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.
