Chapter 3 - The Interception
Marcus Ellery was fifty-two years old, built like a brick warehouse, with a face that looked as though it had been carved from cypress wood by someone who didn't care about symmetry. He had been Vincent’s right hand, his head of security, and his shadow since the day Vincent took over the family business.
"Get the girl out," Marcus said, his voice flat and urgent. He didn't wait for Addy to move before stepping further into the room.
"She stays," Vincent said.
"Vincent, I’m not playing games," Marcus snapped, dropping his professional calm. He held up the fax paper. "This came through the secure line from the Baton Rouge precinct ten minutes ago. Our friends at the state police just processed the boot print we pulled from the marsh line."
Vincent raised an eyebrow. "Whose boot?"
"Not a boot," Marcus said grimly. "A shoe. Specifically, a size nine-and-a-half handmade Italian leather loafer with a bespoke rubber grip sole. The kind you buy on Royal Street in New Orleans for twelve hundred dollars a pair."
The room grew very quiet. The ceiling fan clicked. Click. Click. Click.
"Go on, Marcus," Vincent said softly.
"And the man wearing them," Marcus continued, his eyes darting briefly to Addy before locking back onto Vincent, "wasn't some local muscle hired out of the quarter. The state lab matched the tread pattern and the fiber transfer from the study doorframe to a registry file. It belongs to Julian Moreau."
Vincent didn't flinch, but his fingers tightened on the wool blanket until his knuckles turned white.
Julian Moreau. His cousin by marriage, his rival by ambition, and the man who controlled the eastern shipping docks from Lake Pontchartrain down to the Gulf. For three years, Vincent and Julian had maintained a fragile, armed neutrality—a gentlemen’s agreement brokered by old men who were now in their graves.
"Julian," Vincent murmured, tasting the name like sour wine. "He thinks I'm weak because I took a knife to the ribs. He thinks a house in the country makes a man soft."
"He didn't just send a message, Vincent," Marcus said, stepping closer to the desk and slamming the fax paper down. "Look at the time stamp on the state police log. The car registered to Moreau's estate crossed the toll bridge heading north toward our property twenty minutes before the attack occurred. And it crossed going south... four minutes after Addy here picked up the phone."
Addy stood quietly by the desk, her dark eyes shifting from Marcus to the paper, then up to her uncle. She didn't fidget. She watched them the way a hawk watches ripples on a pond.
Vincent looked at the paper, then looked down at the little girl standing over the invisible stain on the rug.
Four minutes. If Addy hadn't climbed that heavy leather chair, if she hadn't reached the phone with her elbows tucked in, if she had screamed or run instead of executing the exact protocol her mother taught her—Vincent Castellano would have bled out on the floor before the doctor reached the second-floor landing.
Julian Moreau hadn't just tried to assassinate the head of the Castellano family.
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He had missed killing him by the exact length of a four-year-old child's stride.
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