Oswald tried calling Vincent several times, but none of the calls went through.
With no other choice, he reluctantly invited Harvey Dent upstairs.
He had been there during the negotiations and knew all about Falcone’s intentions.
Now that Dent had come straight to his doorstep, Oswald knew that he needed to establish a connection with him immediately.
But Vincent was the brains of the operation.
Without him around, Oswald didn’t dare make any big decisions.
“Want a beer?” Oswald tried to dodge the question, but Dent wasn’t letting him off the hook.
“Just answer the damn question.
Are you going to cooperate with my investigation or not?
I have a million things to do.” Dent looked annoyed, but he still took the beer Oswald offered him.
“I just want to know why you are so focused on taking down Mr.
Maroni.” Oswald sat on the edge of the mattress, his fingers laced tightly together.
He locked his eyes onto Dent, deliberately copying Vincent’s slow, calm way of talking to drag out the conversation.
Sitting on a small wooden stool, Dent shifted uncomfortably under the intense, unblinking stare.
“He’s a criminal and I’m the District Attorney.
Do I really need a fucking reason to go after him?” Dent raised his voice, adopting a harsh tone to hide the sudden panic rising in his chest.
…
Before Maroni got him out of his cell, Charlie was just another prisoner in the yard.
He had accidentally killed a man at the age of twenty, earning an eight-year sentence at Blackgate.
To avoid becoming a victim in prison, he carefully built a terrifying reputation for himself, pretending to be a remorseless, bloodthirsty serial killer.
He had been a star varsity fullback in college, standing tall with a mountain of dense muscle.
Combined with the terrifying crimes he made up about himself, he managed to scare the other inmates and become Blackgate’s undisputed top predator.
But a lie told for too long always starts to crack.
Young inmates eager to make a name for themselves kept challenging him, and the constant pressure became overwhelming.
At first, his crew handled most of the fighting, but eventually even his closest men started questioning how tough he really was.
He lived in constant fear.
If anyone exposed him, all those years of lies would catch up with him.
They would beat him to a bloody pulp in the prison yard.
Just as he was about to crack, a huge opportunity fell into his lap.
Maroni was looking to release a select group of hardened convicts to form an elite enforcement team.
Charlie attended the meeting, kept his head down, and said nothing.
Using the cold, emotionless act he had perfected over the years, he fooled the old fox, Maroni, and walked away with parole.
His gamble had paid off.
Nobody in Gotham dared to mess with Maroni’s inner circle, making his bodyguard job one of the safest in the city.
Until this evening, when his boss grabbed him by the jaw and stared into his face.
“Jesus Christ…
Your face is perfect.
I have a special job for you.
You’re going to pretend to be Harvey Dent and flush out the ticking time bomb inside my organization.” “Don’t worry,” Maroni said, with dark smile.
“Nobody is going to lay a finger on you without my direct order.
I’ve already told my boys to keep their hands to themselves.” “Why me?” Charlie asked, forcing his voice to stay calm while panic rised inside him.
“Why?
Because your acting is pure perfection.
You managed to fool me, didn’t you?
If you can buy your way past my eyes, you can easily handle those street punks.” Maroni’s casual revelation had turned Charlie’s blood to ice.
The old bastard had known the truth the entire time.
“Everyone is a screw, Charlie.
No matter the size or the threads, there’s always a hole that fits.
Right now, I’m putting you exactly where you belong.
It’s time to prove your value.” Maroni gave his shoulder a heavy, almost affectionate pat.
“And if you screw this up, you already know what happens.” *Right.
I cannot fuck up the boss’s plan.* Snapping back to reality, Charlie rubbed his temples and looked straight at Oswald.
In an instant, his entire demeanor changed.
“Gotham has been buried in the dark for far too long.
The citizens need a beacon of light, at least from a legal standpoint.” Charlie stood up, towering over Oswald to apply maximum psychological weight.
” The only protection I can offer is a cooperation deal.
Help me bring down Maroni, and I’ll make sure your name won’t be mentioned.” Charlie had memorized Maroni’s script word for word.
At that moment, he spoke with such conviction that he actually believed every word.
He believed he was Harvey Dent.
Oswald frowned, his thoughts in complete chaos as the fake District Attorney completely overwhelmed his defenses.
“It’s fine if you don’t want to talk,” Charlie pressed, catching the exact moment Oswald’s resolve began to crack.
He poured more fuel to the fire.
“But it means our little arrangement ends here.
You’re throwing away your wildcard.
Don’t come crawling back to my office begging for a deal when you find yourself locked in a cell.” He turned to leave.
Just as his hand reached the doorknob, Oswald’s voice cracked through the silence behind him.
“Hold on.
I have a story.
Do you want to hear it?” Charlie kept his back to the light, a cold, deadly glint shining through his sunglasses.
…
Walking out of the precinct, Vincent checked his phone.
It was already one in the morning.
He took a cab and sped toward the Senate Apartments, flipping through the comic book in his pocket like a man suffering a severe panic attack.
Blank.
Still completely blank.
A hidden, invisible threat was always the most terrifying kind.
Vincent felt just like he had years ago while playing Resident Evil in VR, waiting in fear for a mutant to smash through the wall and rip his head off.
Back then, he had screamed like a child and punched a hole in his monitor.
He never wanted to feel that level of crushing anxiety again.
He paid the driver and stepped onto the curb, stretching his arms behind his back.
When he looked up, he noticed the lights in Oswald’s room were still on.
Oswald kept a strictly disciplined schedule.
What the hell was keeping him up this late?
Was he hiding under the covers crying because he couldn’t recruit any street thugs?
Vincent visualized the Penguin sobbing into a pillow and couldn’t help but chuckle.
The moment he pushed open the main lobby door, a heavy wooden door on the third floor creaked open above him, its sharp scraping sound echoing through the empty stairwell.
Vincent climbed the stairs and crossed paths with a man coming down through the shadows.
The man wore a fedora pulled low over his face, with his coat wrapped tightly around him.
*A midnight job interview?
Even for a street thug, why the fuck are you dressing like a cartoon spy?
Got something to hide?* Vincent muttered internally, keeping his distance as the stranger passed by.
Reaching the third floor, he pushed Oswald’s door open.
“You’re back!” Oswald gasped.
“Who the fuck was that guy on the stairs?” “That’s exactly what I wanted to tell you!
Harvey Dent!
The District Attorney came here to see us!” Vincent froze, quickly calculating the timeline.
When he had left the precinct, the real Dent was locked in a deep conversation with Gordon.
Vincent had jumped straight into a cab to get back here.
There was no physical way Harvey Dent could have beaten him to the Lower District unless the man had somehow inherited the Flash’s speed force.
*A fake.* A violent shiver ran down Vincent’s spine.
The horror-game jump scare had finally arrived.
As the initial wave of adrenaline faded, his tactical brain kicked in.
It didn’t matter who sent this imposter or what they were fishing for.
The absolute priority was to secure him before he vanished into the darkness.
“Hey!
Mr.
Dent!” Vincent gave Oswald a sharp, silent signal to keep his mouth shut, then spun on his heel and sprinted back down the stairs, shouting after the stranger.
By the time he hit the ground floor, the fake Dent had already pushed the exit door open.
Half his body was already out in the alley, with only one boot still planted on the floor.
As the man turned his head halfway to look back, Vincent caught a glimpse of his face and instantly went numb.
The resemblance was terrifying.
It was no wonder Oswald had bought the lie.
If Vincent hadn’t spent the last hour staring directly into the real Harvey Dent’s face, he would have been completely fooled too.
The man standing in the doorway was an absolute duplicate of Harvey Dent .