Chapter 10 - The Boy Who Asked How Flowers Stop a Heart

Matteo remembered the greenhouse.

Not all of it.

Memory arrived in fragments.

White gravel under summer shoes. His aunt Adelina cutting roses with silver shears. Carlo, twelve years old, daring everyone to touch plants after being told not to.

And purple foxglove taller than the children.

“We called them bells,” Matteo said.

Nia sat across from him with her grandmother’s journal open between them.

“Did Carlo ever hurt anyone with them?”

“No.”

“Animals?”

Matteo’s eyes lifted.

Enzo noticed.

“What?”

Matteo hesitated.

“When we were teenagers, one of the groundskeeper’s dogs became sick. Vomiting. Weakness. It survived.”

“You think Carlo poisoned it?”

“I never thought about it again.”

“That is not an answer.”

“I found him crushing leaves behind the greenhouse the week before.”

Nia felt a chill.

“What did he say?”

“That he was making dye.”

Enzo swore.

Matteo looked toward the fire.

“His mother defended him. Said boys do stupid things.”

Nia closed the journal.

“One childhood incident does not prove murder.”

“No,” Hale said from the doorway. “But Carlo’s adult financial records might.”

He carried a banker’s box.

Marissa Keene had begun cooperating.

Not out of remorse.

Out of fear.

Her attorney had spent six hours explaining conspiracy charges, evidence tampering, and attempted murder.

Marissa admitted she helped Carlo conceal the stolen eighteen million. In exchange, he promised her five million and a permanent position running the trust after Matteo’s death.

“She says Carlo planned the poisoning,” Hale said. “She helped with money and the lab suppression.”

Matteo’s expression hardened.

“Did she know he used foxglove?”

“Eventually.”

“Did she prepare it?”

“No.”

“Who did?”

“Carlo.”

Nia exhaled.

That mattered.

Hale continued.

“Marissa says the first doses were small. Carlo wanted symptoms that looked like progressive organ failure. He increased the concentration after physicians failed to identify the cause.”

“And Friday?” Keller asked.

“She says Carlo panicked after Nia opened the canister. He told her he would end it before anyone could test the tea.”

Nia looked down at her hands.

Friday had not been another dose.

It had been the final one.

Hale placed a second file on the desk.

“She also gave us the financial motive.”

The eighteen million was only the beginning.

Carlo had leveraged trust properties as collateral for another twenty-seven million in private debt. If Matteo removed him from management, the lenders would discover the collateral had been pledged without authorization.

Carlo would not simply lose status.

He would face prison and financial ruin.

“He needed me dead before the audit,” Matteo said.

“Yes.”

“And after my death?”

“Marissa expected a succession dispute. Carlo planned to present himself as the stabilizing family member who understood the legitimate companies.”

Enzo gave a bitter laugh.

“He thought I’d let him.”

“He assumed you would be busy preventing a war,” Hale said.

That was the clever part.

Carlo had designed a death that would produce chaos.

The chaos would hide the money.

Nia turned another journal page.

“What about my apartment?”

“Marissa denies knowing about that.”

“So Carlo kept planning after he ran.”

“Yes.”

“Where is he?”

Hale’s expression darkened.

“We do not know.”

Enzo’s phone vibrated.

A message from Voss’s interrogation had arrived.

The driver admitted planting the drugs.

He also admitted something else.

Carlo had asked for Nia’s work schedule, her mother’s old address, and the location of her grandmother’s former property in Oregon.

Nia’s chest tightened.

“Why Oregon?”

No one answered.

Her grandmother’s greenhouse had been abandoned for years.

The property now belonged to a distant cousin who used it for storage.

Matteo watched her.

“What is there?”

“Nothing worth stealing.”

“The journals came from there?”

“No. I brought them with me when Grandma died.”

“Any other records?”

Nia thought.

Her grandmother had kept receipts, correspondence, seed catalogs, and client letters in metal filing cabinets.

Most had never been moved.

Her stomach dropped.

“Old business records.”

Hale understood immediately.

“Proof of the original Costa Hill plant delivery.”

“Maybe more.”

Carlo had already tried to destroy the journals.

If he knew another archive existed, he would want it gone.

Enzo was reaching for his phone when Nia stopped him.

“My cousin.”

“What?”

“She checks the property on weekends.”

Today was Saturday.

Nia called.

No answer.

Again.

Nothing.

A third time.

Voicemail.

Then a text arrived from her cousin’s number.

SORRY. BUSY. CALL LATER.

Nia stared at it.

Her cousin never used punctuation.

Never.

“Carlo has her phone,” Nia whispered.

Another message appeared.

COME ALONE IF YOU WANT HER SAFE.

A location pin followed.

Not the greenhouse.

An abandoned freight depot twenty minutes from the estate.

Enzo said one word.

“No.”

Nia looked at the screen.

Carlo had stopped running.

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Matteo ordered Hale to contact Oregon authorities rather than send Costa men. That choice surprised Nia. A week earlier, Enzo would have solved the problem privately. Now every move was being forced into daylight, where records could survive even if people later changed their stories.

He was making her come to him.