Chapter 3 - THE THINGS A BLIND MAN SEES
By morning, every news station in New England had footage of Angelo Bellano being wheeled through the ballroom.
Bellano Holdings shares collapsed.
Federal investigators reopened old cases.
And Vincent became the center of a family war.
He moved Angelo to a private property in Jamestown.
He tried to send me home.
Again.
I refused.
Again.
“You're stubborn,” he said.
“You're repetitive.”
“You could die.”
“So could anyone crossing Route 95.”
“Claire.”
“Vincent.”
He sighed.
I smiled.
“Was that frustration?”
“Regret.”
“About hiring me?”
“About learning your name.”
But he was smiling.
The investigation led us to Vincent's mother's old dance notebooks.
Most were ordinary choreography.
One contained strange annotations.
Lighthouse.
North window.
Three bells.
Low tide.
I recognized the pattern.
“They're not dance notes.”
Vincent touched the paper.
“What?”
“Directions.”
We followed them to an abandoned boathouse beneath Mariner House.
Inside we found an old tape recorder.
Elena Bellano's voice filled the room.
Vincent stopped breathing.
He hadn't heard his mother's voice in nearly thirty years.
“My darling Vincent,” she said.
His hand found mine.
I held it.
Elena explained that she and Angelo had discovered Salvatore using Bellano shipping routes for criminal operations far beyond what the family had tolerated.
Trafficking.
Weapons.
Extortion.
Angelo wanted out.
Salvatore wanted control.
Elena created copies of everything.
Then she said something worse.
“If you're hearing this, my death may not have been an accident.”
Vincent released my hand.
His mother had supposedly died after falling from a balcony.
He had been nineteen.
He had believed himself responsible because they'd argued minutes earlier.
For twenty-nine years, he'd carried that guilt.
Now it might have been murder.
The tape continued.
“Trust the person who dances without leading you.”
Vincent turned toward me.
“That makes no sense.”
I thought about it.
Then understood.
“Your mother isn't talking about dancing.”
“What?”
“She's talking about someone who doesn't try to control you.”
Silence.
Vincent's face changed.
He stepped toward me.
“Claire.”
A floorboard creaked outside.
Vincent immediately pushed me behind him.
Gunfire tore through the wall.
We dropped.
Two men entered.
Vincent couldn't see them.
He didn't need to.
He tracked their footsteps.
One came left.
Vincent struck him with the cane.
The second grabbed me.
I drove my heel backward into his knee.
Vincent finished the fight.
Thirty seconds later both men were unconscious.
I stared at him.
“You're terrifying.”
“So I've been told.”
“You could have mentioned that.”
“Would it have improved our dance lessons?”
“No.”
“Then irrelevant.”
We searched the attackers.
One carried a Bellano security badge.
Salvatore's personal division.
Vincent finally believed his father.
His uncle had betrayed him.
But another discovery hurt worse.
The second man carried photographs.
Dozens.
Of me.
My apartment.
My clinic.
My Tuesday dance class.
My mother's funeral.
Some were years old.
Vincent's face hardened.
“Claire.”
“I've never seen these.”
“Someone was watching you before Mariner House hired you.”
“How long?”
He turned over the oldest photograph.
Five years.
On the back was my mother's name.
MARGARET HALE.
Then another name.
ELENA BELLANO.
May you like
My mother had known Vincent's mother.
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