12 world-renowned specialists stood around the city’s most feared man, shaking their heads.

12 world-renowned specialists stood around the city’s most feared man, shaking their heads. Millions of dollars in medical equipment beeped in vain as he wasted away from an invisible killer. The doctors called it incurable organ failure.

The young woman changing his bedsheets did not have a medical degree. She had a desperate need for her paycheck and a grandmother who had once grown the exact poison dissolving him from the inside out.

The monitors beeped in a slow, agonizing rhythm that dictated the mood of the entire Costa estate.

Matteo Costa was dying.

The undisputed head of the local syndicate, a man who had survived car bombs, federal indictments, and three separate assassination attempts by rival families, was being defeated by his own body. He lay in the center of a custom-built California king bed, dwarfed by the mattress and the tangles of intravenous tubing snaking from his arms.

Nia Lewis kept her eyes firmly on the baseboards.

She dragged a damp microfiber cloth along the mahogany trim, inching her way around the perimeter of the master suite. Her knees ached. Her uniform, a stiff gray cotton dress that smelled perpetually of bleach and starch, chafed against her collarbone.

She was twenty-four, chronically exhausted, and entirely invisible. In a room filled with armed men and highly decorated physicians, the maid was practically furniture.

That was exactly how she survived.

Doctor number twelve was a man named Keller, whose consulting fee could have paid off Nia’s entire mortgage twice over. He was packing his leather bag with trembling hands, his forehead shining with nervous sweat.

“I have run the toxicology panels three times, Enzo,” Keller said. “Heavy metals, rare alkaloids, ricin, thallium, arsenic. We tested for exotic parasites. We brought in the infectious disease team from Johns Hopkins under NDAs. Nothing is flagging. His liver enzymes are elevated. His heart rate is plunging into bradycardia, and his kidneys are struggling to filter whatever is causing the systemic inflammation. But it’s not an infection, and it’s not any known toxin.”

Enzo stood by the window, blocking out the afternoon sun. He was Matteo’s underboss, a man composed entirely of sharp angles and barely concealed violence. His tailored charcoal suit looked like armor.

“You’re telling me,” Enzo said, keeping his voice dangerously low, “that twelve of the best doctors on the Eastern Seaboard can’t figure out why my boss is dropping ten pounds a week and throwing up bile every morning?”

Keller swallowed hard. “I’m telling you we are treating the symptoms, but the root cause is evading modern diagnostics. We can manage his heart rate with atropine. But his organs are shutting down. Idiopathic multisystem failure.”

Matteo shifted on the bed. A low, wet groan escaped his cracked lips. He turned toward Enzo. Even hollowed out, with dark bruised circles beneath his eyes and cheekbones threatening to cut through his sallow skin, Matteo carried a terrifying gravity.

“Enzo,” Matteo rasped. “Stop threatening the doctor. If he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know.”

“He’s an idiot, Matteo. They all are. Somebody got to you. It has to be the Luces crew.”

“They don’t have the brains to find a poison that beats a mass spectrometer,” Matteo muttered, closing his eyes. “Send him home. Pay him. Get him out of my sight.”

Keller didn't need to be told twice. He snapped his bag shut and hurried through the heavy oak doors between two silent guards.

Nia wrung out her cloth in the plastic bucket beside her. She moved to the next section of wall, keeping her head down while her mind raced.

From the corner of her eye, she watched Matteo rub the bridge of his nose and wince.

“Everything is yellow,” Matteo mumbled, pressing the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “Close the damn curtains, Enzo. The glare is killing me.”

“The curtains are closed, boss. It’s pitch-black in here.”

Matteo grunted. “Then turn off the lamps. They’ve got halos around them. Sickly yellow halos.”

Nia stopped scrubbing. Yellow halos. Her hand hovered over the baseboard.

Not because she had a medical degree, but because she had grown up in the damp forests of the Pacific Northwest with a grandmother who treated modern medicine like a government conspiracy.

The heavy doors opened. Carlo entered. He was Matteo’s cousin, a softer, rounder man who managed the family’s real estate holdings. He carried a silver tray holding a steaming porcelain teacup and a small crystal pitcher of honey.

“I brought the tea,” Carlo said softly. “Echinacea, ginger, and the special blend. Just like you asked, Matty.”

Carlo poured honey into the dark, fragrant liquid and stirred slowly.

As Nia picked up her bucket and backed toward the door, a faint, familiar scent drifted toward her. Earthy. Slightly bitter. A strange sweet undertone.

Instantly, Nia was back inside a damp greenhouse in Oregon.