Harvey Dent slid into the driver’s seat and turned the radio dial until he found a decent station.
He eased onto the gas as the music filled the car.
He rarely listened to music while driving, but today he was in an exceptionally good mood.
His first day had gone well.
He had made a plan to dismantle the mobs, and he had even managed to secure an informant.
Or rather, a partner.
He knew very well that the man named Vincent was not doing this out of a sense of justice.
But Harvey didn’t care.
He was a prosecutor.
Delivering justice was the court’s job, and stopping criminals was the police’s.
His sole duty was to gather enough solid evidence to drag those bastards into court.
The process itself was irrelevant.
Harvey was nothing like those rigid, old-fashioned officials.
He pursued real justice and glory, not blind obedience to procedure.
To achieve his goals, he often operated on the edge of the law, occasionally crossing the line when no one was watching.
Coercion, intimidation, suborning perjury, financial incentives, and even working with criminals were all part of his standard playbook.
Otherwise, how could a rookie prosecutor have turned New York completely upside down?
Many believed Harvey had been transferred to Gotham because he offended powerful figures in New York, but the truth was entirely different.
Harvey had requested the transfer.
He rarely shared this with anyone, but Gotham was his hometown.
It was also his worst nightmare.
A damp, moldy basement.
A drunken, gambling father.
A coin tossed high into the air.
Fists raining down on his skin.
These fractured memories haunted his sleep, turning every night into another sleepless one.
He had returned to put an end to it all.
Nirvana’s “Something in the Way” began playing on the radio.
He hummed along softly to the lyrics.
*Underneath the bridge* *Tarp has sprung a leak* *And the animals I’ve trapped* *Have all become my pets* *And I’m living off of grass* *And the drippings from the ceiling* *It’s okay to eat fish* *Because they don’t have any feelings* *Something in the way…* *Something in the way…* When Harvey walked through the Senate’s back door, Vincent was stuffing a naked corpse into a heavy black plastic bag.
Beside him, Oswald was scrubbing crimson bloodstains from the floorboards.
“Do you believe he fell down the stairs?” Vincent asked, pulling the plastic tie tight.
“I believe it,” Harvey replied, glancing at a blood-stained baseball bat lying in the corner.
“Misfortune and death happen every single day in this city.
Poor guy.” “Then we can discuss the next phase of our operation,” Vincent said.
Vincent briefly summarized everything that had happened.
Harvey’s expression shifted from initial surprise to absolute shock, before finally settling into a calculating smile.
“I see where you are going with this,” Harvey said.
“This plan is fucking insane.” Despite calling it insane, Harvey took off his suit jacket and pulled the dead man’s clothes on.
The long, tailored trench coat was a style he often wore himself, and it fit him even better than expected.
Pressing his lips into a thin line, he gave a grim nod and pulled the dead man’s phone from the coat’s inner pocket.
The phone was packed with sensitive data.
Aside from crude text messages sent to a mistress, the only other contact was Maroni.
Charlie had already visited more than a dozen crew captains, reporting directly to Maroni via text after each encounter.
Harvey scrolled through the previous logs.
Three captains were marked as liabilities, two as disloyal, four as suspicious, and the rest as loyal.
“What kind of rating do you want?” Harvey asked.
“How exactly does Maroni view you two right now?” “Go with liability or suspicious,” Vincent said.
“Oswald and I already had contact with Falcone, so that low-life mobster definitely suspects us anyway.
It is better to give him an evaluation that matches his paranoia.” “You want to use an obvious flaw to mask the larger truth,” Harvey noted.
“But that exposes you to immediate danger.
Maroni is paranoid right now.
Do you honestly think that demon will let a suspect walk?” “That is not your fucking problem.” Vincent bit down hard on his thumbnail, calculating the variables.
*If Maroni makes his move early, our survival odds drop below ten percent.* Oswald had been right.
Playing both sides between two powerful mob bosses could easily get them caught in the crossfire.
Vincent hated living under this constant threat.
If he’d had the firepower, he would’ve gladly put a bullet in both Maroni and Falcone just to clear the board.
Harvey wrote the text and sent it.
Within moments, Maroni’s reply flashed on the screen.
: What did the little penguin say?
: He told me Falcone tried to recruit them, but he is completely torn on which side to choose.
Harvey replicated the dead man’s texting style flawlessly.
It was an incredibly dangerous move, effectively exposing their betrayal right in front of Maroni.
Vincent’s entire gamble rested on one assumption: a narcissistic, arrogant mob boss like Maroni would never flip the chessboard until he believed he had absolute control over every piece.
Oswald watched them, completely dumbfounded.
He couldn’t make sense of the cryptic exchange between the two men.
The only thing he understood was that Vincent had just deliberately exposed them.
In the past, he would have screamed that Vincent was a lunatic.
But Vincent had proven his tactical foresight.
Oswald chose to trust his friend.
Recognizing that his own strategic mind could not keep up with theirs, he kept his mouth shut and fiercely applied more detergent to the floor.
With their roles settled, the three men headed outside.
Harvey, disguised in the dead man’s coat, left to meet the next crew captain.
Oswald dragged the heavy plastic bag and stuffed it into the trunk.
Now, all they could do was wait for Harvey to finish his rounds and return the clothes so they could permanently dispose of the evidence.
“Are we really going to survive this?” Oswald asked, his voice shaking slightly.
“Hard to say,” Vincent muttered.
He picked up a cold hot dog from the passenger seat, took a massive bite, and washed it down with a heavy swig of warm beer.
Every single move on this board carried deadly risk.
A fraction of an inch off, and they would be destroyed.
Gotham’s power structure was turning into complete chaos with Harvey’s sudden arrival.
Vincent understood that calculation alone would no longer be enough.
He desperately needed to build a crew of his own to withstand the coming storm.
“Once we’re past this, I’m helping you build a crew,” Vincent said.
…
After leaving the Senate, Harvey’s brow furrowed, and the clarity in his eyes hardened into something vicious and cruel.
He realized that Maroni using an impersonator to test loyalty meant the mobster did not respect him at all.
Compared to a body hanging upside down from a roof, this blatant manipulation was the true insult to his position.
“You son of a bitch,” Harvey hissed under his breath.
“I will make you pay for looking down on me.” According to Vincent’s plan, Harvey was supposed to visit a low-level enforcer named Royce.
Royce was a nobody, much like Oswald.
Framing Royce for the fake prosecutor’s death would raise zero red flags.
But Harvey wanted to target a completely different man.
Dodge Bourbon.
He was Maroni’s top lieutenant, tasked with managing relations with the Mexican cartels and distributing narcotics across New Jersey.
He was a vital pillar of the criminal syndicate and loyal to Maroni.
Targeting him carried a high risk.
That loyal dog would likely bite back without hesitation.
Maroni obviously knew that, but he didn’t care.
The body double was nothing more than a disposable tool.
Even dead, it would still serve its purpose.
Harvey knew it too, but he could not afford to be reckless.
“Let God decide then,” Harvey whispered.
“Heads, and we take the risk.” He pulled a classic Roman silver coin from his pocket, featuring the profile of Octavian on the front and the Olympian Pantheon on the back.
The silver coin spun rapidly in the air before he slapped it flat against the back of his hand.
The Pantheon side faced up, sealing the fate of Maroni’s empire.