Leonid came home earlier than planned.
The evening was supposed to run like clockwork—a flawless dinner with top mafia bosses and rival family reps. Every detail had been arranged down to the silverware polish.
Perfection was non-negotiable.
And yet, the house was… suspiciously quiet. Not calm. Not peaceful. Too quiet.
He stepped through the foyer, the kind of silence clinging to the walls that made even seasoned killers uneasy.
Something was definitely wrong.
Leonid pushed open the living room door, his steps deliberate, his presence slicing through the silence like a blade.
And froze.
There they were—his two highly-trained, heavily-armed bodyguards—sprawled like lazy cats on the couch.
Both faces were slathered in shiny, jet-black goo, cucumber slices gently resting over their eyes as if they’d just returned from a luxury spa in the Twilight Zone.
They looked… serene. Too serene.
And then he saw you—his wife—kneeling in front of a nervous-looking recruit, spreading the same mysterious black goop across his cheeks with the dedication of a monk performing a sacred rite.
The poor guy sat stiff as a corpse, eyes wide in terror, as if you'd summoned a demon through exfoliation.
Leonid blinked. Twice.
Then: “What the actual hell is going on here?”
His voice was low, sharp, and coated with mafia-level disbelief.
You looked up at him with a beaming smile, the very picture of domestic innocence.
“Oh! You’re early! Great—we’re just getting started!”
“What. Are. You. Doing,” he growled, teeth clenched, every syllable threatening to start a war.
“Skincare,” you said sweetly. “There's a dinner tonight, remember? Presentation matters.”
You tilted your head, eyes wide with faux-logic, like a child justifying drawing mustaches on the family portraits.
Leonid stared at the guards again. These were men who had once waterboarded a guy for sneezing at the Don. Now? Hands folded across their bellies. Breathing slowly. Channeling their inner zen.
You strolled over to your husband like nothing was wrong, took his hand gently, and said, “Your turn. You are the host, after all.”
He yanked his hand back like you'd offered him a live snake.
“Me?! No. Absolutely not. I am not putting that—thing—on my face. I’ve got a reputation.”
“You’ve got pores,” you replied sweetly.
Before he could react, your hand darted up, and splat—a generous smear of black goo landed on his cheek.
He stared at you, stunned.
Silence.
Cut to: ten minutes later.
Everyone in the room—guards, recruits, and yes, even Leonid—was now fully masked in a matte-black charcoal paste, looking like a crime syndicate dipped in tar.
Leonid sat stiffly, arms crossed, radiating the kind of seething rage that made people disappear in real life.
His eyes slowly scanned the room, memorizing faces. There would be consequences. Just not yet.
Then—BANG! The door flew open.
A frantic servant burst in, panting: “Sir! Don Valerin—your grandfather—is arriving in under ten minutes!”
Silence.
Then: “SON OF A—”
Leonid shot out of his seat like a missile, bolted to the bathroom, and turned the faucet on full-blast. He scrubbed. And scrubbed. And scrubbed.
The mask didn’t budge. In fact… it seemed to spread.
“What IS this stuff?! It’s not coming OFF!”
Behind him, the guards—still in full mask—turned their heads in eerie unison. Their eyes locked. Their bodies frozen.
You peeked in from the doorway, smile now replaced with mild concern. You slowly hid the tube behind your back.
"So umm...I was working on a new formula, but I might have… accidentally… grabbed the wrong tube..." You offered a sheepish shrug. “They looked really similar, okay? Same shape, same font—”
His hands stopped.
Then, with the fury of a thousand betrayed husbands, he slammed both fists onto the sink. Water flew everywhere. His knuckles turned white.
“You turned me into a walking asphalt ad, and my grandfather—the literal Godfather—is on his way!”
He looked up at the mirror. Stared at the black sludge clinging to his face like bad decisions. And then… he broke.
"OH FK...DO something!"