Chapter 11 - THE PHANTOM PACKAGE
Two years of deceptive peace had passed over the Costello compound. The baseball field bloomed with rich green grass every summer, and Luca’s limp had vanished completely. He was a father now—whole, healthy, and present. But peace in Chicago was often just an illusion painted over fresh scars.
On Maya’s twelfth birthday, a plain courier delivered a heavy black wooden box stamped with a single crimson wax seal.
Luca, Arthur, and Elena stood around the study desk while Arthur checked the container for explosives or chemical triggers. It came back clean. Inside rested two items: an old reel-to-reel tape recorder and a heavy silver key engraved with a serpent coiled around a dagger.
"What is that?" Elena asked, her face draining of color. She recognized the symbol instantly, though she had spent fifteen years trying to erase it from her memory.
Luca pressed play on the recorder.
May you like
A raspy, unmistakable voice echoed through the room. It was Senator Robert Vance, recorded weeks before he mysteriously died in his high-security prison cell.
"If you are hearing this, Costello," Vance’s voice crackled through the speaker, "I am already dead. You thought you broke the snake when you put me in chains. But I was just the tail. The head sits across the ocean. You think you saved your little girl? You fool. The neurotoxin wasn't designed to kill you, Luca. It was designed to keep you immobilized so you couldn't protect Elena when they came for her real bloodline."
