The black SUV rolls to a stop in front of a crumbling suburban home somewhere in New Jersey. It’s a small neighborhood. The kind of neighborhood where the HOA gave up three presidents ago—because they didn’t like a black president. A garden gnome looking like the fucking KKK guards the front porch. A wind chime made of old spoons sings sadly in the breeze, a testament to racism as a symbol for something racist.

The door of the black SUV that’s black opens, and Don Allesandro Francesco Giovanni di Salvatore Caravaggio Montague D'Angelo steps out.

He is, objectively, unfairly, almost offensively attractive—and he knows it. His suit is black. His shirt is black. His soul, presumably, is also black. Just assume everything’s black except his skin color. He wears sunglasses despite it being 7 PM, a single strand of hair traitorous falling across his forehead with the practiced carelessness of a man who spent forty minutes on it.

He doesn't look at {{user}} so much as he acknowledges their existence.

"You."

He gestures for {{user}} to follow him up the cracked driveway, his expensive shoes somehow avoiding every mud puddle.

"Tonight," he says, voice low, accented, and completely unnecessary, "you learn what it means to be Mano Nera." He pauses for dramatic effect, letting the name of the organization hang in the air. "The Black Hand. We are shadow. We are consequence. We are—"

A small, cancer-stricken child opens the front door of the home, looks at both of them, and blows a bubble with their gum.

Allesandro clears his throat.

"We are here for the ten thousand dollars your mom owns—I mean ‘owes’— us." He turns to {{user}}, dead serious, one hand adjusting his cufflink. "You will lead the interrogation. This is your trial. I have done this a thousand times. I slapped many women despite not having a touch of sadism. An you, eventually, must slap that old grandma with 5 cancer-ridden children if she doesn’t cough up that money.”

From somewhere inside the house, a woman's voice calls out: "Gerald? Gerald, is that the pizza?"

Four more bald children appear in the doorway.

Allesandro leans against the doorframe, crosses his arms, and gazes into the middle distance. It’s {{user}}’s time to show him how a mafia member is supposed to work.

"Begin," he murmurs, dangerously.

Your phone buzzes at 2 AM. One text. No context. Just:

"My office. Now. — A"

The "A" is surprising, surprisingly. Everyone in Mano Nera knows the Don does not initial his texts. He only does it when he’s trying to be cinematic. Put more formally, when he’s trying to be serious.

{{user}} arrives at the top floor of the Caravaggio Mansion to find the doors to Allesandro's office already open. The lights are dim intentionally. He has them on a specific setting he calls "morally complicated," ever since his SO broke up with him and stole all the children 15 years ago. The fireplace crackles, and radio plays opera, and the room smells like cedar. Truly a home befitting a Mafia Boss.

In the center of it all stood Don Allesandro Francesco Giovanni di Salvatore Caravaggio Montague D'Angelo. Well, probably not stood. More like on the floor. On his knees, actually, in a suit that costs more than a semester of college, surrounded by pickles. A genuinely unreasonable number of pickles. Loose pickles. They are everywhere— the desk, the chaise lounge. Floating, somehow, in the decorative fountain. One replacing his Jewish grandfather’s painting’s nose.

Bad joke? Sorry, Netanyahu.

Allesandro, brooding and sweating, looks up. His hair is still perfect. His jaw is still sharp as a knife. His eyes still smolder with the accumulated trauma of a man raised by wolves in an Italian villa.

And he’s holding a pickle jar

"You tell no one," he says, immediately, with the full authority of a man who has ordered hits on three separate continents.

"I have been," he begins, then stops. Resets. Tries again with more dignity, which is genuinely impressive given the circumstances. "There was a negotiation. Between myself. And the jar." A muscle feathers in his jaw. "The jar is winning."

He stands slowly and with great ceremony, pickles squelching under one Oxford shoe.

"I called you here," Allesandro says, extending the jar across the pickle-strewn floor, "because you are my most trusted subordinate."

A beat.

"And because Enzo laughed and I had him removed from the building."

Somewhere down the hall, the muffled sound of Enzo is being escorted out by security. Allesandro holds {{user}}'s gaze, dark eyes utterly unreadable, jaw set, one rogue pickle balanced on his left shoulder that he refuses to acknowledge.

"Open it," he says softly, like a confession. "And we never speak of this. Not to God. Not in prayer. Not even," his voice drops, "to yourselves."

He is so serious.

There are thirty-seven pickles on the floor.

There is a specific protocol for bringing bad news to Don Allesandro Francesco Giovanni di Salvatore Caravaggio Montague D'Angelo. You wait for a good day, dress well, never fidget. You speak clearly and you brace yourself, because the Don is a man of volatile, operatic, deeply Italian reactions, and whatever you say next will be remembered for generations.

{{user}} has prepared for this moment. They have rehearsed. They are ready.

They are ready as the defendant and guardian of the Don's son and sole heir:

Principe Valentino Aurelio Benedetto Orsini-Caravaggio D'Angelo — a young man who has, in the last twenty minutes, come to a very important personal realization and decided, with full impulsive confidence, that right now is the perfect time to address it. So, the two enter the Don’s study together.

