THE MAFIA BOSS FOUND HIS 24-YEAR-OLD MAID KNEELING ON THE CARPET IN A RIPPED GRAY UNIFORM—BUT WHEN SHE WARNED THE DOCTORS ABOUT HIS TEA, HIS OWN COUSIN PANICKED.

At three in the morning, Detective Price asked me a question nobody at the Costa estate had asked in two years.

“Where would you feel safe?”

I nearly laughed. It was such a simple question, and I had no answer. My apartment had a broken entrance lock. The estate had Carlo. Every motel I could afford seemed like a place where someone could find me without trying very hard.

“I don't know,” I admitted.

The detective considered that. “We'll arrange a safe location while we assess the threats. And you're free to call an attorney or a support person. You don't have to make decisions just because Mr. Costa's staff recommends them.”

I thought of my grandmother's journal sitting beside my mother's picture on the little shelf above my sink. It was the closest thing I had to a family heirloom. “Can somebody collect my things?”

“We can accompany you when it's appropriate.”

Enzo heard our conversation, but he didn't interrupt. Before dawn he gave Price copies of the estate's visitor logs, employee records, and scheduled deliveries. For the first time since I'd met him, his loyalty to Matteo seemed to include accepting that outsiders might find things he couldn't control.

I went to the hospital at sunrise with an officer. The cardiac unit smelled of disinfectant and burnt coffee. Through a window, I saw matte gray buildings wet from the overnight rain. I had never visited a hospital without worrying about how much the bill would cost. Standing in that hallway, I wondered what it felt like to be rich enough to buy a wing of a hospital and still powerless to keep your own heart beating normally.

Dr. Keller met us outside Matteo's room. His voice was worn but steady.

“His rhythm has improved with treatment. We have sufficient clinical concern for cardiac glycoside toxicity, and we're continuing to investigate the source. The clinical team has made decisions based on his condition, not on anyone's theory about a particular plant. He's exhausted, but he's conscious.”

“Can he speak?” I asked.

“Briefly. He asked for you.”

My stomach flipped. “Why?”

“I suspect that's something he'll need to tell you.”

Inside, Matteo looked smaller than he had in his mansion. The bedrails and taped wires made his broad shoulders seem oddly vulnerable. A monitor displayed a rhythm that still meant nothing to me except that it was steadier than the one I had heard overnight.

“You look terrible,” he said when he saw me.

I stopped in the doorway.

A faint, tired smile touched his mouth. “I mean that as an apology. Someone tore your uniform because you tried to help me.”

“I've had worse shifts.”

“Don't joke for my benefit.”

“Then don't look like you're about to apologize for being sick.”

For a second, his expression softened. It was the first unguarded look I'd ever seen on his face.

I brought up the messages. Detective Price had warned me not to confront anyone alone, but she had also said a person's name wasn't protected merely because they were powerful.

“Who is Julia Perez?” I asked.

Matteo closed his eyes. “She was a nurse. Good at her work. She told me Carlo was bypassing the medication records. He claimed she was stealing supplies. I ordered her removed from the house while the issue was reviewed.”

“You believed him?”

“I believed the man who'd stood beside me since childhood.”

“Did you investigate her accusation?”

“Not fast enough.” He looked at the pale blanket covering his legs. “I told Enzo to look into it. Then I got sicker. Carlo told me she had resigned.”

I struggled with the weight of that confession. I had imagined Matteo as the kind of man who knew everything about everyone under his roof. Yet he'd been deceived in part because he'd let himself stop asking questions.

“She might be in danger,” I said.

His gaze sharpened. “Tell Price exactly what I just told you. And tell her to request Julia's personnel file. Not the copy Carlo prepared. The original.”

“You could tell her yourself.”

“I will. I wanted you to know first because someone is trying to make you afraid of me.”

I looked down at the bandage on my wrist, where Carlo's fingers had left a painful mark beneath the torn fabric. “I'm already afraid of plenty of things.”

“Of me?”

I took too long to answer. Matteo noticed.

“Fair enough,” he said. “Fear shouldn't be the price of a paycheck.”

He reached toward a glass of water. I instinctively moved to help, but he paused.

“You don't have to serve me, Nia.”

“It's water. Not an oath of allegiance.”

That earned a brief laugh, followed by a grimace that told me he was nowhere near well.

When the doctor ended our visit, I walked into the corridor feeling more uncertain than before. Matteo had acknowledged his mistake, but an apology could not erase what had happened to Julia. Nor did it change the fact that he headed a criminal family whose decisions reached places nobody else could see.

