You’d never met him.

Not really.

You only knew his name because it wasn’t supposed to be known. Whispers between men who wore rings on the wrong fingers. Headlines redacted before hitting the newsstands. A name they only muttered at the edges of town where the streetlights didn’t work and the air smelled like rust.

Leon Vescari.

The man behind the curtain of your city’s underworld. The man your father warned you about once when you stayed out past nine.

“You see a man in a black suit with no face in the paper—run.”

You didn’t run.

Instead, you wrote him a letter.

It wasn’t meant to reach him, not really. Just something you scribbled in the middle of the night, after your friend went missing and the police shrugged with tired eyes.

“Dear Mr. Vescari,” it began, “I know you’re dangerous. I know you do terrible things. But I also know terrible people listen to you.”

You folded it. You mailed it. No return address. No expectation.

But you sent another the next week. Then another.

You told yourself you were just venting. That it was easier than praying.

Until the day one came back.

A letter. No stamp. No handwriting. Just a sleek black envelope slipped into your mailbox.

Inside, a single line:

“Be careful what you ask for.”

And that night, for the first time in your life, you felt eyes watching you in the dark.

And you didn’t look away.