So this was his father’s parting gift? A dingy old silver chain that seemed as if it had been stolen from an antique shop with a deformed bit of metal hanging from it. Truly the most heartful of gifts. Just how far had his father gone to get him this precious demonstration of his love? Some arcade? The sewers? Walmart? What awe-inspiring devotion this gift showed! Antonio flipped the metal mess around in an attempt to make sense as to what the blob was meant to be. Now on this side was an even worse mess of unrecognizable nonsense except this side had also been seemingly scratched with these scratches almost resembling some initials. R and L. Antonio held his breath. R and L. This metal thing, just what exactly was it? R and L. Surely not, surely just a coincidence. R and L. Yet what else could a small deformed metal object be. R and L. Of course, it was from his father. Had he really not learned everything from all these years? How could he have held out his hand so innocently for the wretched thing? R and L. R and L. R and L. 

“R,” Antonio gasped. As he was hit by the realization he dropped the necklace, grimacing as he was forced to listen to it clang against the ground. Carlos’ eyes widened in curiosity while Antonio’s did so with fear. He took a step back from the thing. How could something so small stir up such a great reaction from him? A deep nausea began to twist its way through his body, tensing his muscles all the while making him break out in a cold sweat. He brought his shaking hand up to try and shield his vision from it, his breath becoming increasingly ragged with every second he was forced to lay eyes on it. Still not even this could stop his vision from growing cloudy. At this point he was practically devoid of any senses with the intensity of his heartbeat blocking out any sounds and his mind only consumed with these initials. “What is wrong with you?”

“Huh Alessio did say that you’d be able to recognize it, and here's me thinking he was just a delusional old grandpa,” Carlos noted. Antonio took another step back, completely convinced by Carlos’ continued smile that this man was some sort of desensitized psychopath. 

“How? HOW CAN YOU PULL SHIT LIKE THIS WITHOUT FEELING ANYTHING? DO YOU REALLY NOT HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT THAT IS,” Antonio screamed. Carlos shook his head, his eyes sparkling more and more with each instant as his curiosity grew. “That thing killed my mother.”

Carlos’ smile dropped. Still his eyes widened even more with the realization. He crouched down and picked up the necklace, spinning it around to gaze at the messed up piece of metal on the bottom. So it had actually been a bullet all along. Well, some credit had to be given to Alessio after all. Even at such an age and struggling with sickness he hadn’t dulled on his cruelty in the slightest, even when it was dedicated to his parting son. Carlos’ smile forced its way back on his lips and he let out a slight chuckle. 

“Tell me! Is he trying to send me some sort of message? Is this a threat?”

“Relax kid, trust me I don’t think the old man has it out for you or you’d have been dead long ago. From my experience this is more of a sign to not go crawling back to him later on,” Carlos tried to explain. Antonio continued staring mindlessly into the hand that blocked the necklace, seemingly ignoring anything that Carlos could choose to say. “If you wish so then there's no need to keep it. No need to worry I’ll just tell Alessio you took it and said nothing. Then he won’t know if you recognized it or not. How does that sound?”

Antonio provided this man with no response. It truly seemed that in an attempt to get out of one hell he had stumbled right into another, but nothing good could come from just waiting for it to go away. Slowly he moved the hand he had brought up to block away the necklace, his pulse beginning to normalize once again now that he could see that it was no longer there. There was nothing holding him back anymore. “I’m leaving”

“WOAH WOAH BUDDY!” In a quick motion Carlos stuffed the necklace in a pocket and ran to Antonio, grabbing ahold of his coat in a weak attempt to stop him. “Check the time pal, look in the mirror. It's late and you’re in no condition to drive. I’ve already got a plenty of issues with the police so I don’t need them coming here to ask questions when you crash. No need to rush off when you can just stay the night here.”

“Just what are you hiding,” Antonio asked, his eyes narrowing from the suspicion of Carlos’ sudden hospitality. Carlos let go of Antonio’s coat and laughed nervously, his eyes racing around the room.

“Doesn’t a man have a right to the fifth amendment?”

“I’ve never read the constitution.”

“And it certainly does show,” Carlos muttered, immediately following up by pretending to clear his throat. “But I guess the choice is yours. My couch or the great outdoors. Now I’ll be in my room nursing my poor head injuries, if you don’t mind.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At present Antonio was struggling to think of a word strong enough to describe his regret. As if the necklace hadn’t been enough of a warning he had still stupidly agreed to spend the night on this man’s couch. While it did have to be noted that he hadn’t bothered Antonio since locking himself up in his bedroom, that didn’t wash away any uneasiness. Rather he was struggling to sleep knowing that a potential enemy could be plotting something just a few feet away. As if Carlos’ presence itself wasn’t enough to leave Antonio sleepless it seemed that not even a single minute could pass in this house without some strange crash or bang happening outside. Whether it was animal or human the fact didn’t change that whatever was out there was too damn noisy for anyone to get a moment of rest. 

