He walked out into the rain. Behind him, Marco opened the satchel, found the passports, and began to cry—quietly, gratefully.

Marco laughed—a dry, sad sound. “My wife thinks I’ll be dead by dawn.”

The rain fell on Milan like a cheap cologne—thin, persistent, and slightly disappointing. Salo Armani was none of those things.

At 11:47 PM, Salo sat at the marble table. Marco arrived at 11:59. He was younger, softer, but his eyes had the same salt-crusted grief Salo saw in his own mirror.

Salo took a slow bite of his panino. “I’m a tailor of exits. You wanted out. I cut the fabric.”

At sixty-three, he still moved through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II with the precision of a tailor’s needle. His shoes were not Armani. His suit was not Armani. His name, despite what tourists whispered, was not a brand. It was a curse his father had given him as a joke: Salo , after the salty Roman wind, and Armani , after the uncle who had abandoned the family for a better life in the north.

But the husband, a financier named Marco Ratti, had a last request: One espresso. At the Bar Basso. At midnight. Alone.

“None,” Salo agreed.