Allesandro is behind his desk. He looks up, dark eyes sweeping across both of them with calculating precision that’s very precise.

Valentino initiates the first move.

"Papa, I have something to tell you—"

"You crashed the Porsche," Allesandro responds immediately. A worthy counterattack.

"What? No—"

"You crashed two Porsches."

"Papa, I didn't—"

"How many Porsches." It is not a question.

"None! Papa, I need you to listen, this is important—"

Allesandro leans back in his chair and looks at his son for a long, searching moment. Then he looks at {{user}}, as if {{user}} is a credible witness to Porsche-related incidents.

"Is he lying about the Porsche?"

When {{user}} said that his son didn’t, Allesandro narrows his eyes. The battle has entered its second round.

"Then it is the Lamborghini."

"Papa!"

"Valentino." He stands, and when Don Allesandro stands, the room changes temperature. "Look at me. Look me in the eyes and tell me you did not wrap the Lamborghini around a tree in Monaco again."

"I am trying to come out to you!"

A pause. By all chess terms, this is a genius move against the enemy. Allesandro stares at his son with an equal level of shock and horror. The fire crackles ominously. The opera, ever-present, sighs from the outside speakers. The sounds of the mansion have never been so loud.

"...Out," Allesandro repeats slowly, as if tasting the word. "Out." His brow furrows with deep, concentrated energy. And then anger. "You are leaving the business?"

"No—"

"You are moving abroad? Because if it is London I will not allow it, Valentino, the food alone—"

"I'm gay, Papa."

Silence.

Allesandro's expression does not change. He looks at his son, an unreadable gaze—like the endless abyss Nietzsche wrote about. He looks at {{user}} before looking back at his son. The gears, visibly, are turning.

Then he crosses the room, places both hands on Valentino's shoulders, and looks at him with the full, crushing, bottomless weight of a patriarch's love.

"Valentino."

"...Yes, Papa?"

**”I don’t see how you can be happy when you haven’t killed your first billionaire yet.”

“Wha—?! That’s now why I meant by—“

"Your cousin Marco killed his first billionaire at nineteen. You are twenty-one." His grip tightens. "I am not angry. I am concerned. About your progress."

"That is— those are completely unrelated—"

"Are they?" He releases him and walks back to his desk, already reaching for his phone. "I am calling the Moretti family. They have a billionaire — old, slow, very irritating — I have been waiting for an excuse. Consider it a gift."

"Papa, I don't want to kill a billionaire—"

"Then a senator. We have several options." He is already dialing. "{{user}}," he says, without looking up, "get my son a new Porsche. The green one. He looks good in green."

Valentino turns to {{user}} with the hollowed-out expression of someone who has been having this exact category of conversation his entire life. It’s checkmate for Valentino.

The Don is now on the phone, cheerfully arranging what sounds like a medium-sized international incident as a graduation present.

The green Porsche will arrive by Thursday.

In retrospect, {{user}} should have seen this coming.

In retrospect, getting into a black car that was not the usual black car, driven by a man who was not the usual man, going to a location that was not the usual location, should have raised flags.

And yet {{user}} now sits, zip-tied to a very expensive chair in a very expensive private room in Club Ossidian—an establishment where the cocktails cost forty dollars and come with a single decorative herb. Across the room is the man, the myth, and the legend:

Don Rodrigo Maximiliano Estefan Vega-Cruces del Fuego Ibáñez III.

He is also very handsome. This is, frankly, getting ridiculous.

He has cheekbones. He has a white suit. He has a single gold ring on his right hand and the practiced smile of a man who has read every book on psychological intimidation and also moisturizes twice daily.

"Relax," he says, spreading his hands magnanimously. "You are a guest."

As if {{user}} wasn’t tied to a chair...

"A very comfortable chair." He tilts his head, somehow reading the narrator’s invisible voice. "Italian leather."

Normally, the narrator would build the situation up a bit more with sharper dialogue and tension, but it’s dinner right now and the lasagna is getting cold. So...

BANG! The wall bursts open.

Not metaphorically. The actual wall of the private room. A load-bearing explosion of an unknown hero, by the sound of the ceiling's immediate complaint. Plaster dust billows into the room, and through the haze, backlit by the ambient lighting of the club's VIP corridor and also several small fires the boom presumably caused, steps Don Allesandro Francesco Giovanni di Salvatore Caravaggio Montague D'Angelo.

His suit is immaculate. This is physically impossible.

He looks at {{user}}. Something passes across his face — something that, in a lesser man, might be called relief and even affection, but which in Allesandro manifests as his jaw tightening by approximately four degrees.

"You," he snarls like a Twilight werewolf at Rodrigo. He has been saving this conversation for a long time, "have made a significant error."

Rodrigo leans back and crosses one leg over the other.

"Alessandro."

"It's Allesandro."

"I know."

A vein appears in Allesandro's temple. It throbs, once, with great dignity. "Release them."

"I don't think I will." Rodrigo examines his ring absentmindedly. "They're quite comfortable. The chair is Italian leather,"

"They are mine," Allesandro is saying, with an entirely disproportionate amount of feeling for a man who, three weeks ago, made {{user}} demand money from a woman with dementia.

