

|48|

I gave him an attentive look, stopping what I was doing. 

"I pulled a gun on him," he smirked back at Zion, "and he didn't even blink."

"Did he attack you?" I was perched upon my seat. 

"Tesoro, if I had attacked him, he wouldn't be here right now," Zion spoke up, catching my interest. My heart fluttered a little. 

"He thought I had potential, and then gave me a time and a place. I needed something more permanent, and I couldn't just keep living off of each unpredictable job."

"I'm still shocked he didn't kill you," I lean back in the chair. 

"Trust me, I am as well," he comments as a loud cracking noise comes from the safe. The hinges had snapped off, and the entire safe door went flying. 

"Fuck," I breathe out, watching Isaiah put down the crowbar. 

There better be a check with at least six zeros in this bitch. 

We both peak inside, at first thinking there wasn't anything due to the emptiness. But laying on the bottom was another damn key, and below the key was a printed picture. I glanced at Isaiah, who started to pull out the picture, and then I looked to Zion. 

"We need to label the keys," I broke the silence. "Do you remember which one of those two came from which location?"

"The darker tinted key is the one you found after the Lions followed you from the hospital. The one that looks cleaner is from the first location that we visited," Ren replied.

I walked over to Zion's desk, getting some tape and a marker. 

"How did I not notice this before?" I question to no one in particular, observing the two keys side by side. 

They're the fucking same.

The newer one is a copy of the old, worn-out key. 

"They're identical," I mumble, studying the ridges of them individually. I quickly write labels on pieces of tape, then attach them to the heads of the keys. 

"What about this one?" Isaiah held up the third key, walking over to me. He placed it side-by-side with the other two, and his brows furrowed when he figured it out, too. 

"They all go to the same thing."

At my statement, Cobra looks up from the blunt he was rolling. "Nah, Bird. You gotta be trippin'."

"I'm not, I swear!" I exclaim, waving him over. "They definitely have something to do with the picture...Isaiah?"

He hands me the picture, and it takes me a minute to focus on what the scene is. 

It's my father, getting his ass whooped by some buff guy with a bunch of tattoos. A few feet away from the fight, a short, young woman stands in a beautiful cocktail dress. Many people seem to be gathering around the two men. A chair is knocked over by a poker table, and there's an unconscious lady in a black uniform right beside it. 

I was a little confused because I know my father got his shit rocked a lot, but why was this picture so important...

The poker table. Gambling. 

A casino.

The casino...

"This picture was taken before the Casino was destroyed. Ren, can you figure out who the people in this picture are?" I ask, placing the picture by the computer Ren was still working at. 

"Si, Zhara," he typed faster than I imagined, running a shit ton of things through a database. That reminds me about the initials.

"Did you find any relation of the initials on the maps?"

Ren nods, reaching for the paper he had printed out earlier. He didn't glance away from the screen once as he handed me the list of names. 

Obviously, the last initials listed, A.D.M., were my father's. 

The first listed initials, "S.H.P.", had plenty of names that could've matched. Apparently, there are more than a few people that have those initials and relate back to Alphonzo. 

There were four names that could've correlated to "G.Q.", and Ren had already run them through the location histories.

"The woman in the back is Evangeline Eros. The man attacking Alphonzo is Gideon Quero. The two men still sitting at the table are the Kapital Brothers..." Ren continues on, pointing at each person in the picture. Evangeline Eros is a Greek organized crime princess; the daughter of a Made Man. I'm sure I've heard of Gideon Quero, but nothing rang a bell immediately. The Kapital Brothers are the three of the most dangerous men in Russia. I paused, looking back at the sheet of paper with the initials. 

"Gideon Quero, trace him back through the Casino history, please."

Ren hurriedly copied his name and entered it into a whole new spreadsheet. An image of the man --Gideon -- and the Casino owner together popped up. Below the picture was a short article on the investing and finance side of "The Elysium" Casino. It mentions the donations and time relating to the Quero family. I'm assuming Gideon was an important impact on this location. 

We were digging way deeper into the meaning of this hunt than I could imagine. The Lions, if they are even the ones doing this, are trying to make it more complex than it should be. 

How do they know all this information? 

I have absolutely no idea. They have always been the type to shoot first and ask questions after. And I'm starting to think they are getting something out of it when this mess is over. They went off the grid for almost ten years, and now they're suddenly resurfacing. There has to be a reason for it. And it's not just because they want to lead us in the right direction. 

This almost feels like a scam, but one hell of a good one. 

There was something that is much larger than just us searching for my father. And I'll be damned if I let us walk into it blindly.