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

Dawn broke over the Mississippi River in shades of bruised purple and grey.

The Algiers riverfront was a bleak landscape of rusting shipping containers, industrial cranes, and massive corrugated steel warehouses where the Corsaro family had run their contraband operations since the days of Prohibition.

We arrived in Marco's heavy armored black sedan at 8:45 AM.

I sat in the back seat beside Emilio. He wore a crisp dark grey suit, tailored to fit his reduced frame, but his tie was pristine, his hair combed back, and his eyes burned with a lethal clarity that made him look like the sovereign ruler he had been three years ago.

"You don't have to carry a weapon, Etta," Marco said from the front seat, passing a sleek steel recorder across the leather console to me. "Just keep this button pressed down when we step inside that office."

"I know how to record a conversation, Marco," I said, slipping the device into the pocket of my dark wool coat.

"If things go bad," Emilio said, turning his head to look at me, his voice soft despite the tension in the vehicle, "get behind Marco. He has explicit instructions to get you out of the warehouse before anything else."

"I told you no three nights ago, Emilio," I reminded him, meeting his dark gaze. "I didn't come here to be protected. I came here to see the end of what was in that drywall."

A tight, genuine smile touched Emilio's lips. "You are an extraordinary woman, Etta Malloy."

We stepped out of the sedan into the cold, damp river air.

The warehouse smelled of diesel exhaust, brackish river water, and rusted iron. Standing near the wide sliding steel doors were four of Rafe's personal guards—young men in leather jackets with tactical shoulder holsters visible beneath their arms.

When they saw Emilio step out of the car—standing upright, using his cane only for balance, his face clear and sharp—their jaws dropped in visible shock.

"Mr... Mr. Corsaro?" one of the guards stammered, stepping back involuntarily.

"Move aside," Emilio commanded, his voice slicing through the hum of distant tugboat horns.

The guards didn't raise their hands. They didn't dare. The terrifying reputation Emilio had spent fifteen years building was not something that vanished easily, even after a long illness.

We walked through the side door into the central office—a glass-walled mezzanine overlooking the vast warehouse floor where dozens of steel crates were stacked four high.

Inside the office sat six older men in expensive coats—the captains of the Corsaro Syndicate—along with Rafe Corsaro and his two attorneys.