Chapter 7 - THE BLIND MAN ON THE RUN
Vincent could have fled the country.
He had money.
Boats.
People who owed him favors.
Instead we hid in the least glamorous place imaginable.
Walter's basement.
“You're telling me,” Vincent said, sitting on a folding bed beneath a shelf of canned tomatoes, “that the safest location available to the Bellano organization is underneath an eighty-three-year-old mailman's house?”
Walter corrected him.
“Eighty-four.”
“Apologies.”
“And these tomatoes are excellent.”
“I'm sure.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
Then we worked.
The footage was convincing.
But I noticed something.
The fake Vincent touched walls.
The real Vincent didn't.
He used echoes, his cane and memory.
The impersonator behaved like a sighted person pretending to be blind.
We enhanced another frame.
A scar on the man's hand.
Rosa recognized it.
Marco Bellano.
Angelo's illegitimate son.
Vincent's half-brother.
Another secret.
Angelo had spent decades building replacements.
If Vincent failed, Julian.
If Julian failed, Marco.
Children weren't family to Angelo.
They were succession plans.
Marco had killed Julian.
Now Angelo intended to blame Vincent and place Marco at the head of the organization.
We needed Marco alive.
Finding him led us to a coastal warehouse.
Vincent insisted I stay behind.
I agreed.
Then followed him.
“You lied.”
“Yes.”
“I'm strangely proud.”
We found Marco.
But he wasn't what we expected.
He was wounded.
Terrified.
Angelo had ordered his death too.
“No witnesses,” Marco whispered.
He gave us proof clearing Vincent.
Then he revealed Angelo's final plan.
A meeting of every major Bellano captain.
Angelo planned to transfer power.
Anyone who resisted would die.
Where?
The ruins of Mariner House.
Vincent laughed bitterly.
“Of course.”
Marco looked at him.
“He hates you.”
“I know.”
“No.”
Marco shook his head.
“He hates that you survived.”
The bombing.
The blindness.
The investigations.
Every time Angelo tried to reduce Vincent, Vincent adapted.
That was what Angelo couldn't forgive.
Vincent had become proof that control could fail.
We sent Marco's evidence to federal investigators.
Vincent was cleared.
Then he made a decision nobody expected.
He called every Bellano captain himself.
“The meeting is happening.”
I stared.
“Why?”
“Because my father wants a king.”
He picked up his cane.
May you like
“So I'm going to make sure he gets the last one.”
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