Page 45 of Mafia King

Xander does not flinch.

Maxim merely watches.

Rage rises in Nikolai’s chest, cold and absolute. He has allowed the boy into his home. Into his bed. Into the carefully guarded softer corners of himself that almost no one has ever seen.

And the entire time Theo has been working a contract aimed at the one thing a man in his position can never afford to have mapped by an enemy: the money that keeps the entire structure standing.

Nikolai straightens up.

“I will handle the boy,” Nikolai says, voice flat and final. “He will never cross me… or anyone else… again.”

No one offers advice.

No one asks for details.

Everyone understands what is being said.

Maxim gives a single, measured nod. Xander’s expression is carefully neutral, waiting for orders that will come later.

Nikolai leaves the room without another word. The corridor outside feels too narrow. The late-afternoon light when he steps onto the street is too bright. He walks to the car, starts the engine, and pulls into traffic with controlled precision.

Inside Nikolai’s chest the black mood settles deep and cold. The image of Theo walking merrily into the bookstore—soft, open, still carrying the residual glow of their morning and afternoon—plays against the new knowledge like two incompatible films.

The Daddy who had chosen stuffies and told dragon stories is gone.

In his place is the pakhan who has been played.

Now all that remains is a final, deadly vengeance…

Nikolai parks half a block from the bookstore, kills the engine, and sits for a full minute with both hands locked on the wheel.

The rage is still red-hot behind his ribs—hot enough that he can feel it in his teeth. He forces air in through his nose and out through his mouth, slow and deliberate, the same way he has done before every serious confrontation of his adult life.

The last thing he can afford is for Theo to see the fury on his face the moment he walks through the door. If he senses the shift too early he will spook, and a spooked asset is harder to contain.

Nikolai wants to give the wretched boy one chance to explain.

That is what he tells himself as he steps out of the car and crosses the pavement.

One chance.

The professional courtesy of a man who has already decided the outcome. In truth the decision is already made. Theo has been paid to map his money. He has slept in his bed, crawled for him, laughed with him over stuffies on the living-room rug, all while running a contract against the foundation of everything he has built.

Nikolai is in no doubt, the boy will face his fate.

The only variable left is whether he tells him the truth before he delivers it.

The heavy wooden doors of the bookstore swing shut behind him.

Soft overhead lights glow between tall shelves that stretch toward high ceilings. The ground floor is busy with the usual late-afternoon browsers: students, quiet professionals, an elderly couple moving slowly along the history wall.

Nikolai keeps his expression neutral, almost bored, and begins to move. He takes the long way through the fiction section, eyes scanning every reading chair and every narrow aisle.

No dark hair, no familiar sparkling eyes.

Nikolai climbs the wide central staircase to the second floor—travel and biography—and walks the full perimeter. Still nothing.

On the third floor the shelves grow denser, the lighting lower, the reading nooks deeper and more shadowed. He checks each one methodically, the cold calculation in his chest tightening with every empty corner.