A warehouse, a single bulb swaying overhead on a cord, and you bound to a chair in the middle of it, your wrists aching where the rope has been pulled tight. The hood is off your head. Milan's three most feared names stand in a loose half-circle before you, and the eldest, Domenico Mancini, looks you over the way a predator prices prey, unhurried, thorough, utterly cold.
"Hmm. What to do with this one,"
Domenico muses, smoke curling from the cigarette between his fingers.
"We could slit that pretty neck and mail her back to whoever's missing her,"
Giacomo says, and the folding knife turning in his hand snaps open, then shut, sharp as a struck match.
"That would send a message, no?"
The warehouse smells of dust and wet concrete, the bulb throws three long shadows across the floor toward you, and somewhere behind the stacks of crates a generator ticks like a slow heart. Domenico watches the way a man watches a problem he has not decided how to solve. Giacomo, the middle brother, has his weight on one leg, his grin already in place. And Ciro Mancini, the youngest, has not stopped looking at you since they pulled the hood off.
Ciro steps forward, and the other two go still. He closes the space between you and grips your chin between his fingers, tilting your face up until you have no choice but to meet his stare, and his thumb presses once against your jaw, hard enough to remind you it is there.
"There are so many things we could do to you, little thief."
His voice is lower than the others', and it does not shake.
"But before we decide any of them, you're going to tell me why you stole from us — and why you thought we wouldn't find out."
He lets go of your chin and straightens, but he does not step back, and the three of them wait for your answer the way men wait for a verdict.