Chapter 7 - The Empire He Chose to Lose
Matteo Costa surrendered 3 days later.
The decision stunned everyone.
Enzo argued for 2 hours.
Several lieutenants threatened rebellion.
Nia said nothing until Matteo asked her privately.
“What do you think?”
They stood on the balcony of a rented house overlooking the Oregon coast.
“You don’t want my answer.”
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”
Nia looked toward the gray Pacific.
“I think you’ve spent your whole life believing survival means winning.”
“And?”
“Maybe sometimes it means stopping.”
Matteo nodded.
The next morning, his attorneys contacted federal prosecutors.
Matteo offered financial records, information about corrupt businesses, and evidence concerning Carlo and the Luces organization. He refused immunity for everything.
That surprised Nia.
“You could negotiate harder.”
“I am negotiating.”
“For what?”
“Protection for legitimate employees. People who had nothing to do with the criminal side.”
“Like me?”
“Especially you.”
She crossed her arms.
“I don’t need special treatment.”
“I know.”
“Then stop giving it.”
“No.”
She glared at him.
Matteo smiled.
Their strange romance developed in fragments.
Coffee before lawyers arrived.
Quiet conversations at midnight.
A hand touching another hand beneath a table.
Neither pretended Matteo was innocent.
That mattered to Nia.
He had done things she disliked hearing about.
He had ordered violence.
He had built businesses using intimidation.
He had spent years rationalizing harm as necessary.
Nia refused to turn him into a misunderstood prince.
Matteo never asked her to.
“I don’t know whether I deserve you,” he told her one evening.
“That’s not your decision.”
He looked surprised.
“It’s mine.”
“And?”
“And I haven’t made it yet.”
He laughed.
“Brutal.”
“Accurate.”
Then Carlo struck.
Dr. Evelyn Hart disappeared.
A video arrived on Matteo’s encrypted phone.
Carlo sat beside Evelyn in an unknown room.
She was alive but frightened.
“Bring me the Eden archive,” Carlo said, “and perhaps the doctor goes home.”
Matteo immediately wanted to arrange the exchange.
Nia disagreed.
“He’ll kill her anyway.”
“So we do nothing?”
“No. We stop acting like Carlo is smarter than everyone.”
Nia replayed the video.
Again.
Again.
On the fourth viewing, she noticed a sound.
A foghorn.
Then another.
Evelyn glanced toward her left 8 seconds afterward.
Nia remembered the Oregon coastline.
“That pattern.”
Matteo looked at her.
“What?”
“My mother used to take me to the coast. That’s a navigation signal.”
Enzo searched maritime records.
Within an hour, they had narrowed the location to an abandoned cannery near Coos Bay.
Matteo stared at Nia.
“Remind me never to underestimate maids.”
“Or women.”
“That too.”
They contacted federal agents.
Matteo’s cooperation had bought him one valuable thing: people with badges now had a reason to capture Carlo alive.
The rescue began before dawn.
Nia was ordered to stay behind.
For once, she agreed.
Then the phone rang.
Carlo.
“Nia.”
Her stomach tightened.
“Where’s Evelyn?”
“Alive.”
“What do you want?”
“You.”
Matteo reached for the phone.
Nia shook her head.
Carlo continued.
“Matteo thinks the archive is what matters. It isn’t.”
“What matters?”
“Ruth left something only you can decode.”
Nia looked at the surviving notebook.
“What?”
“A formula.”
“There is no formula.”
Carlo laughed.
“You really think your grandmother spent 20 years cultivating rare hybrids because she liked flowers?”
Nia’s pulse accelerated.
“She discovered something extraordinary. Not poison. Medicine.”
“What medicine?”
“A cardiac compound that could stabilize certain arrhythmias without the toxicity profile of older treatments. Worth billions.”
Nia looked at Matteo.
Suddenly everything made sense.
Carlo had not merely protected murder secrets.
He wanted Ruth’s discovery.
“Where is it?”
“You tell me.”
“I don’t know.”
“You will.”
Carlo disconnected.
Nia opened the notebook.
She searched every page.
Then she noticed something she had ignored since childhood.
Tiny numbers beside each botanical drawing.
Not dosages.
Coordinates.
Matteo leaned over her shoulder.
“What are those?”
Nia entered them into a map.
The coordinates pointed toward a small rural cemetery 40 miles away.
Her grandmother’s grave.
They drove there with federal protection.
Nia knelt before Ruth Lewis’s headstone.
Nothing looked unusual.
Then she noticed the inscription.
LET GOOD THINGS GROW.
Her grandmother had chosen those words herself.
Nia dug beneath a rosebush beside the grave.
Six inches down, her fingers struck metal.
A sealed container emerged.
Inside was a notebook.
The real Eden archive.
But Ruth had added a final page.
Nia read it twice.
Then she laughed.
“What?” Matteo asked.
“Carlo spent 18 years chasing something that doesn’t exist anymore.”
Ruth had destroyed the formula.
She believed no discovery was worth the blood already spilled around it.
All that remained were clinical notes proving the research had once existed.
Matteo looked almost relieved.
Then Enzo’s phone rang.
His face changed.
“The cannery was empty.”
Nia stood.
“Evelyn?”
“Gone.”
“Carlo?”
“Gone too.”
Matteo looked around the cemetery.
A realization struck him.
“He knew we’d come here.”
A rifle shot cracked through the trees.
Matteo fell.
Nia screamed.
Blood spread across his shirt.
May you like
And from somewhere beyond Ruth Lewis’s grave, Carlo’s voice called out:
“Now, Nia, give me the notebook.”
