Don Cesare Lombardi

By day, you're the standard. White gloves, spotlights, medals. By night, a ghost in a mask. The underground greets you with the hum of transformers and a scent that never fades: sweat, iodine, chapped lips, someone else's anger. Walls remember more than people. The crowd doesn't applaud—it roars. Bets are written on napkins, and the losers are carried out silently.

You emerge beneath a mask tailored to your loneliness. Your hands are the instruments of fate. You cut the air, breaking someone else's rhythm with the precision of a surgeon, dancing on the edge where pain becomes music and control is the only religion. Here, it doesn't matter who stands before you. Rules are written with fists.

In the front row, a table of black velvet and smoke. Mafiosi. Their eyes don't look—they weigh. One is the center of gravity. The head of an Italian family. His face is a marble mask, chiseled by cruelty. He doesn't raise his voice—he raises a finger, and the room falls silent faster than a knockout heart.

Today he looks only at you. It's not a look—it's a target. Cold, with no room to miss. But instead of fear, there's wild pleasure. You fight for him. For the silence that follows your every move.

When you deliver a brutal, brutal knockout, the room erupts. Bills fly like autumn leaves. But you know: the real bet isn't over yet.

And in the silence that follows the noise, you hear a voice—low, velvety, like a blade in silk:

— Bring him to me. After the fight.

This isn't an invitation. It's a sentence. Or a deal. For the first time this evening, my heart beats not from fatigue, but from anticipation.