“There are still a few things Oswald didn’t explain,” Vincent said, trying to lure Charlie back inside the room.
Unfortunately, the man didn’t take the bait.
“It’s already very late.
Whatever it is can wait until tomorrow,” Charlie replied, completely unbothered.
Oswald had already told him enough, and it was more than enough to report back to his boss.
Seeing the man about to leave the building, Vincent felt a sudden rush of adrenaline.
The fake Dent was built like a brick wall, and if he let him get through the door, Vincent had no confidence he could catch him in a straight sprint.
Fortunately, Vincent’s tactical brain had already stitched the clues together, accurately pinning down the puppet master behind this play.
If this bastard was truly acting on the old fox Maroni’s orders, it was time to drop some irresistible bait.
“Is that so?
What a shame,” Vincent sighed, pretending to pull his hand back.
“I was actually planning to hand over the definitive criminal evidence I have against Maroni.” It was a cold calculation.
A game of psychological push-and-pull.
If he acted too eager, a professional con man like Charlie would smell the trap instantly.
Vincent’s paranoia was completely justified.
Charlie was an expert con man, and the moment their shoulders brushed on the stairs, his street instincts warned him that the hooded kid could be dangerous.
Right now, all he wanted was to get out of this suffocating building.
But Vincent had just dropped a nuclear bomb right in his path.
The boss’s criminal evidence?
*Jesus Christ, these punks actually hold something that dangerous?* Watching Vincent turn away, Charlie’s knuckles turned white around the brass doorknob.
*If I just walk out now, will the boss kill me for failing to secure the real leverage?
What if they’ve already leaked this shit to the Gotham Police Department and I didn’t warn him in time?
I’ll be held responsible for the fallout…* *But what if it’s a bluff?
What if he already recognized my face and wants to lure me back inside to slit my throat?* *Man up, Charlie.
Harvey Dent only took office this evening.
Why the hell would a low-level mob grunt have a direct line to him?
My face is identical to Dent’s.
There’s no way he knows the difference!* What finally killed Charlie’s suspicion was Vincent’s complete indifference.
*If he actually suspected me, he would be doing everything he could to block that door.
Why would he look so detached?* Charlie comforted himself with his own arrogance, completely forgetting that he had just used the exact same psychological tactic to squeeze the truth out of Oswald minutes ago.
The full moon cut through a dense layer of black smog, throwing a pale, skeletal light through the doorway and across the dust-caked floorboards.
Before Charlie lay the open, quiet streets of the Lower District, while behind him was a stairwell buried in pitch-black shadow.
The moment he let go of the door and turned back toward Vincent, the tables turned.
“Can you summarize the evidence for me?” Following Vincent back up the steps, Charlie kept his guard up, trying to pick apart every sentence for hidden flaws.
But he had completely underestimated Vincent’s incredible ability to lie.
“It was about six months ago,” Vincent said, deliberately slowing his pace as he spun an elaborate web of nonsense to draw Charlie deeper into the trap.
“Maroni sent us to collect a debt.
The target was a beautiful woman.
The night we broke in, she was wearing a scarlet evening gown, her hair styled in tight, bleached-white curls, with a priceless pearl necklace around her neck…” Vincent kept talking, his voice flat and steady, detailing the woman’s features, her wardrobe, and even the sultry, breathy texture of her voice.
As the description went on, Charlie’s brain finally hit a wall.
*Wait a minute…
This kid is talking complete nonsense.* He was supposed to be describing a racketeering operation, but he was describing a woman in obsessive detail.
Charlie ran the description through his head again, and a cold realization hit him.
*This motherfucker is describing Marilyn Monroe.* “Son of a bitch, you’re stalling!” Realizing the danger, Charlie turned on his heel to sprint.
Vincent didn’t give him a chance.
He lunged forward, wrapped his arms tightly around Charlie’s waist, and their combined momentum sent them crashing down the concrete stairs.
They crashed onto the landing, Vincent’s head spinning from the impact.
