Page 49 of Mafia King

Inside, the rooms are all dark wood, low leather chairs, and soft amber lighting that never quite reaches the corners. Heavy curtains block the windows, and the air carries the muted scent of cigars and expensive spirits.

No music plays.

Conversations stay low.

It is a place built for men who prefer their business and their silences equally undisturbed.

Nikolai sits in a deep armchair in the farthest corner of the main lounge, a heavy glass of vodka untouched on the low table beside him. Xander occupies the chair opposite, posture relaxed but eyes constantly moving.

The search for Theo is already running at full capacity: men at the train and bus terminals, the known safe houses and short-term rentals that appear on any half-competent skip trace.

Updates arrive on Xander’s encrypted phone every few minutes. They are using the club as a temporary base precisely because it allows them to move the moment solid information lands. Xander watches Nikolai over the rim of his own glass...

“You’re thinking too loud,” Xander says eventually. “Talk.”

Nikolai turns the vodka slowly, watching the clear liquid catch the light. “I found a note at the bookstore. Top floor, the boy’s favorite place. He left it inside a children’s book.” He pauses. “I know I can’t trust him. Everything about the situation says I can’t. But the note sounded genuine. Fuck. It’s hard to explain. But my instinct…”

Xander is quiet for a moment. When he speaks again the usual dry edge is softer. “Under normal circumstances I would tell you to find him and end it clean. No conversation. No second chances. But this time… I think you need to give the boy the chance to explain.”

Nikolai’s jaw tightens. “If people inside the organization learn I hesitated… if the Rossinis hear that a boy who was sent to map my money walked away breathing… it will look like weakness. And weakness is an invitation.”

“That part is true,” Xander answers. “But the decision still sits with you. No one else can make it.”

Silence settles between them again. Nikolai drinks at last, the burn clean and familiar. His mind drifts backward through the short, intense stretch of days with Theo. The heat between them as they explored one another’s bodies. Then the soft moments layered over sharper ones. The laughter when he declared the dinosaur should lose its candies. The quiet way he had said he had never felt like this about anyone.

Then the memory surfaces, clear and sudden…

Theo’s voice, casual, almost throwaway, from an earlier conversation. He had mentioned an old diner on the edge of the city, the kind of place truckers and long-haul drivers still used. He stopped there sometimes when he took the road trip out to his grandfather’s old town.

A diner with a small motel beside it. Nothing special. Just a place that felt safe when he needed to think.

Something hits Nikolai, and hits him hard.

It is a long shot.

He could be anywhere.

He could already be on a plane or under a new name two states away.

But the instinct that has kept Nikolai alive for twenty years sits up and pays attention.

Nikolai sets the glass down and stands.

“I’m leaving. Solo.”

Xander rises with him, frown deepening. “Is that wise? Depending how the conversation goes, you may need help disposing of a body.”

Nikolai meets his eyes without flinching…

“Whatever the outcome, this is a situation I put myself in. I will resolve it one way or the other by myself.”

Nikolai does not wait for further argument. He leaves the quiet lounge, takes the private stairs down to the street, and walks to the black town car waiting at the curb.

The city is already sliding into evening. Somewhere beyond the outer roads, past the last clean suburbs, an old diner sits under tired fluorescent lights with a motel beside it.

Nikolai starts the engine and turns the car toward the edge of the city, the note still folded in his inside pocket and the cold, unresolved weight of Theo’s betrayal riding with him like a second passenger.

This will all be over soon, Nikolai is sure of it.