Chapter 2 - THE MAN VINCENT BURIED
The official story said Angelo Bellano died of pancreatic cancer twelve years earlier.
Vincent had identified the body.
Attended the funeral.
Carried the coffin.
Now Angelo Bellano was lying barefoot on a gurney in the middle of Mariner House.
The shooting stopped as suddenly as it had started.
That scared Vincent more than the bullets.
“This is theater,” he said.
“What?”
“They wanted everyone to see him.”
Security surrounded the gurney.
Julian had disappeared.
Angelo reached toward Vincent.
“My boy.”
Vincent didn't move.
“You're dead.”
“So were you supposed to be.”
That sentence changed the room.
Police sirens approached outside.
Angelo began convulsing.
I ran to him.
“Claire.”
“I know.”
“You don't know him.”
“I know seizures.”
Angelo's pulse was racing.
Pinpoint pupils.
Sweating.
Drugged.
I smelled something medicinal.
A transdermal patch was hidden beneath his collar.
I ripped it away.
“Call EMS!”
Vincent knelt beside us.
“Father?”
Angelo's hand found his sleeve.
“Mariner.”
“What?”
“Under the floor.”
His body jerked.
“Don't let Julian—”
He lost consciousness.
At Newport General, Vincent sat beside his father's bed for six hours.
I stayed because I had become involved whether I liked it or not.
At 4:00 a.m., Vincent said, “Go home.”
“No.”
“That's not a request.”
“Good. Because I'm ignoring it.”
“You were shot at tonight.”
“So were you.”
“That's normal for me.”
“That is not the reassuring sentence you think it is.”
His mouth moved.
Almost smiling.
Then Angelo woke.
He asked for Vincent.
And me.
His story was unbelievable.
Twelve years earlier, Angelo had discovered someone stealing millions through Bellano-controlled ports.
He planned to expose it.
Instead he was poisoned.
The body Vincent buried had been another man altered to resemble him after death.
Angelo had been held for twelve years.
“By whom?” Vincent asked.
Angelo looked terrified.
“Your uncle Salvatore.”
Vincent recoiled.
Salvatore Bellano had raised him after Angelo's death.
Taught him business.
Protected him.
He was also the man Vincent loved almost like a second father.
Angelo whispered, “And Julian.”
Vincent stood.
“No.”
“They needed my signatures.”
“For what?”
“Mariner.”
Angelo looked toward me.
“The house isn't a ballroom.”
I frowned.
“What is it?”
“A vault.”
Decades earlier, Bellano money had been hidden through property acquisitions.
But the most dangerous thing hidden at Mariner House wasn't cash.
It was evidence.
Records documenting bribes, murders, judges, police officers and businessmen.
Angelo had hidden copies before his disappearance.
Under the ballroom floor.
Julian knew they existed.
He didn't know exactly where.
The restoration had been designed to find them.
I suddenly remembered dozens of unexplained floor repairs.
Vincent asked, “Why reveal you tonight?”
“To force you to search.”
A terrible realization crossed his face.
“They're following me.”
Angelo nodded.
“You're the only one who knows your mother's dance.”
“What?”
“Your mother designed the hiding place.”
Vincent's mother, Elena, had been a competitive ballroom dancer.
She died when he was nineteen.
Angelo explained.
The vault coordinates weren't written as numbers.
They were encoded as choreography.
A dance only Elena taught Vincent.
A waltz.
Vincent turned toward me.
And I understood why someone had made the orchestra stop.
Why they wanted him on the dance floor.
Why nobody had been allowed to dance with him.
They needed to watch his feet.
Vincent whispered, “I showed them.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
He stood.
“Every step.”
We raced back to Mariner House.
Police still controlled the ballroom.
One section of maple flooring had been ripped apart.
Beneath it was an empty steel compartment.
The evidence was gone.
On top lay a photograph.
Vincent at eight years old dancing on his mother's shoes.
Across the photograph someone had written:
THANK YOU FOR REMEMBERING THE STEPS.
Vincent crushed the photograph in his hand.
Then his phone rang.
Julian.
Vincent answered.
“You have something of mine.”
Julian laughed.
“No, cousin.”
Then his voice hardened.
“I have something that can bury every Bellano still breathing.”
A pause.
May you like
“Including you.”
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