Realizing that he wouldn’t get anything out of just laying there Antonio shot up from the couch and glanced around the room for something to get his mind off the necklace and his ears away from those noises. Perhaps it’d be best to simply distract himself with a glass of water, after all it’d been hours since he had last had something to drink. Making his way across the living room he was careful to take in his surroundings, partly because he was in a suspicious stranger’s home but mostly because the darkness forced him to have to feel out the majority of his way to the kitchen. Once in there he looked around, once again trying to get a general idea of his surroundings before making a move. Not at all to his surprise, just as the living room had looked disheveled the kitchen was as well. Dishes were thrown around the counter haphazardly, some still dirty and stained with food. Almost out of malewife instinct Antonio reached out for one before reminding himself that this wasn’t his house to clean. Once his mind was back on the right track he scoured around the kitchen for a good ten minutes in order to find a glass that he hoped with all his heart was actually clean and filled it up at the faucet. Finally it was time to just have a relaxing drink of water to put his mind at ease and let him sleep in peace. Just as this thought calmed his mind a great crash came from inside the house this time, Carlos’ room. Antonio scowled, focusing his eyes on the water. That was none of his business after all. If the man had somehow tripped or broke his neck, well Antonio would be out and away tomorrow and he wouldn’t have had anything to do with it in the first place. Yet at the same time if something bad had really happened Carlos was already living in fear of the police so if they were to come and find his body and whatever else incriminating evidence he was hoarding in his house then all of the blame could very well be pushed onto Antonio. Leaving one hell to stumble right into another. Antonio clenched his hand around the glass, such a tempting glass of refreshing water, and ultimately slammed it down on the counter. He wasn’t gonna let himself get sent to jail, not by this idiot, not by anyone. 

With heavy steps, weighed down by his annoyance, he stomped off to Carlos’ room. Outside the door he lifted his hand, ready to knock, until he remembered where knocking had gotten him before and decided to just use the doorknob. Well Antonio had to hand it to him. For a guy who had problems with the police he sure was daring to let a stranger sleep in his house and leave his room unlocked on top of everything. Fitting this careless pattern, Carlos was sprawled over his desk, peacefully and completely knocked out without a single care in the world. Antonio pressed down on the bridge of his nose, so this was what all the worry was about. His eyes made their way to the papers that surrounded Carlos on the table. It sure was a strange way of falling asleep that all the papers had been placed just a few inches away from him, as to insure that he wasn’t covering a single one. Was he trying to get people to look at them? Antonio walked over and began skimming over them: a picture of a small boy with his mother, some hospital bills,  a newspaper article about a car crash from 1932, none of them making any sense as to what they had to do with him. Perhaps it was because they didn’t. Antonio sighed, getting ready to leave the room when something caught his eye. This was much too suspicious to simply ignore. In a sudden rush of energy he began to sweep the papers off the desk, slowly uncovering a map that had been buried underneath them. Without any of the markings it may have passed as an innocent enough map of the United States but now Antonio could clearly make out Carlos’ scrawls. In various colors and with assorted strings connecting them to each other were the surnames of various families placed near large cities. Some he could recognize such as his father’s business partners, Davis and Montgomery, others seemed familiar as if they had showed up on the news at some point or another, McKay and Griffin, others he had absolutely no clue about and could have been misspelled as far as he knew, Denzel and Tiryani, yet there was a pair of them that stood out. One was hovering over Chicago while the other was stuck under the shadow of another in Las Vegas. Lovure, his own surname, and Harris, that was Jane’s former surname. 

Just what was up with this sicko? Did his problems with the police have to do with these families? How were they all even connected to him? These documents all likely had something to do with it all but it was difficult for Antonio to find an answer from pharmacy receipts. Unless? Antonio looked back at the picture of the child and its mother, was he watching them? Wouldn’t that in turn mean that he was being watched as well? Antonio took a step back, sliding his fingers across the pages as he did so. Sure enough between them all he was able to pick out a picture of himself. Without a second more to waste he yanked it up and flipped it over, finding Carlos’ notes scribbled on the back: “Antonio Lovure: Alessio’s son, married, child, not threat, too much effort, just forget”. 

So that was it? If Carlos saw him as neither a threat nor a possible ally there was no need to worry was there? After all there’d be no need for Carlos to continue stalking him if he had absolutely nothing to win or lose from Antonio, so it was only natural that Antonio could now relax in peace. Getting ready to leave he took yet another step back and stopped upon hearing a sort of splash accompanying his step. Glancing down he found the source of the noise to be water spilled on the floor, a glass that had miraculously remained unbroken laying a few inches away from it. So that was the source of the crash that had brought him here in the first place. In that case there really wasn’t anything at all that should hold him there any longer.