Chapter 7 - Vincent’s Old Debt
Before we left for Mulberry Street, Vincent told me the truth he had been avoiding.
“My father did kill someone because of Antonio.”
I stared.
“Who?”
“A courier.”
We stood alone inside the closed diner.
Vincent's men waited outside.
He continued.
“The courier betrayed them to Vale. My father ordered him killed.”
“Did Antonio know?”
“Yes.”
“Did he approve?”
“No.”
Vincent looked ashamed for the first time since I had known him.
“That was when Antonio decided he could no longer work with my family.”
I folded my arms.
“So your father wasn't innocent.”
“No.”
“Neither was mine.”
“No.”
That mattered.
We were not cleaning our fathers into heroes.
They had participated in criminal systems.
They had made choices.
They had also tried, eventually, to change.
Vincent said, “Salvatore promised Antonio he would help expose Vale.”
“And then your father died.”
“Yes.”
“Was it a heart attack?”
Vincent looked at me.
“No.”
His father had been poisoned.
Digitalis.
Tiny doses.
Over weeks.
Doctors blamed heart disease.
Years later, Vincent learned the truth but never proved who administered it.
“I always thought Vale ordered it.”
“He probably did.”
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean?”
“My father trusted people Vale could reach.”
Vincent looked toward the window.
“I've spent fifteen years trying to identify the person who brought the poison into our home.”
“Did you?”
“Yes.”
I waited.
“Who?”
He whispered, “My uncle.”
That explained something in Vincent.
His obsession with loyalty.
His coldness.
The black card.
“If you ever need help.”
He had once watched someone he loved become trapped inside a situation no one admitted was dangerous until it was too late.
I looked at him.
“Is that why you gave me the card?”
He nodded.
“I saw Daniel grab your wrist outside the diner.”
I had forgotten that night.
Daniel arrived drunk.
He squeezed my wrist hard enough to leave marks but released me when customers appeared.
Vincent had seen.
“Why didn't you do anything?”
“Because you smiled afterward.”
I winced.
“I always smiled.”
“I know that now.”
He looked at my cast.
“I thought you might eventually need someone who would believe you the first time.”
My throat tightened.
“Why me?”
“Because someone should have given my mother that card.”
That answer changed how I saw him.
Not as a savior.
I did not need another man owning my survival.
But as someone who understood what a door could mean when you had nowhere left to run.
Agent Chen arrived.
“We have movement.”
Vale's men had transported Margaret from Queens to Manhattan.
Mulberry Street.
The old Moretti restaurant.
It was a trap.
Everyone knew.
So we built a larger one.
Vincent would enter.
I would appear to enter but remain inside an adjacent building accessible through an old service tunnel.
Agent Chen's team would surround the block.
The ledger would be duplicated.
The original remained in federal custody.
At 9:58 p.m., Vincent walked into Moretti's.
At 10:02, Vale appeared.
I watched through a fiber-optic camera.
He was sixty-seven.
Silver hair.
Dark overcoat.
The kind of face that looked trustworthy on charity boards.
Margaret sat tied to a chair.
Daniel stood beside her.
My blood went cold.
“What is he doing out?”
Agent Chen cursed.
Daniel had been transported for a hearing that morning.
The vehicle was intercepted.
Two officers injured.
Daniel escaped.
Now he stood beside Graham Vale.
Vale said, “Where is Elena?”
Vincent placed the fake ledger on a table.
“Margaret first.”
Vale smiled.
“You sound like Salvatore.”
Vincent's jaw tightened.
Daniel walked toward the table.
“She's here.”
Vincent looked at him.
Daniel smiled.
“I know my wife.”
“Ex-wife,” I whispered from the monitor room, though the divorce was not yet final.
Daniel continued.
“She would never let someone else make the deal.”
He turned toward the wall.
Toward the service tunnel.
My stomach dropped.
He knew the building.
Of course.
Harbor Crest had managed renovations nearby.
Vale's men moved toward our hidden entrance.
Agent Chen shouted orders.
The trap collapsed.
Gunshots erupted.
I ran through the tunnel in the opposite direction.
Then someone grabbed me.
I screamed.
A hand covered my mouth.
Daniel.
He had entered through a second passage.
“You always were predictable.”
I fought.
He twisted my healing arm.
Pain exploded.
But the plate held.
And I was not the same woman from the bathroom.
I drove my knee upward.
Daniel grunted.
I ran.
He caught my jacket.
I slipped out of it.
Ahead, a steel door opened.
Rosa Bellini stood there holding a fire extinguisher.
I stared.
“Rosa?”
She swung it directly into Daniel's face.
He dropped.
“What are you doing here?”
“I own the building next door.”
Of course she did.
Daniel groaned.
Rosa hit him again.
“For good measure.”
Agent Chen's officers flooded the hallway and arrested him.
I nearly laughed from sheer disbelief.
Then gunfire stopped inside the restaurant.
I ran in.
Vincent was on the floor.
Blood spreading across his shirt.
Margaret was alive.
Graham Vale was gone.
Agent Chen knelt beside Vincent.
“Through and through.”
Vincent looked at me.
“You okay?”
I stared at him.
“You were shot.”
“You didn't answer.”
“Yes, I'm okay.”
“Good.”
Then Margaret shouted from her chair.
“Elena!”
“What?”
“Vale took the real clue.”
I froze.
“What clue?”
She looked at Vincent.
“The third piece Antonio left Salvatore.”
Vincent's face changed.
“What third piece?”
Margaret swallowed.
“Proof of who ordered both their deaths.”
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Vale had escaped with it.
And if we did not find him first, the last secret our fathers died protecting would disappear with him.
