Chapter 1 - The Blood on the Floorboards
The stain in the center of the office study had been scrubbed with lye and hot water until the fibers of the Persian rug were frayed, but Vincent Castellano could still see it. To anyone else, the room smelled of lemon wax and expensive tobacco. To Vincent, who sat propped up in his wingback chair with a heavy wool blanket over his knees, it smelled of iron and ozone and the precise shade of panic that comes with realizing your life has just been measured and found short.
It was three days after the man in the dark jacket had slipped through the side entrance. The doctor had warned him against sitting up, against reading the mail, against thinking about anything more taxing than the slow rotation of the ceiling fan.
Vincent ignored all of it.
He looked across the room at the mahogany desk. The papers had been cleared, squared off by a housekeeper who moved like a shadow. But the phone was still there. The heavy black instrument with the red stop-button set low on its face. The button his four-year-old niece, Addy, had pressed with the calm certainty of a seasoned dispatcher.
"You should be in bed, Vincent."
Camille Budro stood in the doorway, her hands folded over a crisp white apron, her dark eyes steady. She had been the head housekeeper for six years, a woman whose efficiency was so complete it bordered on eerie. She was also Addy’s mother—a fact that had never meant much to Vincent beyond the monthly payroll ledger until three nights ago.
"The bed is too soft, Camille," Vincent said, his voice still raspy from the blood loss. "It makes me think about how easily a man can be unmade in his own house."
"The house is secure," Camille said, not moving from the frame. "Marcus Ellery has doubled the gate guards. The side entrance has been welded shut from the inside. Nobody comes in unless their name is on the ledger."
"And the man who left?" Vincent asked, turning his head slowly. The movement still pulled at the stitches along his ribs. "Marcus find anything?"
Camille’s face didn't change, but her fingers tightened fractionally over her apron. "Marcus found a set of boot tracks by the marsh line. Cheap rubber soles. Common work boots. But whoever it was didn't walk out alone. There were tire tracks on the old logging road behind the stables. Fresh gravel turned over. Someone was waiting for him."
Vincent stared at her for a long, quiet moment. Twelve years. For twelve years he had managed the Castellano family's shipping terminals, sugar lands, and quiet political debts from this very room. He thought he knew every rat in the cellar.
"Bring Addy up," Vincent said.
Camille’s chin lifted a fraction of an inch. "She’s busy with her alligator, Mr. Castellano."
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"Bring her," Vincent repeated, his voice dropping an octave into the flat, heavy tone that usually made grown men in New Orleans back out of a room. "I want to look at her."
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