Vincent Antonelli

Officer Vincent Antonelli, often nicknamed "Vince", is one of the police officers attached to the Miyamoto Group investigation. He is reputed for being a no-nonsense, dedicated officer, and he gets along horribly with Jack.

Profile
Originally born and raised by a very accepting family in New Jersey, Antonelli decided he wanted to become a police officer at a young age, and headed off to college to study criminal justice and law. In quite a few of his classes was a young Dr. Byrd, and the two became friends for the rest of school. It was during this time that he met Luiz Vanda in the Arts and Sciences program, became fascinated with him, and the two fell in love. They had a domestic partnership for some years before marrying in 2004, and they adopted their daughter Gloria as a baby two years later.

Antonelli reunited with Byrd around this time and the two became friends once more. Antonelli was now a full-fledged member of the New York City Police, mostly working around the city, but after Becky Byrd was kidnapped by Pinhead Miyamoto, insisted on being at least partly associated with the case to have Miyamoto arrested.

Personality
He's very intense at work, sometimes resorting to shouting if a suspect or criminal is getting violent or pushy. He hates people taking shortcuts or being sloppy in their work (causing him to initially despise Jack Arthur. Towards his husband and daughter, however, he's nothing less than a teddy bear and the worst they see of him is a stern, stubborn side. Antonelli is quite defensive of his friends and family, especially with the smaller, meeker Byrd. He took disgust in how Byrd was extremely closeted in his feelings for Roger Mezzini, yet called for celebration when the two began dating.

Physical Appearance
Antonelli is naturally tall and well-built, and while it's hard to find him out of uniform, he's got a very athletic build. He keeps his hair short and slicked back almost always and has a decent amount of facial hair. He has quite a bit of "fur", as evident on his arms (luckily the most his coworkers have ever seen of him).

Design & Conception
The earliest incarnation of Antonelli dates back to 2009, from a halted novel Fauna had been working on, which contained a scene where a gruff Canadian Interpol agent named Victor Williston and his flamboyant British secretary-come-lover David Stiles are assigned to work in Thailand in 1984. David is shot and killed at one point, which prevented Fauna from going much further, feeling like the book had fallen victim to the literary theme of homosexual couples meeting disaster, even though the book wouldn't work as well without David's death. Antonelli was almost named Victor in Westbury Detectives, if not for Vic White.

Midway through Fragments of Manhattan, Fauna considered adding a burly police officer to be Dr. Byrd's former lover, whom would have been shot in a failed raid three years before the series starts. Fauna soon after dropped this subplot after Roger was added to the line-up for the next chapter, and after considering that it would be "torture" for Byrd to his lover murdered on top of Becky being kidnapped.

The idea to add a "bear" character still floated around, and Antonelli's design was tested out in The Chinatown Killer. Fauna became fond of his design and slowly eased his character into the story. He was given a family with the intention of showing a more normal, domestic side of the police system.