Lift You Up (Rivers Brothers 1)

"Some male model. Some say he came from oil money in Pakistan. Others say he was a gutter kid with a pretty face."

"I don't want his fucking life story, Harry," I snapped, turning the car back onto the road, heading back toward Jersey. "I want to know what he does, how you are connected to him, and how we can get him to give us the address to his men, where we can find them."

"Eamon isn't going to give you any of that."

"And Eamon fucking is?" I growled, my patience wearing thin.

"He owns an underground casino."

My gaze slipped from the road, looking over at him. "In Navesink Bank?" I clarified.

"Yep."

"How am I just hearing about this now?" I demanded.

There were a lot of organizations in our little town. Gun runners, loansharks, drug dealers, the mob, the list went on and on.

But the only underground club I knew of was a fighting ring.

And as far as I knew, since I had never heard anything mentioned by anyone else, no one else knew about it either.

"It's invitation only," Harry informed me.

"And you expect me to believe that you - nobody, low-life gambling you, got an invitation?"

"Not really," he admitted, not offended by my description of him. Likely because there was too much truth in it. You wouldn't look at Harry and think he was a self-realized individual. But he seemed to know what he was, and therefore couldn't be offended when people called him on it. "I stole an invite. Someone dropped the chip. Bright gold chip with black notches. Haven't seen it around before. Turned it over. All there was there was an address."

"And being a lifelong gambler, you couldn't resist."

"You can never resist a new table. An exclusive table. They're usually reserved for high rollers, important people. Who could resist getting a chance to play with them?"

There was a pathetic sort of logic there.

"So, where is it?"

To that, he snorted.

"The address brings you to a meeting place where you are then blindfolded, loaded into a stretch of some sort, the kind you have to step up into, an Escalade maybe. And driven to the new location with guards there watching to make sure you don't peek."

"What was the address on the chip?"

"That's the thing," he said, a humorless smile pulling at his lips as he leaned back against the headrest, almost seeming relieved to get this out, to talk about it all with someone.

There was a small - minuscule, given the situation - stab of sympathy for him. This somewhat pathetic creature, all alone in the world, drowning in an addiction that he had no one in his life to push him to seek recovery from.

Aloneness was sad.

Even when he had brought it upon himself.

"What is the thing?" I demanded, taking a deep breath, trying to keep my mind focused on what was important. How to find the men who had Savea.

"The chip is the same every week. But the address printed on it is different. Never been the same place twice."

"How do the chips come to you?"

"Once you have been there one night, and they decide you're allowed to come back, they get your addresses. Work and home. They deliver them, dropping them in your mailbox or with someone at work. No one gets to know where the club is. And I've never seen Eamon outside of the club. Swear the bastard lives there, counting his money, rolling in it at night, fucking those gorgeous women hanging around on it."

"If you have the money to pay your debts, how do you get in touch with Eamon?"

"You don't get in touch with Eamon. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen him with a cell."

"So you deal directly with whichever contractors are working that week or month?"

"Pretty much."

"And you contact them how?"

"Mainly, they contact you."

I tried - and failed - to hold back a sigh, feeling like there was so much to go on. And yet there wasn't.

"You got descriptions at least?"

"That I can do," he agreed, nodding. "I know it might not seem like it, but I want to help. Soon as I knew they had Savea's name, I took off to try to make the money."

"Why do you owe them money anyway? They don't collect at the time of the game?"

This was when Harry's neck went red, his gaze skittering away, fingers drumming on the armrest on the door. "What did you do?"

"Tried to skew the odds in my favor."

"Cheated. You cheated what sounds like a very rich and powerful owner of an underground gambling club?"

"See how it was not the best bet."

"Ya think?" I shot back, not even trying to hold back the eye roll I felt coming on.

Trying to cheat a normal casino was dangerous. They weren't - for the most part - run by the mob like they used to be. But that didn't mean that the men who owned them - and the men and women they employed- were fine, upstanding citizens who always played by the books. You fucked them over, they could, and often did, haul you into a back room and beat the shit out of you.