For nineteen months she was just his housekeeper, until she realized someone was slowly poisoning the most dangerous man in New Orleans.

At midnight, the rain began to fall—a heavy, tropical New Orleans downpour that rattled against the glass panes of the conservatory and turned the oak trees along St. Charles Avenue into thrashing black shadows.

I stayed in the small staff restroom near the laundry facility, sitting on the edge of the iron tub with my small canvas bag on my lap. Inside the bag were my street clothes, my house keys, three dried orange-peel sachets I had sewn myself, and the original blue-bound renovation invoice I had taken from the office.

I knew I should have walked out the back gate hours ago.

I was thirty-four years old, an orphan from across the river, earning eighteen dollars an hour to scrub the floors of criminals. I had no blood tie to Emilio Corsaro. I didn't love him; I barely knew him beyond the quiet hours I spent wiping down his mahogany headboard while he lay coughing into his silk handkerchiefs.

Yet, I couldn't forget the look in his eyes when he asked me to stay.

A man who commanded a hundred armed enforcers, a man who controlled half the shipping infrastructure of the Gulf Coast, had looked at a woman holding a bucket of vinegar water and asked for her permission to survive.

A soft tap sounded at the laundry room door.

I grabbed my canvas bag, stepping toward the door cautiously. "Who is it?"

"It's Marco," a deep, quiet voice answered through the wood.

Marco was Emilio’s personal bodyguard and driver—a massive, fifty-year-old Sicilian with a broken nose, silver-streaked hair, and a heavy suit that always smelled of black tobacco. Unlike Rafe's young, arrogant street thugs, Marco had served Emilio's father for thirty years.

I unlocked the door. Marco stepped inside, wet from the rain, holding a heavy black umbrella and a keycard.

"Boss wants to see you," Marco said simply.

"Where is he?"

"Third floor," Marco replied. "In the old library. Not the bedroom."

"Rafe put guards on the third-floor landing," I noted.

Marco permitted himself a tiny, grim smile that barely showed his teeth. "Rafe's guards were invited to take an early evening break in the basement garage. They won't be coming up the stairs for a while."

I followed Marco through the dark, cavernous kitchens and up the service elevator. The elevator rattled as it ascended, its brass gears grinding against old iron rails.

When the doors slid open on the third floor, the hall was dark save for a single lamp glowing at the end of the corridor.

Emilio sat in a high-backed leather armchair inside the library, surrounded by thousands of leather-bound books. He wasn't wearing his expensive suit jacket tonight; he wore a plain white linen shirt, unbuttoned at the collar, and his cane rested across his knees.