Jack closed the door slowly, the reporter’s curious gaze still lingering in the hallway. His eyes didn’t leave the black SUV parked at the end of the street.
They were closing in from all sides.
He turned back to his apartment—if you could still call it that. The place was trashed, glass crunched beneath his boots, blood stained the wall near the shattered window, and the stench of adrenaline still clung to the air.
Then—three knocks. Soft, deliberate.
He paused.
Another knock, slower this time.
Not an assassin’s rhythm. Not a cop’s.
He opened the door cautiously and there's no one.
But on the floor sat a narrow wooden box, no bigger than a shoebox, wrapped in thick brown paper and tied with rough twine. A faded wax seal marked its top, a dragon curling into itself, tail biting its