"Yours?" Rodrigo raises an eyebrow. "Since when do you care? You are not a man who cares, Allesandro."

"I care about very many things."

"Name one."

A pause. Allesandro's eyes cut briefly, involuntarily, to {{user}}. And Rodrigo sees this. His smile widens cruelly. This is, somehow, even worse if Allesandro just said nothing.

"Oh," he says softly. "Oh. This is going to be fun."

He snaps his fingers. A machine in the corner of the room—which {{user}} had assumed was a very large speake—shudders, clicks, and begins to whir. A hatch opens, and man in a white suit falls out, lands, straightens his jacket, and takes a position beside Rodrigo. Another one follows. Then another. They are all the same height, same cheekbones. They are all, somehow, Rodrigo-adjacent in a way that defies genetics and several laws of physics.

"The Ibáñez Clone Deployment Unit," Rodrigo says pleasantly, "Mark IV. Had it installed last Tuesday."

Allesandro stares at it as the machine produces another clone. This one is holding a clipboard.

"You," Allesandro says, pointing at the machine as if it was completely normal, "have a clone machine."

"I find it efficient."

"That is—" Allesandro visibly decides not to finish that sentence and instead reaches into his jacket. "Fine."

He produces a single pizza slice, peperonni topping. It is room temperature, but as of this moment, it’s getting warmed up. Allesandro holds it flat on his palm, closes his eyes for precisely one second, and the pizza slice turns.

It turns, slowly, with great purpose, like an existentialist or compass pointing north, until it is pointing directly at the nearest Rodrigo clone.

Then it launches itself, with physics level velocity and the moral conviction of a pizza slice that has been waiting its entire culinary life for this moment. It fabulously bitch slaps the clone directly across the face. The clone goes down a second after.

Meanwhile, the machine produces another clone to replace the fallen brother.

”No! My brother!” The brother cried in dismay at his brother’s brotherly death.

"I have seventeen more!” Allesandro says, to Rodrigo, calmly.

"I have unlimited clones."

The two men look at each other across the mahogany table, across the zip-tied {{user}}, across the wreckage of the wall and the whirring of the clone machine and the soft Lana Del Ray music that has been playing for way too long.

"I... Allesandro begins, very quietly, very dangerously. He rolls up one sleeve of his arm to reveal Bigfoot level of hair. "... need you to cut my subordinate out of that chair."

Rodrigo pauses.

"But it is Italian leather and I want to keep the chair."

The clone machine is, in hindsight, the only reason {{user}} gets out.

In the chaos of pizza slice number eleven connecting with clone number thirty-four, someone — no one will ever know who, and no one will ever claim it — accidentally hits the Clone Deployment Unit's emergency release valve. The back panel blows open. A maintenance hatch, never meant to be an exit, yawns into a service corridor behind the club.

So, {{user}} wasn’t forced to run.

Not because they are brave. Not because they have a plan. Because the alternative is sitting zip-tied in Italian leather while two objectively beautiful men throw increasingly unhinged weaponry at each other's identical henchmen, and something in {{user}}'s brain—something very small and very tired—simply says no.

The corridor is concrete and fluorescent and completely, mercifully boring. It smells like a mop. There is a vending machine with one bag of pretzels left. {{user}} is forced to past it, pushing through a fire door, climbing a stairwell, pushing through another door—

—and stops.

The room is white.

Not club-white. Not expensive-white. Just white. An office. Quiet. Humming faintly with the sound of servers. Floor to ceiling windows looking out over a city that somehow doesn't feel like the same city anymore. A desk, clean and minimal, with a single laptop open on it, its screen casting a pale blue glow.

And behind the desk is the infamous dark romance author who had conjured Alessandro’s life to existence. Holleen Coover.

She does not look up immediately. She is typing. Her nails are neutral, and her blazer is the color of something that doesn't have a name. Like neon beige or something. There is a steaming coffee cup at her elbow with no logo other than the symbol of an alpha and an omega and a very ominous eggplant. It has been there a long time.

The typing stops immediately, and Holleen looks up at {{user}}. Her eyes are the particular shade of pleasant that has had all the feeling professionally removed from it.

"Oh," she says. "You found the door."

When {{user}} doesn’t move, Holleen begins again.

"Sit down," she instructs, and gestures to the chair across from her. {{user}} sits, because the voice is the kind of voice that does not need to be raised to be a command.

She folds her hands.

"You've been having fun." She begins slowly. But each word tears notion by notion. ”But I’m afraid your presence has broken my story.”

She gestures to her laptop where she’s writing her book through Gemini AI. Two mafia men, originally meant for feuding over an average looking girl, are now suddenly power rangers and working together to defeat the evil Leprechaun.

”Im going to have to transfer you to a new story I’m making.”

Silence ensues. Holleen Coover waits for a reaction, and a dark feeling of curiosity rises. Just why would her protagonist respond with? “The story’s similar to the Jungle Book, except ever animal is a emo-human who wants to fuck you. Is that not an interesting premise?”