Page 6 of Victorious Vice

VINNIE

Your life begins tonight, Vincent. You will see what awaits you.

My grandfather’s—my father’s—words race through my mind.

This whole thing makes me nauseated in a way I never knew possible. My mother. My poor mother. The deathbed confession she was trying to give me.

The man who raised me, who I love, isn’t my biological father. He doesn’t even know that.

My grandfather, my mother’s father, is alsomyfather.

How fucking twisted is this?

I should have stayed in Europe.

I can’t call Mario Bianchi Grandfather anymore. And I’m sure as hell not calling him Father.

He’ll just be Mario.

Mario. Mario, who’s a rapist. Who committed incest. Who’s taken countless lives.

At least my mother was eighteen.

God, did I truly just have that thought?

I’m actually grateful my grandfather isn’t a pedophile? Just a man who raped his own daughter?

Thank God for small favors. But not fucking small enough.

Mario has something in common with his new business partner. I’m pretty sure Declan McAllister is an incestuous rapist and a pedophile.

How the hell am I going to protect Belinda when I have to go to Colombia tonight?

I have no one. My mother’s dead, my father’s in prison. Michael is dead, and I can’t ask Savannah to step back into my world. Thanks to my father’s—the man who I consider my father—machinations, she does not owe any more debt to the family.

There’s no one to help me. Mario certainly won’t.

There’s no one to help me but me.

And I can’t do anything from Colombia.

Damn.

Then of course there’s Raven. My beautiful, sweet Raven. I love her so much it hurts. It literally twists my insides out.

I don’t believe her father would ever harm her. I believe he loves his children.

But he’s not the man she thinks he is. I don’t know for sure, but he may have had a hand in sending Falcon to prison. I don’t think it’s what he wanted, but he may not have had a choice in the matter.

There’s something so warped about all of this. Diego Vega’s involvement with my family, with the Bellamy family.

Vega’s dead, so I can’t find anything out about him. I’ve scoured the dark web for information about him. He, or his people, scrubbed it clean.

The two minions with him that day, according to Falcon and his brothers, were never heard from again. They were most likely stopped at the border and either taken prisoner or killed.

And now I have to go to Colombia for a month.

Raven will be safer if I’m out of the country. That’s reason enough to go.

---