Chapter 8 - The Woman in the Passenger Seat Beside Carlo

The photograph from the border camera was grainy, but Marissa Keene’s face was unmistakable.

So was Carlo’s.

They had crossed a toll checkpoint ninety minutes earlier, heading toward the northern state line in a sedan registered to a legal services company.

Enzo wanted men on every highway.

Matteo said no.

“They know we have the estate locked,” he said. “If you flood the roads with our people, they will disappear before we know where they are going.”

Enzo paced.

“You want to let them run?”

“I want them followed.”

“By whom?”

Matteo looked at Nia.

She shook her head. “Absolutely not.”

For one second, Enzo almost laughed.

Matteo did.

Then pain caught him and the humor vanished.

“Hale has investigators,” Matteo said. “Licensed. Invisible. Use them.”

That decision changed the tone of the room.

Nia had assumed every Costa problem ended with men like Enzo. Matteo was choosing accountants, attorneys, and investigators instead.

Perhaps illness had weakened him.

Or perhaps betrayal had made him more careful.

By late afternoon, Hale’s team located the sedan at a lakeside hotel two counties north. Carlo and Marissa had checked in under false names and requested adjoining rooms.

No one approached.

The investigators photographed visitors.

At 6:40 p.m., a man in a gray coat arrived.

Nia recognized him from the Northwell personnel file.

Evan Marsh.

Marissa’s consulting partner.

“They brought the lab technician to them,” Keller said.

“Not a technician,” Enzo corrected. “A witness.”

“Or a liability,” Nia said.

Everyone looked at her.

She wished they would stop doing that.

“If Carlo killed Matteo, the altered lab record could still expose the plan. Marsh knows who told him to change it.”

Hale nodded. “Which means Marsh may be frightened enough to cooperate.”

“Unless he is frightened enough to disappear.”

Matteo ordered Hale to contact federal prosecutors through an attorney he trusted.

Enzo hated that.

Nia could see it in every line of his body.

“You want law enforcement involved in a family matter?”

“It stopped being a family matter when Carlo tried to kill me and framed a laboratory record.”

“You know what they will ask once they enter.”

“Yes.”

“About everything.”

“Yes.”

Enzo stared at him.

Matteo met the stare.

“I am not dying to protect Carlo from questions.”

Nia looked away.

That sentence carried more weight than it sounded like.

The investigators kept watching.

At 9:12, Marsh left the hotel alone.

At 9:19, he called 911 from a gas station.

By 9:34, local police had him.

Hale received permission to speak with Marsh’s attorney shortly before midnight.

The story came apart quickly.

Marsh claimed Marissa first asked him to suppress the low-positive result as a favor. She told him Matteo was taking an herbal supplement that created known interference and that releasing the number would trigger unnecessary panic.

He believed her because she provided a letter bearing Keller’s electronic signature.

The signature was fake.

Two days later, Marsh discovered it.

Instead of correcting the record, he confronted Marissa.

She offered him two hundred thousand dollars.

He took it.

Keller swore so violently that the nurse outside the study closed the door.

“Did Marsh know Carlo was poisoning him?” Nia asked.

Hale shook his head.

“Not at first. He says he understood after the second payment.”

“And still stayed quiet.”

“Yes.”

Matteo’s expression revealed nothing.

Enzo asked the question that mattered most.

“Why did he leave the hotel tonight?”

Hale looked at his notes.

“Because he heard Carlo and Marissa arguing.”

“About?”

“Whether to kill him.”

No one moved.

Marsh had hidden in the adjoining bathroom and recorded thirty-two seconds of their conversation through a ventilation grille.

Hale played it.

Marissa’s voice came first.

“He can connect the lab.”

Carlo replied, “Then he should never have come.”

Marissa said something muffled.

Then Carlo, clearer.

“Matteo should have been dead Friday. None of this matters if that maid keeps her mouth shut.”

Nia felt the blood leave her face.

The recording continued.

Marissa: “She won’t.”

Carlo: “Then solve that too.”

The file ended.

Enzo reached for his coat.

Matteo stopped him.

“No.”

“He just ordered a hit on her.”

“He discussed one. We have prosecutors listening now.”

“I can solve it faster.”

“That is the problem.”

The two men stared at each other.

Nia understood suddenly that Matteo was not only fighting Carlo.

He was fighting the machinery around himself.

A system built to answer fear with force.

Hale’s phone buzzed.

He read the message.

“The investigators lost Carlo.”

Enzo’s head snapped around.

“What?”

“Marissa is still at the hotel. Carlo left through a service exit before police secured the building.”

Nia looked toward the dark window.

Carlo was no longer running from the estate.

May you like

[COMPLETED] “GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY DRESS! YOU’RE NOTHING BUT AN OLD SEAM...

[COMPLETED] At the Mafia Boss's Engagement Party, I Served His Hungry So...

[COMPLETED] The Mafia Boss’s Fiancée Tried to Dismiss His Father’s Loyal...

He had separated from the only people who could expose him.

And somewhere between the lake and the city, he had decided what to solve next.