Chapter 6 - The Man Vincent Trusted
Vincent turned slowly.
Marcus did not move.
Bell kept the gun aimed at him.
Evelyn’s face was white with panic.
“Vincent, he’s lying.”
Bell laughed.
“Of course she thinks so.”
Vincent looked at Marcus.
“Did you?”
Marcus’s eyes remained on Bell.
“No.”
Bell lifted his other hand.
A phone.
He pressed play.
Marcus’s voice filled the room.
“Mercer leaves by the south garage at eleven forty. Driver dismissed. She’ll be alone.”
Evelyn stared at Marcus.
Vincent said nothing.
Marcus’s face hardened.
“That’s my voice.”
Bell smiled.
“Thank you.”
“But I never said those words.”
Bell’s smile faded slightly.
Marcus continued.
“Audio synthesis.”
Bell shrugged.
“Convenient.”
Vincent looked at the phone.
Then at Marcus.
Years of loyalty stood on one side.
A perfect recording stood on the other.
Evelyn spoke.
“Vincent.”
He looked at her.
“Think.”
Bell stepped farther into the room.
“You think loyalty means anything to men like us?”
Vincent turned toward him.
“Us?”
Bell smiled.
“I worked for your father before your current watchdog learned to shave.”
“Then you know my father hated sloppy lies.”
Bell’s expression changed.
Vincent nodded toward the phone.
“Marcus calls her Ms. Mercer.”
Bell looked at him.
“What?”
“Always.”
Evelyn understood first.
“He never calls me Mercer.”
Marcus almost smiled.
Vincent’s gaze hardened.
“You built the recording from surveillance.”
Bell’s weapon shifted.
Marcus moved.
Fast.
He knocked Bell’s wrist aside.
The gun fired into the ceiling.
Vincent crossed the distance.
Bell struck Marcus.
Marcus drove him against the wall.
The gun fell.
Evelyn shouted.
“Vincent!”
Another figure appeared behind the steel door.
Vincent turned.
A man stood there.
Tall.
Thin.
Scar across one cheek.
Dark hair streaked with gray.
Vincent knew the eyes.
Elias.
Alive.
For several seconds, neither brother moved.
Elias looked older than forty.
Not weak.
Not broken.
But shaped by six missing years.
Vincent’s voice came quietly.
“You’re dead.”
Elias smiled without warmth.
“So I heard.”
Marcus pinned Bell against the wall.
Kerr’s officers rushed down the stairs.
Elias raised both hands.
“No weapon.”
Vincent stared at him.
“You attacked Evelyn.”
“No.”
“You kidnapped Daniel.”
“Yes.”
“You stole the file.”
“Yes.”
“You broke into my tower.”
“Yes.”
“You targeted her apartment.”
Elias looked at Evelyn.
“No.”
Bell stopped struggling.
Everyone heard the difference.
Vincent looked at Bell.
Bell’s eyes changed.
Elias noticed.
“There,” he said. “That’s why I came.”
Vincent turned back.
“Explain.”
Elias nodded toward Bell.
“He’s not my partner.”
Bell laughed.
“Don’t.”
Elias ignored him.
“Bell worked for Father. Then he worked for someone else.”
“Who?”
Elias looked toward the steel room.
“Open the cabinet.”
Vincent saw an old metal cabinet against the wall.
Marcus kept Bell restrained while Kerr retrieved the fallen weapon.
Vincent opened the cabinet.
Inside were dozens of files.
Photographs.
Bank records.
Newspaper clippings.
One photograph lay on top.
A woman in her sixties.
Silver-blonde hair.
Standing outside a church two months earlier.
Vincent picked it up.
His hands stopped.
He recognized her.
Not from adulthood.
From a memory more than thirty years old.
His mother.
“Katherine.”
Elias nodded.
“She’s alive.”
Evelyn watched Vincent’s face collapse by degrees.
Vincent gripped the edge of the cabinet.
“Where?”
“That’s what Bell was trying to discover.”
Bell spat blood.
“You’re insane.”
Elias looked at him.
“You tortured Daniel because you thought he knew.”
Vincent turned sharply.
“You kidnapped Daniel.”
“Yes.”
“Then Bell tortured him?”
Elias paused.
“No.”
Vincent stepped closer.
“You said yes.”
“I took Daniel first.”
“Why?”
“To force him to tell me where Mother was.”
“And the bomb?”
Elias looked ashamed for the first time.
“It wasn’t supposed to detonate.”
Vincent laughed once.
