A gleaming silver jet, sleek and silent, touches down in London, and the city shudders beneath it. Yearning or fearful? Both. Neither. Its passenger—a man, small in stature, intimidating—steps onto the tarmac; his presence breathes new life into the pavement. Dark, brooding, he strolls lazily away from the plane, late spring sunshine beating down on his broad shoulders, sunglasses drawn over his bronze face, shielding him. Masking him. Both. Neither. He laughs and retrieves a purple banknote from his wallet, flings it carelessly in the direction of the uniformed boy carrying his luggage, punctuates the gesture with a lewd wink.
“Buy yourself something nice,” he drawls in accented English, and the city trembles again, like it knows the chaos that’s been brought to it.
He slides into an inconspicuous black car and lounges against the leather seat with his legs spread and jacket thrown open, breathing in smoke and exhaling strife. He stays like this until the car creeps to a stop in front of an imposing (familiar) club, stewing in his own anxieties and methodically ashing cigarette after cigarette, until his driver glances reproachfully back at him. A signal to go. A signal he must return to a life that nearly ruined him. A signal his break is over, and now he must attend to the chaos the heist has erupted in, fear in his veins and throat. The car door swings open noiselessly, sunshine streams in, and Ciro’s mouth twists into a wolfish grin.
(Because it’s expected. Because he’s nothing if not Capecchi. Because he came back from the dead and learned no lessons from it at all.)
Still, he feels small as he strolls through the Victorian’s grand entrance, feels undeniably unwelcome as a cool wind whistles past him and the door clicks shut behind him, feels out of place even as he locks gazes with a familiar face, lurking among the velvet sofas and heady smoke and glittering chandeliers.
“It’s been awhile,” Ciro says around his cigarette, head tilting to one side. His dark hair bounces with it; it’s longer and lighter, not gelled, soft curls untamed, a laziness he’s grown used to in his weeks away from the melodrama of the heist, although the garishly colored suit stretched across his shoulders nullifies the possibility of a complete transformation. Some things simply never change, and when he continues, words spoken with playful vitriol through a tight grin, it’s clear that his brash Capecchi wit is one of them: “Miss me?”
















