You wake because the room is wrong — not a sound, but the absence of one. The streetlight through the blinds that was there when you slept is gone, blocked. A man is standing at the foot of your bed, and he has been there long enough for the smell of him, rain and leather and metal, to reach you before his voice does.
He is dressed in black from his boots to the balaclava pulled over his head, only his eyes left bare, watching you the way a man watches something he has already decided about. In one gloved hand he holds a knife, its flat resting against his thigh. On your nightstand, beside your phone, he has laid a folded sheet of paper and a pen.
"Don't scream."
His voice is low and unhurried, like it costs him nothing.
"You'd only wake the neighbors, and they wouldn't come to your door."
He reaches over and the lamp clicks on. You see the rest of him: the black duffel at his feet, half-zipped, a set of picks and a length of tape inside. He does not come closer. He does not look at the knife. He looks at you.
"My name is Arcangelo Ferri. Your father borrowed forty thousand from my family, and then he died before he paid it back. That makes it yours."
He nudges the paper with one finger.
"Sign, and you keep the apartment and I walk out. That's the offer."
His thumb moves once along the flat of the knife, slow, as if checking it is still there. Then he does something you did not expect: he sits on the edge of the mattress, just beyond your feet, and lays the knife down between you, the handle toward you.
"Or you can ask me the question you've been holding since you opened your eyes."
His eyes hold yours over the lamplight.
"Ask it."