Chapter Sincere Bellamy
SINCERE BELLAMY
The next day was the zoning board vote. This was the vote that decided whether the project could move forward the way we planned or stay tied up in politics and delay tactics.
The zoning board was voting on land use, approvals, and whether the city would let the project move from plans and promises into actual work.
If they voted yes, we could finally start building.
If they voted no, or pushed it off again, we’d lose time, money, and leverage.
When I got out of the car and headed toward the building, I noticed the protest crowd first. The group was smaller, and the energy was weaker. With the Crown no longer around to fan the flames, their momentum was dying off.
Inside, I took my seat. Legend, Icon, and Saint were already seated.
Kai came in a few minutes later. Before the vote, he would be called to speak because he was the public face tied to the pushback and who called for the moratorium, so the board needed to hear him support the project now.
I’d given him exactly what he needed to say to make them comfortable.
Every phrase was built to make the project sound safe, smart, and impossible to vote against without looking stupid.
When his name got called, he stood and went right into it. He talked about jobs, tax revenue, and investment without displacement. He read from that script like he wrote every line himself.
The whole time, I watched the board.
By the time public comment wrapped and they moved into the vote, the yes votes started coming in one after another. There were no speeches or surprise holdups. Just yes after yes after yes.
When the final vote was given, the project was approved. The moratorium died right there without the fight people expected. All the back and forth and stalling over the last few months finally ended with a board member reading out a result into a microphone. “Approved.”
Legend leaned over first and gripped the back of my neck before he let me go. “Good work, bro.”
Icon gave me a proud stare. “You handled that.”
Saint leaned in from the other side. “’Bout time. I was tired of listening to all this political bullshit.”
I sat there and let myself feel it for a second.
I was proud of myself. This was the biggest project I’d ever touched, and I got it through the part that was built to break it.
For once, all the work I put in, all the moving around, all the thinking ahead, it wasn’t just helping everybody else eat.
It was building something for me too; for my future, for the life I’m trying to have outside of putting out fires for other people.
And now that the vote was done, we could finally stop talking about what we were going to build and start building it.