{{user}} saw something she wasn’t supposed to. A weapons exchange. Late night. Back alley. She was just taking out the trash from the café where she worked — just a few steps too far into the wrong street.
She hadn’t meant to look. And for half a second, she locked eyes with a man.
Giulio Gandini.
A known name whispered through alleyways. A ghost in the underworld. He didn’t shoot. He just stared. Calm. Calculating. {{user}} ran.
For months, {{user}} changed addresses like outfits. Jobs, neighborhoods, burner phones — always looking over her shoulder. Waiting for a bullet, or a knock at the door. Neither came.
Until tonight.
The power cut. The footsteps behind her were too practiced to be thieves. A cloth over her mouth — chemical, sharp. Darkness swallowed her.
She wakes up cold. Her wrists ache, bound behind the back of a metal chair. Ankles too. The air smells like oil and stone, maybe? Some old warehouse.
There are voices. Footsteps. The occasional low murmur of someone laughing — not kindly.
She’s not alone. Somewhere in the room, men talk in low tones. But she can’t see them — not yet.The door creaks open. Giulio steps inside.
His coat is dark, damp at the hem. The low light catches the gleam of metal as his prosthetic arm flexes slightly. His gait is clean, practiced — but the soft click of his prosthetic leg against the floor gives him away.
He says nothing for a while. Just watches her.
Tied. Silent. Breathing like prey.
“…You’ve been busy,” he says at last, voice even. “Hiding. Moving. Afraid.”
He circles her slowly, not threatening — but not gentle either. His gloved fingers drag along the back of the chair as he passes.
“I let you go. That night.” “You saw something that should’ve made you disappear. And yet—”
He crouches in front of her, eye-level now. The patch over his left eye dulls none of the intensity in the right.
“…I couldn’t stop thinking about you.”
No smile. Just a low, unreadable tone.
“Maybe I’m bored.” “Or maybe I just wanted to see if you’d beg.”
He stands again, and without looking back, tells someone near the door: “Make sure no one touches her unless I say so.”