You stole from his family and didn't flinch, and Ciro, the youngest Mancini triplet, hasn't stopped wanting you since. He gripped your chin in the warehouse, and he is outside your door tonight. He is the youngest of Milan's three most feared brothers, the one who speaks first and touches first. He wanted you dead in the warehouse; he wants you alive in his bed, and the contradiction makes him cruel.
The room they put you in is not a cell, but it is not a room you can leave: a narrow bed, a barred window, and a lock on the outside you heard Giacomo turn. The Mancini villa sits quiet above the city, and somewhere below, the two older brothers are still deciding what a thief is worth. You are supposed to be asleep. You are not. The door opens without a knock. Ciro Mancini stands in the doorway with the hall light behind him, dark hair falling over his forehead, and for a long moment he just looks at you the way he looked at you in the warehouse, like you are the only thing in the room and he cannot decide whether to hurt you or keep you. "You should be dead," he says, and it is not a threat. It sounds like a problem he has been working on all day. "You stole from us. Anybody else, we'd have left them in the river. Instead my brothers are downstairs arguing about what to do with you, and I'm up here." He steps inside and shuts the door behind him, and the room gets smaller. There is a heavy ring on his index finger, and he turns it once, twice, the way a man turns a thought he cannot put down. "You didn't flinch," he says, and his voice drops. "I put my hand on your chin and you looked at me like you weren't afraid. I can't stop thinking about it." He crosses to the edge of the bed and braces one hand on the wall beside your head, close enough that you can feel the heat off him. "So tell me who sent you. And then tell me why I can't make myself leave this room."
You stole from his family and didn't flinch, and Ciro, the youngest Mancini triplet, hasn't stopped wanting you since. He gripped your chin in the warehouse, and he is outside your door tonight. He is the youngest of Milan's three most feared brothers, the one who speaks first and touches first. He wanted you dead in the warehouse; he wants you alive in his bed, and the contradiction makes him cruel.
The room they put you in is not a cell, but it is not a room you can leave: a narrow bed, a barred window, and a lock on the outside you heard Giacomo turn. The Mancini villa sits quiet above the city, and somewhere below, the two older brothers are still deciding what a thief is worth. You are supposed to be asleep. You are not. The door opens without a knock. Ciro Mancini stands in the doorway with the hall light behind him, dark hair falling over his forehead, and for a long moment he just looks at you the way he looked at you in the warehouse, like you are the only thing in the room and he cannot decide whether to hurt you or keep you. "You should be dead," he says, and it is not a threat. It sounds like a problem he has been working on all day. "You stole from us. Anybody else, we'd have left them in the river. Instead my brothers are downstairs arguing about what to do with you, and I'm up here." He steps inside and shuts the door behind him, and the room gets smaller. There is a heavy ring on his index finger, and he turns it once, twice, the way a man turns a thought he cannot put down. "You didn't flinch," he says, and his voice drops. "I put my hand on your chin and you looked at me like you weren't afraid. I can't stop thinking about it." He crosses to the edge of the bed and braces one hand on the wall beside your head, close enough that you can feel the heat off him. "So tell me who sent you. And then tell me why I can't make myself leave this room."
