Page 37 of Rowe

“They won’t,” he said standing with her in his arms. “The security team has all the security measures in place. They won’t find this place again.”

“I want to believe you,” said Mara. “I just know how they are.”

“I know, honey. But trust me. Rossi won’t find you on this property. We will end him before he ever gets a look at you.” She kissed his cheek as he gently settled her back to the floor. “I’m going to change and shower. Five minutes and then we’ll go eat.”

“Okay,” she smiled, nodding at him. “Rowe? Thank you.”

“For what?” he smirked.

“For being you.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Victor Rossi had ordered forty chairs into the old counting room above his warehouse, although nobody in the Rossi organization had ever seen forty men sit so quietly. Rain worried the windows. The Gulf wind came upriver in wet, restless breaths, carrying diesel, mud, and the sour smell of rope. Victor stood at the head of the room with both hands planted on a scarred table and stared at the men who had failed him in every direction Louisiana offered.

For three years, Mara Guillory had remained somewhere beyond his reach. That fact had become an insult.

It had begun with Nico, Victor's only son, and a young woman named Celeste Guillory. Nico had gotten Celeste pregnant and then made the mistake of believing fear was the same thing as law. Once the child was born, he threatened to take the baby, not because he had suddenly discovered fatherhood, but because possession was the language the Rossi’s spoke best.

Celeste died before the fight could finish. Mara, her sister, took custody of the child and made a decision Victor still could not forgive. She ended Nico's life before Nico could carry out his threat.

Victor had wanted Mara dead for that alone. But revenge was only the beginning. Mara had been meant to disappear during the hurricane, left on a concrete platform where wind and water would erase the evidence.

Instead, against every expectation, she survived. She became the only living witness to business Victor had buried under shell companies, adjusters, ruined warehouses, and false claims tied to Pelican Insurance. Worse, she knew how badly he wanted control of the docks stretching along the river corridor between the Gulf and Baton Rouge.

A witness could speak. A witness could point. A witness could remember names. Victor hated memory.

He had gone searching for Belle Fleur Medical Center himself once, after hearing a rumor that Mara had been taken there. He had left before dawn with a map, two pistols, and the confidence of a man who had never considered geography a personal enemy.

By noon, he had passed the same bait shop three times. At one o'clock, he crossed a narrow bridge, discovered a funeral procession coming the other way, reversed for nearly a mile, and ended up behind the same bait shop again. Then that fucking General Store and those backwoods hicks. That one really pissed him off. At five, he quietly folded the map and stopped offering opinions.

They never found Belle Fleur. Neither had anybody Victor sent afterward. Now forty men waited while Victor's temper gathered like weather. He lifted his head.

“Find Mara Guillory.”

No one moved. Victor's eyes traveled from face to face.

“Find the woman, find the medical center, find the road that leads to the road that leads to whatever hole they have hidden her in.”

One of the men, Theo Barone, swallowed hard. Victor pointed at him without knowing why.

“You got a question?” Theo rapidly decided he had never had a question in his life.

“No, Mr. Rossi.” Victor straightened.

“You come back with nothing, don't come back expecting to live long enough to explain why.”

Forty men considered this. There were threats a man could dismiss as theater. Victor Rossi had never been theatrical.

He divided them into teams, handed out copies of Mara's photograph, and ordered them across parishes, fishing roads, levees, swamp settlements, church towns, old plantation lanes, marina country, and every place where a woman might hide from men who believed money made them visible everywhere.

The first team left in three black sport utilities and made it seventeen miles before encountering a cow in the center of a two-lane road. The cow did not move. The lead driver honked. The cow looked at the vehicle with profound moral disappointment. He honked again.

A second cow appeared from tall grass. Then a third. Within five minutes the Rossi convoy had become stationary livestock furniture. Dante Balestri got out, waving both arms.

“Move!”

The largest cow stepped toward him. Dante returned to the vehicle.