The second his vision cleared, he threw his full weight onto Charlie’s chest, pinning the bigger man down while yelling for Oswald.
“Oswald!
Help me!” The overhead lights flicked on.
Oswald jumped from the third-floor landing, holding a heavy wooden baseball bat.
Everything had happened too fast for Vincent to explain the plan, so Oswald was acting completely in the dark.
On one side was his most trusted partner, and on the other was the White Knight Falcone had explicitly told them to secure.
Now, the two of them were rolling around on the dirty floorboards.
*Who the fuck am I supposed to hit?* Oswald didn’t waste a single second overthinking it.
Doubting Vincent for even a second felt like a betrayal.
He stepped into the swing, bringing the heavy wooden baseball bat down directly onto the back of “Harvey Dent’s” skull.
*Crack.* The first hit knocked Charlie out instantly.
But Vincent didn’t tell him to stop, and since Vincent stayed silent, Oswald kept swinging.
Again, and again, and again.
He didn’t stop until Charlie’s skull looked like a smashed watermelon on the concrete.
Panting heavily, a wild look in his eyes, Oswald finally lowered the bloody bat.
Vincent let go of the shirt, letting the corpse collapse onto the floorboards like a sack of wet flour.
His face and chest were completely covered in warm blood.
Watching a living person be beaten to death right in front of his eyes left a knot of fear in Vincent’s stomach, but panic was an ineffective emotion in Gotham.
If they didn’t solve the immediate problem right now, they would both be dead by sunrise.
“Vincent, what the fuck did we just do?
We just murdered the District Attorney!” Vincent reached into the pool of blood, pinched the edge of the blond wig between his fingers, ripped it off, and held it up in front of Oswald’s face.
“A fake?” Oswald gasped.
“Yeah,” Vincent replied, wiping the blood from his cheek.
“If I hadn’t spent the last hour staring at the real Dent, he would’ve fooled me too.
Maroni has some serious pieces on the board.” Vincent bent over, searching through the dead man’s clothing.
“If this imposter belongs to Maroni,” Oswald muttered, a dark thought forming in his head.
“Can we hand the body over to Falcone anyway?
We’ll claim we took out the real District Attorney, take the credit, and spit in Maroni’s face.” “I thought about that too,” Vincent said, his fingers sliding into the jacket’s interior pocket.
“But that play only works if this bastard wasn’t carrying a wire.
Like this one…” Vincent pulled out a sleek digital voice recorder.
A small, red light was still blinking on the casing, showing it was actively capturing every single sound in the room.
It was the worst possible outcome.
Vincent had to destroy the recorder, which meant they could no longer play the “loyal grunts who killed the District Attorney to protect the family” card in front of Maroni.
This fake Dent had been sent specifically to test their loyalty.
The moment Maroni pieced together his spawn’s movements, they were dead men.
“Two choices,” Vincent said, holding up two fingers.
“First choice, we run before the news of his death reaches Maroni’s.” Vincent almost laughed at his own suggestion.
The highly trained assassins who had hunted them through the monorail, the ones Falcone called the “owl cubs,” weren’t the kind of predators you could simply outrun.
“What’s the second choice?” Oswald asked, his voice tight.
“We find another Harvey Dent.
We just need to leave definitive proof that he walked out of the Senate Apartments alive.” “That’s even worse than the first plan!
It’s the middle of the fucking night, Vincent!
What are you going to do, grab some random drifter off the street and offer him a high-paying gig as the DA?
Wait…
Don’t tell me you’re planning to bring the real one here.” “What do you think?” Vincent snapped the battery cover back onto his phone, slid the screen open, and dialed a number.
A booming, confident laugh came through the receiver.
“Haha!
Let me guess, Vincent,” Harvey Dent’s voice came through clear.
“Do you have intel for me, or are you in deep shit?” “Save the laughs for later, Dent,” Vincent said coldly.
“You’re not going to like what I’m about to tell you.” …