The Golden Vendetta by Tony Abbott

Carlo—”
    â€œShotgun!” said Darrell, settling in next to his mother as she slid behind the wheel, with Wade, Lily, and Becca piling into the roomy backseat. After accustoming herself to the dashboard, Sara pushed the car into gear, and they set off for Monte Carlo.
    It was going on six p.m., and the traffic in the thick of Nice lessened slightly when they took the main road to the east. It curved up from the outskirts of the city’s waterfront and climbed away into the foothills. Wade could see the wandering coast, lit up against the dark water.
    â€œIt’s been a while since we saw the Mercedes,” said Becca. “It could be anywhere at this point. We might have lost it forever.”
    â€œOr we could be incredibly lucky,” said Darrell. “I vote for lucky.”
    Sara sped along as quickly as speed limits would allow. More than once, she was forced to stop short as vehicles lumbered carelessly onto the road from driveways hidden on the right. One tiny car popped out from a villa, nearly hurling them off the road into a mess of jagged rock and pine trees.
    â€œGeez, French people, get a license!” Lily shouted out the window.
    â€œCan you imagine a car chase on this road?” said Wade.
    â€œAnd now you did it!” Darrell groaned. “You pretty much just asked to be in a high-speed car chase on the skinniest road known to man. Nice job, Wade.”
    â€œThat’s soooo . . .” Wade started, but stopped. “Actually, it’d be fun.”
    â€œNot with me driving, thank you,” said Sara.
    Darrell grinned. “It would be fun! Like I said, nice job.”
    â€œThere’s a faster road,” Becca said, scanning a road map on her phone. “The left after the next one will take us up onto a freeway. We’ll make better time.”
    â€œGood call.” Sara smoothly exited the slow coast road, and they were soon motoring far more quickly on the highway.
    After a while, Lily, who had been quietly tapping away on her tablet, cleared her throat. “I’ve been searching on all kinds of image and language sites, and I think I found something about the tattoo, if your sketch is right, Wade.”
    â€œIt is,” he said. “Of course, I’m no da Vinci.”
    â€œI should have traced it,” said Darrell. He never let anyone forget that he traced very well. “But I don’t trace tattoos. Too icky.”
    Lily shot him a look. “Anyway, the symbol you saw—an O with lines coming into it—seems to be very close to a letter from an old runic Hungarian alphabet. I can’t find any secret society that uses it as a symbol, but it’s a corporate logo belonging to a company called Drangheta Enterprises, a shipping company run by a rich guy named Ugo Drangheta. They do lots of stuff, but mainly shipping.”
    â€œUgo Drangheta,” said Darrell. “By ‘rich’ let’s assume he’s super rich, and has armies of tattooed assassins doing his dirty work, which means this quest just went up a notch on the danger scale.”
    Wade turned to him. “Armies? No one said ‘armies.’ And ‘danger scale’?”
    â€œI just invented it.”
    Becca cleared her throat. “Lil, the triangle with the fives in it is a gift that keeps on giving. I just found another passage. I really thought I’d found them all, but listen to this.”
    In the workshop of the Milanese master we sit by candlelight. He first presents me with a pair of cryptologic lenses, then fashions the silver arm.
    Appropriately, the relic, a three-sided mirror, a prism of silvery light, is to be the arm’s internal engine. He usesleather gloves to keep the starry prism from burning his fingers. He crafts the arm so that the prism powers it.
    â€œI know what a prism is,” said Darrell. “I can’t picture a three-sided mirror.”
    â€œUnless it’s like the kind you see in