Cold.
“You tied a man to a pressure device.”
“I needed you to believe the threat.”
“You nearly killed him.”
“And you have never threatened anyone?”
“This isn’t about me.”
“It has always been about you.”
The old wound appeared between them instantly.
Elias’s voice rose.
“Father chose you.”
Vincent stared.
“He chose the empire for you. The houses. The legitimate companies. The protection.”
“You disappeared.”
“I was hunted.”
“You let me bury you.”
“I had no choice.”
“You had six years.”
“I had nowhere safe.”
Vincent stepped closer.
“You had me.”
Elias’s anger cracked.
“Did I?”
Silence.
Elias looked down.
“When the warehouse exploded, I woke up three days later in a private clinic. Bell was there.”
Vincent looked at Bell.
“He told me you ordered the explosion.”
Bell laughed.
Vincent ignored him.
“You believed that?”
“For a while.”
“You believed I killed Father and tried to kill you?”
“I was twenty-nine, burned, drugged, and every document Bell showed me pointed to you.”
Vincent’s jaw tightened.
Elias continued.
“It took two years to discover the records were false.”
“417.”
“Yes.”
“The federal documents.”
“Copies of the same system.”
Evelyn whispered, “Someone has been manufacturing evidence for years.”
Elias nodded.
“Bell.”
Bell finally spoke.
“You think I built this alone?”
Everyone looked at him.
Kerr stepped closer.
“Who else?”
Bell smiled.
“Ask Dominic.”
Vincent’s stomach tightened.
“My father is dead.”
Bell laughed.
“No.”
Elias went rigid.
Vincent stared.
“Enough.”
Bell’s smile widened.
“You still don’t understand.”
Kerr grabbed him.
“Talk.”
Bell looked only at Vincent.
“Your father staged everything.”
Elias shook his head.
“No.”
“The warehouse. Your brother. Your mother. All of it.”
“Why?”
“Because Dominic knew someone was coming for the family.”
“Who?”
Bell’s expression became almost amused.
“Someone with more patience than you.”
Vincent wanted to strike him.
Instead he stepped back.
Evelyn spoke.
“The black envelope.”
Everyone looked toward her.
“The men who attacked me weren’t trying to kill me.”
Vincent turned.
“What?”
“They kept asking one question.”
“You never told me that.”
“I was scared.”
“What question?”
Evelyn swallowed.
“They asked where Vincent keeps the list.”
Vincent frowned.
“What list?”
“I told them I didn’t know.”
Bell’s expression shifted.
Very slightly.
Evelyn saw it.
“So there is one.”
Bell said nothing.
Elias stepped toward the cabinet.
“Father kept names.”
Vincent looked at him.
“Names of what?”
“People he protected.”
Bell laughed again.
“Protected?”
Elias ignored him.
“Politicians. Witnesses. Families. People he moved out of danger.”
Kerr’s eyes narrowed.
“A protection network?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because Dominic made enemies on both sides of the law.”
Vincent looked through the files.
He had spent his adult life believing his father was ruthless.
Not charitable.
Not noble.
But perhaps Dominic had been more complicated than either son understood.
Elias pointed to an empty slot inside the cabinet.
“The list used to be here.”
Vincent looked at Bell.
“Where is it?”
Bell smiled.
“You don’t have it?”
“No.”
“Then someone beat us both.”
A phone rang.
Not Vincent’s.
Not Marcus’s.
Evelyn looked down.
The sound came from beneath her chair.
Marcus found a small burner phone taped underneath.
Vincent answered.
No one spoke.
Then a woman’s voice.
Older.
Steady.
“Vincent?”
His face changed.
He knew that voice.
Even after thirty years.
Even after funerals.
Even after graves.
His mother.
“Where are you?”
“Don’t trust Bell.”
Vincent looked at the former detective.
“Where are you?”
A pause.
Then Katherine Hale whispered an address.
Vincent recognized it.
The cemetery.
The Hale family mausoleum.
“I found the list,” she said.
Vincent’s pulse hammered.
“Stay there.”
“No.”
“Mother—”
The word almost broke in his throat.
Her breathing changed.
“Vincent, someone followed me.”
Then a man’s voice sounded faintly through her phone.
Katherine gasped.
The line went dead.
Vincent stared at the screen.
One second later, a text arrived.
A photograph.
His mother standing beside Dominic Hale’s grave.
Behind her was a man Vincent recognized.
Daniel Ross.
May you like
His attorney.
And Daniel was holding a gun.
