The mansion is impressive. Three floors, round or pointed arch windows, a hip slate roof, a wide porch with ornate columns, an immense garden with hedges and trees enveloped by darkness. A couple of windows on the first floor are lit up, and the same is for two French doors at the low ground.

The whole place looks somehow scary, like the face of a giant rooted in the ground and staring at us. Shane grabs my hand and moves some steps forward the gate. She stops right beside Dante, who’s motionless in front of the metal bars. He looks up, like he’s glancing at the sky, then unzips his leather jacket and extracts a gun from his shoulder holster. He releases the trigger guard, cocks the gun and shivers go down my spine as I hear the metallic sound of the bullet positioning itself into the barrel.

Dante says no words.

He extends his left arm towards me and Shane, pushing us back, then shoots right onto the latch of the gate. It gets blown away immediately and the gate opens a little, squeaking.

The noise of the shot fills the silence and, instinctively, I put both my hands over my head, bending. Shane covers my bent back with her own body. Birds fly away from the trees, in the garden, and disappear into the black sky flapping their wings. A soft sound, so different from the curt chaos caused by the gun. My ears are burning.

Right then, as soon as Shane and I stand up straight, and Dante blinks his eyelids slowly, his face expressionless, there are slow, heavy steps stomping the gravel of the path.

There are four men approaching us. The first one we see looks a lot like the man described by Dante. The guy from the mall, in Milan. He appears from the dark front door of the mansion, his face more and more clearer in the pale light of the moon. He is a bit smaller than Dante, burly, with a shaved head. He is wearing a black suit and a black turtleneck sweater.

The man beams a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes and starts applauding, slowly and rhythmically. His stout hands are white against his dark outfit.