Detective Price arrived at ten with news. Julia's phone had been disconnected. Her former landlord said she'd moved out abruptly, leaving dishes in the sink and a pair of work shoes under the bed. She had not filed a missing-person report, and a bank withdrawal made after her departure suggested someone had accessed her account.

“Could she be hiding?” I asked.

“Certainly. She may have chosen to disappear. But we'll establish that rather than assuming it.”

That afternoon I went to my apartment with two officers. There were no dramatic signs of a break-in. My groceries were where I'd left them, and the heating still rattled. But the lock had been scratched, and my bedroom drawer sat half an inch open. I knew I'd closed it.

I took Grandma Ruth's journal from the shelf. A pressed violet fell from between the pages. On the inside cover, she'd written, NIA, IF YOU DON'T KNOW THE ANSWER, KEEP ASKING GOOD QUESTIONS. I held the book against my chest and cried in front of people I'd met that morning.

One officer quietly stepped outside to give me privacy. The other remained by the door.

In the journal I found handwritten warnings about foxglove, along with dozens of recipes for harmless herbal infusions. That difference mattered. Grandma had loved plants, but she'd never treated them like magic. She'd taught me never to guess at a poison from the smell of a cup. I understood that now better than ever.

An envelope lay under my rent notice. It hadn't been there the night before. Inside was a photocopy of a payroll form bearing Julia Perez's name and a handwritten line at the bottom:

SHE LEFT BECAUSE SHE FOUND THE SECOND LEDGER.

I gave it to the officer without touching the paper again. He photographed its location and bagged it. Detective Price called and asked whether I recognized the handwriting. I didn't.

Back at the safe hotel arranged through the police, I turned the phrase over in my mind. A second ledger sounded like a problem for accountants, not nurses. What could it have to do with an herbal tea and a dying man?

The answer began to emerge that evening.

Julia had worked part-time after leaving the estate at a clinic in Queens. A records manager remembered her asking whether donated medical supplies had been billed twice. Julia had also requested a meeting with a state health-care fraud investigator. She never showed up.

While Price followed that lead, Enzo discovered that Carlo had signed a temporary contract with a company called Briarcrest Clinical Services. It had supposedly supplied nurses, specialized equipment, and nutrition consultations during Matteo's illness. Most of the invoices had been approved without the normal purchasing review. The address on the contract belonged to an office building where the listed suite had been vacant for months.

I was sitting across from Detective Price when she read that detail aloud. The safe hotel's lamps made her notebook look yellow.

“Isn't it strange,” I said, “that somebody could charge a fortune for people who might not even exist?”

“That's one of the questions we'll investigate.”

“Could Julia have seen those invoices?”

“Very possibly.”

At nine, I received a call from Mrs. Delgado. Her voice shook. She'd found a handbag behind a locked linen cupboard in the east wing. It contained Julia's hospital badge, a spare pair of glasses, and an appointment card for a meeting at the St. Agnes Community Clinic. The appointment date was six days after Julia supposedly resigned.

“Don't move anything,” I told her. “Call Detective Price.”

“I already have.” Mrs. Delgado hesitated. “Nia, there's more. A slip of paper was tucked into the glasses case. Julia wrote something on it.”

“What?”

“The name of a woman. Miriam Cole.”

“Who is she?”

“I don't know. But beside the name, Julia wrote, ASK ABOUT MATTEO'S MOTHER.”

Matteo's mother, Beatrice Costa, had died nearly a decade ago. The photographs in the entrance hall showed her in pearls and dark velvet, always standing just behind the men of the family. I knew almost nothing about her beyond the fact that she'd funded a free clinic in the Bronx.

Then Price called with a separate development. Julia's name had been used to enter a storage facility three days ago, long after the date Carlo claimed she had disappeared. A security image showed a woman wearing a hood, but the camera angle didn't establish her identity.

“We're going to find out if it was her,” the detective said. “For now, stay where you are.”

I put the phone down and opened Grandma's journal again. Pressed between two pages was an old photograph of me as a girl, grinning beside a greenhouse filled with purple flowers. Behind me, Grandma Ruth had been laughing at something I couldn't remember.

I thought of Julia, possibly frightened and alone. I thought of Matteo, staring at the ceiling while somebody else planned the end of his life. And I thought of a name written on a slip of paper connected to a woman who'd been dead for years.

A knock sounded at my hotel door.

“Nia Lewis?” a woman called softly. “My name is Miriam Cole.”

The hallway camera showed an older woman in a navy raincoat, holding a cardboard box with both arms. Before opening the door, I called Detective Price.