Chapter 8 - The Truth of the Past
Three days later, in the subterranean vault beneath the Romano estate, the man responsible for the betrayal sat tied to a steel chair.
It wasn't a rival gang member. It was Marcus Vance, Vincent’s own chief financial officer—and the man who had secretly engineered the assassination attempt on Madeline four years ago.
Vincent stood under the glaring tungsten lights of the basement, his shirt off, revealing tight bandages wrapped around his shoulder where shrapnel from the explosion had torn through his flesh. He slowly loaded a magazine into his pistol, the metallic clicks echoing in the silent room.
Marcus spat blood onto the concrete floor, laughing hysterically. "You think killing me changes anything, Vincent? The O’Connors paid me a fortune! And your wife’s car bomb... oh, that was poetry. You thought it was a rival hit, but it was us cleaning house because Madeline found out about our off-the-books accounts!"
Vincent’s movements stopped completely.
The air in the room vanished. The ghost of Madeline—the haunting guilt that had eaten away at his soul for four years—suddenly crystallized into a blinding, undeniable truth.
It wasn't a random war casualty. It was a calculated inside job.
"You," Vincent whispered, his voice dropping into a register so chilling that even Marcus stopped laughing.
"That's right, Boss," Marcus sneered. "And you were too busy crying over her grave to notice—"
Vincent didn't let him finish. He crossed the room with terrifying speed, slamming the butt of his pistol into Marcus’s jaw with bone-crunching force. The CFO slumped unconscious against the chair.
Grant Keller stepped out from the shadows, holding a flash drive. "We have all the financial wire logs, Boss. Marcus authorized the payoff for the O’Connors, and we traced the original offshore account from four years ago straight to his private holdings."
Vincent stared down at the broken man on the floor. The rage inside him burned hotter than hellfire, but alongside it, for the first time in four years, came a strange, profound sense of release.
The lie was dead. The truth was laid bare.
"Make sure he confesses to every federal prosecutor and underworld boss from here to New York," Vincent commanded coldly. "And then make sure he never sees the light of day again."
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"Consider it done," Grant said.
As Vincent walked out of the underground vault and up the stairs into the main house, he felt the heavy iron chains around his chest finally begin to shatter.
