Chapter 5 - The venom in the ink
The winter night was bitter and dark as Vincent’s black SUV pulled up to a high-end residential building in the financial district. His men moved with silent, practiced efficiency, bypassing the doorman and riding the service elevator directly to the penthouse.
Harrington, a polished, high-priced corporate lawyer, was sitting in his plush living room, nursing a scotch and reading through a tablet when Vincent Belladonna walked through his front door.
The lawyer froze, the blood draining from his face. He knew exactly who Vincent was.
Vincent walked over to the modern glass table and sat down across from the man. He rested his large hands on his knees, his gold cufflinks gleaming under the modern recessed lighting.
“You received a package for my sister-in-law,” Vincent said, his tone perfectly even, deeply terrifying. “I want it.”
Harrington trembled. He was a man of the law, not the streets. The terrifying, masculine gravity of Vincent Belladonna was not something he could argue against in a courtroom. With shaking hands, Harrington reached into his briefcase by the sofa, unlocking a false bottom, and pulled out a heavy metal lockbox alongside a thick manila envelope.
He slid them across the glass table.
Vincent pulled the envelope toward him. He opened the flap and pulled out a stack of aged, yellowing papers. He recognized his father’s harsh, slanted handwriting immediately. There were lab reports, heavily redacted but clear in their conclusion: heavy metal poisoning. Administered slowly over a period of months.
Vincent flipped to the final page of the journal. His father’s handwriting was frantic, deeply paranoid.
'She’s doing it. I can taste it in the tea. I can see it in her eyes. The quiet little mouse is killing me. But I won't let her win. If I go down, she goes down.'
Vincent’s chest felt tight. But as he looked at the metal lockbox, he noticed a folded piece of modern white printer paper stuck to the bottom. He pulled it free and unfolded it. It was a printed architectural blueprint. It wasn't of the Hamptons house. It was a blueprint of the very estate he lived in right now. And marked in thick red ink was a sprawling sub-basement level that did not exist on any official city record.
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At the bottom of the blueprint, written in fresh black ink, was a single sentence in his father's unmistakable, slanted handwriting:
'Let’s see if my boy is smart enough to find the door.'
