28. Vinnie
28
VINNIE
B ellamy’s phone buzzes.
“I have to take this,” he says. He walks away from me, back toward the ballroom.
I follow him. The hotel staff is cleaning up. The chandeliers have been dimmed and the silk tablecloths have been stripped away to reveal bare wooden surfaces.
Bellamy, still on his phone, paces. His dark eyes are distracted.
A waiter trudges by with an almost empty champagne tray and I take a flute. The bubbly liquid feels strange in my mouth, cold and flat. Kind of the way I’m feeling at the moment.
Bellamy ends his call and walks toward me. “We’ll talk in the car. It’s nearly an hour drive to my house.”
“Why would I be going to your house?”
“Because,” he says, clearing his throat, “Raven is there.”
I cock my head. “Why is she at your house?”
“Her bodyguard had instructions to take her there. Either there or to the safe house, and the only reason I’m mentioning that is because apparently you know all about it.”
“ You know about it?”
He exhales sharply. “Jared and I don’t have any secrets. Though he came to us through Falcon’s friend Leif Ramsey, I’m the one paying his bills. So when he found out about the safe house that Falcon and Hawk had constructed after Falcon went to prison, I found out as well.”
I scratch the side of my head. “What the hell is your game, Bellamy?”
We walk out of the hotel, where Bellamy’s car waits for us. His driver opens the back seat, and Bellamy gestures me to get in.
Though I don’t trust this man as far as I can throw him, I don’t feel that I’m in any imminent danger. The skin on the back of my neck isn’t icy cold, and my heart isn’t racing.
He slides in the seat next to me and grabs a bottle of amber liquid from the console. “Bourbon?”
I nod.
He pours me a finger as the car begins to roll.
He gestures to the partition dividing us from his chauffeur. “We can speak freely. This is soundproofed, though I trust my driver without question.”
I take a sip of the bourbon. It’s good, smooth stuff. Only the best for the Cooper Steel heir, of course.
Just like only the best for Mario Bianchi.
And his son.
“So where do I start?” he asks, more to himself than to me.
“At the beginning. Start at the beginning, Austin.”
He raises his eyebrows at my use of his first name. “Good enough, Vinnie.” He clicks his glass to mine. “Cheers.”
I don’t return his toast. Hardly seems like a cheers moment.
“You told me the last time we talked, at my office at home, that you had found information on me on the dark web. Records that were expunged when I turned eighteen.”
“Yes. But I don’t hold that against you.”
“I didn’t think you would. Just like I don’t hold against you the fact that you’ve killed. Twice.”
I let out a dull laugh. “So we both do our research. I wouldn’t expect anything less from either of us.”
Bellamy chuckles lightly. “It’s a shame, Vinnie. If you weren’t the grandson of Mario Bianchi, I’d really like you.”
I glare at him. “I can’t say the same, Austin. Anyone who does business with drugs—and God knows what else—isn’t someone I respect.”
This time he chuckles louder. “But isn’t that what you’re doing? You weren’t down in Colombia for your health.”
“No, I was down in Colombia to set a plan in motion.”
He doesn’t need to know that I didn’t come up with the plan until I actually got there and found Serena and Daniela.
“So you think you can take out your grandfather?”
“It’s not a matter of whether I think I can do it,” I reply. “It’s necessary. I can’t let this go on. It cost me my brother, my father, and now my mother. It nearly cost me my sister. The woman your son loves.”
“Savannah is a lovely young lady.”
“She is.” I look down. “I should’ve been here for her. I should’ve been here for my brother too. He’d be alive today if I had been. But I ran.”
He lays a tentative hand on my shoulder. “You were a kid, Vinnie. You had your reasons.”
I cock my head. Exactly how much does Bellamy know? Clearly he knows about my run-in with Misha. That I killed him. And he knows about Puzo.
“I was eighteen, Austin. A man in the eyes of the law. But I was a selfish little bastard.”
“You returned. You returned to save your sister.”
“Yeah.” I scoff. “Seventeen short years later. That’s hardly heroic.”
“Hell, none of us are heroes, Vinnie.” He gazes out the window of the car. “You think I haven’t bent the rules in my day?”
This time I chuckle. “I know you have. I’d love to know why you allowed your son to go to prison. And, Austin, I’d love to know something else.”
“Yes.” He clasps his hands together. “Why I decided to excavate under the old barn near the Mexican border that’s on my property. And why it was stopped.”
“For what it’s worth, I wasn’t going to let that happen.”
“Interesting. Why not?”
“I’m not going to tell you that. Besides, I think you probably already know why.”
He rubs at his forehead. “My children are smart. Especially Falcon and Raven. All five of them are brilliant, but those two have an emotional intelligence as well. I know Falcon didn’t kill that young cop.” The muscles in his neck tighten. “I know damned well it was my youngest.”
“Why didn’t you tell Falcon that?”
“Because I love my children. And that’s why I keep them on a need-to-know basis.”
“Just how long has your family been involved with the cartels?” I ask.
“Not as long as you might think,” he says. “But I had to make a choice when my father died. Our money comes from my mother’s side of the family, as you know. She was the only child of Broderick Cooper of Cooper Steel.”
I nod.
“But the ranch, that comes from my father, Brick Bellamy. The Bellamy family has owned this land for a century, and each one of us has added to it. When my father married Sandy, my mother, he built an empire.”
“Yes.”
“Let’s just say this.” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in before continuing. “There’s not a lot of difference between a ranching empire and the organized crime empire your grandfather presides over.”
“What exactly are you saying?”
“What I’m saying”—Bellamy takes a moment to drain his glass—“is that power is power. No matter how it is gained or how it is wielded. The cattle empire my father built and the…other operations he got involved in both served to consolidate power.” He pours himself another drink. His hands are steadier than I expect, considering the topic and the hour.
He continues, “Power and influence are universal currencies. Money can be made and lost, but power and influence are constant. They exist in every society, every business, on every level. And where there is power and influence, people will do whatever it takes to protect it.”
I shift uncomfortably in my seat as the words sink in.
“Ranching or manufacturing or shipping metal or running an organized crime syndicate. It all boils down to the same thing.”
I nod. “And that is?”
His dark eyes meet mine. “Control. You asked me why I allowed my son to go to prison. The answer is complex. It was something that had to happen at that time.”
“But he’s your son!”
“Yes, and he chose to confess to a crime he didn’t commit.” He slowly pours another splash of bourbon into his glass. “Someone had to pay. And yes, I could have prevented it, but it was to my advantage at the time not to.”
I shake my head. “Sleight of hand. You got the focus on your son to cover something up you were involved in. You’re a damned monster.”
“A monster?” Bellamy chuckles, but without humor. “Vinnie, that’s where you’re wrong. I’m a businessman. I deal in power and influence, and sometimes the stakes are high.”
“Don’t you dare try to justify this!” I snap.
He takes another sip from his glass. “Justify? I don’t need to justify anything to you, Vinnie. Not after everything you’ve done. You killed two men. You ran away from your family responsibilities for seventeen years. You played right into your grandfather’s hands.”
And there’s nothing more I can say.
Because Austin Bellamy is exactly right.
So I go for it. I ask the question I’m dying to know the answer to.
“Tell me, Austin. Who the hell is buried under that old barn along the border?”
He looks away from me. “I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
It’s a lie, of course. If it weren’t, he wouldn’t be so cavalier about it.
But I know instinctively that I won’t get any more information out of him.
At least not tonight.