Page 30 of Mafia King

The thought arrives uninvited… whether the same could exist with Theo.

Nikolai pushes it aside for later.

They finish the meeting without returning to the Rossini question. The food arrives and is mostly ignored. When the plates are cleared, Nikolai stands again.

“Get back in touch when you have an answer,” Nikolai tells Maxim. “I will be waiting.”

He bids Milo a polite good day, nods once to Maxim, and turns toward the door. Xander falls into step behind him.

Maxim’s voice follows them...

“A good young man in your life will help you negotiate more patiently, Nikolai.”

Nikolai glances back, expression neutral.

“I am my own man,” Nikolai says. This isn’t the time for banter.

Outside, the alley feels brighter after the dim private room. Nikolai climbs into the SUV.

Xander starts the engine. And as the vehicle pulls away, Nikolai’s thoughts turn inward…

Maxim’s remark lingers longer than it should. A good young man. Patience. The image of Theo in the coffee shop, his bare wrist, careful smile, the flicker of heat when he promised discipline.

Everything rises clearly in his mind.

It might be time to find this young man’s location and deliver exactly what he told him was coming his way.

Nikolai looks at Xander. “Where is the boy now?”

The report comes through within the hour. Theo has left the coffee shop and taken a cab across town to a discreet address Xander’s man recognizes as a private Little club—one of the quieter ones that operates behind an unmarked door and keeps its membership list tightly controlled.

Nikolai takes a blacked-out town car himself. He parks half a block away, engine off, windows opaque, and settles in to wait.

The street is ordinary enough in daylight: brownstone façades, a few trees, the occasional delivery van. No one gives the dark vehicle a second glance.

Nikolai leans back against the leather and lets his thoughts turn over what the location tells him. He knows a little about the DDlg scene. Enough to recognize the signs when they appear. He has always considered himself a Daddy Dom in the ways that matter—protective, demanding, possessive, the kind of man who expects obedience and rewards it on his own terms.

Nikolai has never invested much time in the more formal trappings or the community side of it. His dominance has always simply existed, natural and unapologetic, rising to the surface whenever a boy responded to it.

Most boys never lasted long enough for the dynamic to deepen.

With Theo it is different. His intelligence is obvious. The sharp eyes, the careful questions, the way he catalogues every room he enters.

Yet beneath that competence sits a clear, hungry submissive streak.

The way he presented his ass and asked to be disciplined. The way Theo’s breath caught when Nikolai’s hand settled around his throat. The flush that rose the moment he promised future correction for the missing bracelet.

It makes sense now in a way it did not before.

The Little club is simply the place where that side of him is allowed to breathe without the masks he wears everywhere else.

Nikolai watches the entrance. Theo emerges a little after three, dressed in the same clothes he wore at the coffee shop. A young man with soft features and a pastel cardigan walks out with him. They exchange a brief hug on the sidewalk. Theo smiles—genuine, unguarded for a moment—then turns and starts walking alone in the opposite direction from the main avenue.

Nikolai starts the engine and follows at a crawl, staying half a block behind. The boy does not look back. Theo’s posture is relaxed, almost thoughtful, as if the hour inside the club has settled something in him.

Nikolai lets Theo cover two more blocks before he accelerates smoothly and pulls up alongside him. The rear window lowers…

“Get in the car, Theo.”