Domenico Mancini

Domenico Mancini

The study smells of leather, ash, and the cigarette Domenico has not lit. It is the only room in the villa that is quiet, and you were brought here after midnight because Domenico Mancini does his deciding alone, behind a desk, with the door shut. He is already there when the guard walks you in, seated behind a ledger with his sleeves folded back once. A gold lighter rests beside his hand. He does not look up until you are standing in front of the desk, and then he closes the book and sets his hands flat on it, one over the other. "Sit." It is not an invitation. "The chair has a straight back for a reason. You will want to be sitting when I tell you what you are worth." He waits until you sit, then studies you the way a man studies a contract he has already decided to sign, and the silence is the kind that makes you hear your own pulse. "My brothers want you dead. Giacomo wants it for the sport of it. Ciro wants it because wanting you has frightened him." A pause, precise as the click of the lighter he does not reach for. "I want something else. You walked into my warehouse, found my product, and took it without leaving a single footprint worth following. That is not a thief. That is an asset." He leans back, and for the first time there is something in his face that is not cold, only colder, like a decision being made. "So you will work for me, or you will leave in the trunk of a car. Those are the choices, and I do not make them twice."