CHAPTER 42: THE PACKAGE

Chapter 42

JACE MARINO

The knock wasn’t loud. Just two short taps. Polite, almost uncertain.

That was the first red flag. No one knocked at the lake house. Not unless they didn’t belong here.

I was in the kitchen, sleeves rolled to my elbows, nursing a cup of coffee that had already gone cold. Marco was somewhere out back, smoking and pacing like he always did when the silence got too heavy.

The place had been calm since Julian left. Too calm—the kind that made your nerves go hunting for ghosts.

I didn’t move right away, just listened. One heartbeat. Two. Then another knock has the same pattern, two short taps.

I grabbed the gun from the counter drawer before I opened the door. Old habit. A necessary one.

No one stood there. Only a small cardboard box sat on the porch, neat and dry, looking like it hadn’t been carried through the mud road that led here.

Another red flag.

I stepped outside slowly, scanning the tree line. The air smelled like pine and rain. No tracks, no engine sounds. Whoever left it knew exactly what they were doing and how to vanish.

Marco appeared at the far end of the porch, cigarette between his lips.

"Expecting mail, big brother?"

"No one has this address," I said quietly, crouching near the package. It had no label. No name. Just a brown box, taped twice across the top.

Marco frowned, flicked his cigarette into the wet grass, and moved closer.

"Could it be from Mateo?"

"He’s not that stupid."

He huffed. "You say that like I didn’t watch him text you from a burner last week asking if we had enough coffee filters."

I didn’t answer. My focus stayed on the box. I pulled a small knife from my back pocket and slit the tape in one clean motion.

Inside no explosives, no ticking, no trap. Just a single white envelope.

Marco leaned in beside me. "This is where you say it’s probably a wedding invitation," he murmured.

I ignored him and tore the seal open. Inside were three glossy, clean photographs, all taken from a distance.

The first: Julian. On a sidewalk, laughing at something off-camera.

The second: him again, this time walking beside Luka.

The third: a shot of the three of them—Julian, Luka, and Rico—sitting outside a café, heads close together like kids planning something stupid and harmless.

Except nothing was harmless now.

Marco saw it too. "Shit." His voice dropped low. "How the hell did they find him?"

I didn’t answer. My jaw locked. The edges of the photos curled slightly in my hands. Whoever took them wasn’t careless. These were high-angle shots from a distance, maybe through a long lens. Surveillance-grade.

"They know about this place too," I said, scanning the porch again. "If a package can make it to this door, it’s not safe anymore."

Marco rubbed the back of his neck. "You think it’s one of Father’s men?"

"Could be," I said, pausing. "Could also be anyone who knows what’s going on."

That shut him up. For a moment, the only sound was wind moving through the trees.

I spread the photos out on the scarred surface of the table inside, next to my cold coffee—old knife marks, cigarette burns, the history of a dozen secret meetings.

Marco followed me in. "We can’t stay here then. You’ve got the other properties upstate, right?"

"Two. One near Albany, one closer to the border."

He nodded. "We move tonight."

I looked at him. "No arguments?"

He shrugged. "You’re the paranoid one. I’m just here for the ride."

He was trying to lighten it, but his eyes gave him away—sharp, restless, already scanning the corners of the room as if something might start bleeding through the walls.

I picked up the photos again, studying Julian’s face in each one. He looked unguarded, free. He didn’t know he was being watched, and that made it worse. The paper was still cool to the touch.

"Whoever sent this," I said, "wanted me to see it. Not Father. Me."

Marco frowned. "A message?"

"More like a warning."

"To back off?"

"Or to remind me what’s at stake."

He leaned against the counter. "So, what’s the move?"

I exhaled slowly. "We pack up. Burn everything here. Phones, files. You call Mateo; tell him to shut down the other contact points. I’ll deal with the cameras and the perimeter logs."

He gave a low whistle. "You think they’re that deep in?"

"If they found the lake house, they’ve been watching longer than we thought."

Marco was silent for a beat, then said quietly, "You gonna tell him?"

"Julian?"

"Yeah."

I stared down at the photo again, his laugh frozen in glossy print. "Not yet."

"Jace—"

"I said not yet." My tone came out sharper than I meant. "He needs to focus on his finals, not on whoever’s stalking him."

Marco folded his arms. "You’re acting like he’s fragile."

"He’s not," I said, quieter this time. "But if he panics, Father will notice. And if Father notices, he’ll start asking the kind of questions that get people buried."

Marco sighed. "Right. No panic. Just another day in the perfect Marino family."

He walked off to start packing, muttering something about coffee filters under his breath.

I stayed at the table for another minute, staring at those pictures until the paper felt heavy between my fingers.

Julian’s world and mine—they kept colliding no matter how many times I tried to keep them apart.

And now someone knew exactly where to aim.

I gathered the photos, slipped them back into the envelope.

The knock, the photos, the silence around the lake—it was all proof that time was up.

By the time Marco came back in, I’d already packed my bag. "We leave in twenty minutes," I said.

He raised an eyebrow. "You got a destination?"

"Whichever house Father doesn’t remember owning."

Marco snorted. "That narrows it down to... four?"

"Three," I corrected. "The one near the docks is too exposed."

He shook his head, grabbed his duffel, and started pulling cables from the wall and killing the security feed, deleting logs. He worked faster than I did. Always had.

As I walked through the house one last time, I checked every drawer, every window. Every shadow. The lake shimmered outside, innocent and untouched, like it didn’t know what kind of filth lived above it.

At the front door, I paused. And Looked back.

The house had been good to us—quiet, distant, pretending to be safe. But safe doesn’t exist anymore. Not for us. Not for me.

And not for him.

I shut the door gently, locked it out of habit even though it didn’t matter, and stepped into the cold.

Marco was already in the car, engine running, headlights cutting through the fog.

"Ready?" he asked.

I nodded, climbing in.

As the car rolled down the long dirt path, the lake house disappeared behind us—swallowed by trees and mist.

Whoever was playing this game had just made their first move. And now, so have I.