Chapter 5 - The Night the Estate Fell
The Costa estate had been designed to impress people.
That night, it became a fortress.
Steel shutters dropped over the first-floor windows. Security lights illuminated the grounds. Matteo’s men moved through corridors with weapons drawn while Enzo directed them from the surveillance room.
Nia found herself inside Matteo’s private office with Matteo himself standing between her and the door.
“You should be lying down.”
“So everyone keeps telling me.”
“You were on dialysis 2 days ago.”
“And yet nobody attacking my house seems interested in my recovery schedule.”
Despite the terror, Nia almost smiled.
Then gunfire rattled outside.
Matteo swayed.
Nia grabbed his arm.
“Sit.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re about to fall over.”
“I fall elegantly.”
“You’re impossible.”
“And you’re still holding my arm.”
Nia immediately released him.
Matteo smiled faintly.
It vanished when Enzo entered.
“East gate is compromised.”
“How many?”
“Twenty, maybe 30.”
“Police?”
“Anonymous report says gang violence 6 miles south. Someone redirected them.”
Matteo nodded grimly.
“Carlo.”
Enzo handed him a phone.
“We intercepted a message. They aren’t here to kill you.”
“Then why?”
“They want the maid.”
Nia stared at him.
Matteo’s expression turned lethal.
“No.”
Enzo continued. “They think she knows where Ruth hid Eden.”
“I don’t.”
“They don’t know that.”
Matteo looked at Nia.
“We leave through the tunnel.”
“What tunnel?”
“This is a mafia mansion. Of course there’s a tunnel.”
Under any other circumstances, she might have laughed.
Five minutes later, Nia descended a narrow stone staircase beneath Matteo’s wine cellar.
Matteo followed.
Enzo remained behind to coordinate the defense.
“You’re coming with me,” Matteo told him.
“I’ll catch up.”
“That’s an order.”
Enzo looked at the man he had served for 15 years.
“No, boss. That’s fear talking.”
Matteo’s jaw tightened.
Enzo smiled.
“Go.”
The steel door closed between them.
Nia and Matteo entered darkness.
The tunnel stretched beneath the estate toward an old carriage house beyond the property line.
Matteo’s breathing grew labored.
After several hundred yards, he leaned against the wall.
Nia stopped.
“Matteo?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re sweating.”
“I’m walking underground after almost dying. Standards have changed.”
She moved closer.
His knees buckled.
Nia caught him.
For several seconds, the most feared man in the city rested his forehead against the shoulder of a maid earning $18 an hour.
“I hate this,” he whispered.
“What?”
“Being weak.”
Nia steadied him.
“You’re alive.”
“That doesn’t feel like enough.”
“It is when you almost weren’t.”
He looked at her.
The emergency lights cast shadows across his face.
“You really believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Even for someone like me?”
Nia understood what he was asking.
Not whether his pulse mattered.
Whether his life did.
“I don’t know what kind of man you’ve been,” she said. “But I know dying doesn’t fix what you’ve done.”
Matteo stared at her.
“Living gives you the inconvenience of having to do something about it.”
A strange laugh escaped him.
“You speak to every employer like this?”
“Only the poisoned ones.”
They continued.
At the carriage house, a black SUV waited.
The driver was dead.
Matteo immediately pulled Nia behind him.
A man stepped from the shadows.
Carlo.
He held a pistol.
“You always were stubborn, cousin.”
Matteo positioned himself between Carlo and Nia.
“You poisoned me.”
“I corrected a succession problem.”
“You murdered my mother.”
Carlo’s expression flickered.
There it was.
Confirmation.
Matteo went still.
Carlo smiled.
“Elena was brilliant. Unfortunately, brilliant people become dangerous when they develop consciences.”
Matteo moved.
Carlo raised the gun.
Nia grabbed Matteo’s sleeve.
“Don’t.”
Carlo laughed.
“Listen to the maid.”
“What do you want?” Nia asked.
“Ruth’s archive.”
“I don’t have it.”
“But you know where it is.”
“No.”
“You found the notebook.”
Nia’s stomach dropped.
Carlo knew too much.
Matteo saw her reaction.
“So you’ve been watching her.”
“For weeks.”
“Before she came upstairs?”
“Of course.”
Carlo looked at Nia.
“You weren’t assigned to Matteo’s room by accident.”
Nia froze.
“I arranged it.”
“Why?”
“Your grandmother’s last surviving relative working inside the Costa estate? I needed to know whether you knew anything.”
“You put me near the tea.”
“I thought you knew nothing.”
Carlo smiled.
“Then you smelled it.”
The entire chain of events rearranged itself in Nia’s mind.
Her hiring.
Her reassignment.
Everything.
Carlo had brought her into the trap.
He simply had not expected her to recognize it.
“Come with me,” Carlo said. “Tell me where the archive is, and you live.”
“No.”
His gun shifted toward her.
Matteo stepped farther in front.
“Shoot me.”
Carlo blinked.
“You spent weeks trying.”
“Matteo.”
“You want the family? Take it.”
“Matteo, don’t,” Nia whispered.
He ignored her.
“Money. Properties. Ports. Everything. Leave her out.”
Carlo studied him.
Then laughed.
“Oh.”
Matteo’s expression darkened.
“Oh, this is beautiful.”
“Shut up.”
“You care about her.”
Nia looked at Matteo.
He did not deny it.
Carlo raised the gun.
“Then she finally gives me something you value.”
A shot exploded.
Nia screamed.
Carlo dropped.
Enzo stood at the tunnel entrance behind him, smoke rising from his weapon.
“I told you I’d catch up.”
Carlo was wounded in the shoulder, alive but disarmed.
Matteo lunged.
Enzo grabbed him.
“No.”
“He killed my mother!”
“And if you kill him now, we lose everything he knows.”
Matteo struggled.
Then Nia touched his hand.
He stopped.
Not because Enzo had ordered him.
Because she had.
Carlo noticed.
His smile returned.
“You’re already weak for her.”
Matteo stared down at him.
“No.”
He took Nia’s hand.
“For the first time in years, I may have found something worth being strong for.”
Nia’s breath caught.
But Enzo interrupted.
“We need to move. More cars are coming.”
They loaded Carlo into the SUV.
As they drove toward a private airfield, Nia opened Ruth’s notebook again.
A pressed flower slipped from between 2 pages.
Foxglove.
Behind it was a tiny brass key.
Nia stared at it.
On the paper beneath, Ruth had written:
OREGON. GREENHOUSE. FLOOR 7.
Nia looked toward Matteo.
“We know where to search.”
May you like
Carlo heard her from the back seat.
For the first time all night, he looked truly afraid.
