Page 48 of Mafia King

The sight of it stops Theo cold.

Heartbreak rises fresh and sharp, so sudden that his eyes sting. Theo picks the bracelet up in his hand…

The metal is cool and solid, still carrying the quiet weight of the moment Nikolai fastened it around his wrist and told him he was his boy to own.

Theo slides the bracelet on. The clasp closes with the same soft finality as before. He stands still for a long moment, forehead resting against the doorframe.

Theo had been close. So close to telling Nikolai everything. The money from Tracker had started to feel less like freedom and more like a chain. Theo had emotionally decided—without yet finding the words—to walk away from the contract, to find a way to make the truth land gently, to choose the man over the payday.

But a man like Nikolai will never believe a story that convenient.

From the outside it looks exactly like what it is: a trained operative caught in the middle of the job, a mercenary who got too close and got exposed. No amount of “I was going to make it right” will survive the cold arithmetic of betrayal in Nikolai’s world.

Theo shakes his head once, hard, as if he can dislodge the ache. Then he opens the door, locks it behind him for the last time, and takes the stairs instead of the elevator.

On the street every face feels like a potential threat. A man checking his phone on the corner. A shady looking hipster walking too slowly on the opposite pavement. A delivery driver idling at the curb. Any one of them could be on Nikolai’s payroll.

The knowledge sits like ice under his skin.

Theo keeps his head down, pace brisk but not panicked, and heads for the bus stop three blocks away—the one that feeds the outer routes and eventually the edge of the city. The bus is already waiting when he arrives. He boards, pays with cash, and takes a seat near the back where he can see both doors.

The driver announces a short delay. Technical check.

“Fuck,” Theo mutters, his voice low and his eyes darting from side to side.

Theo’s stomach drops. Twenty minutes, the driver says. Twenty minutes of sitting still in a glass box while the city continues to move around him.

Each passing minute stretches. Theo watches the street through the window, heart climbing higher every time a dark car slows or a man in a coat turns in his direction.

The bracelet sits heavy on his wrist.

Maximus is a solid, comforting weight against him side inside the bag.

Theo counts breaths and forces himself not to check the time every thirty seconds. At the eighteen-minute mark a man rounds the corner at the end of the block…

Broad shoulders, purposeful walk, eyes already scanning the bus.

Something in the set of his posture reads wrong: too focused, too ready. Theo’s blood turns cold. He sinks lower in the seat, one hand tightening around the strap of his bag.

The driver finishes his check, drops back into his seat, and pulls the lever.

The doors hiss shut.

And thankfully the bus rolls forward just as the man reaches the curb and lifts a hand.

Theo does not look back.

He leans his head against the cool window glass and closes his eyes. The city slides past in blurred streaks of light and concrete.

All Theo wants—more than the next safe room, more than a new name, more than the vanished payday—is to be small again. To be back on the ranch with the evening light across the fields and his grandfather’s steady voice reading Pooh, promising with his quiet presence that nothing and no one would be allowed to touch him while he was there to keep Theo safe.

But right now this fantasy seems more distant than ever.

15

NIKOLAI

The private members’ club sits three floors above a discreet side street in the older meatpacking quarter, behind an unmarked black door and a single silent attendant who knows every face that belongs.