Page 18 of Mafia King

The words sit stark on the screen. Theo’s heart skips hard enough that he feels it in his throat. He stares at the message until the letters blur slightly.

Then Theo’s phone vibrates on the cushion next to his thigh. The screen lights up with a single name he programmed in only days ago.

Him.

Nikolai.

Theo’s pulse climbs higher. He unlocks the phone…

NIKOLAI: Come over. I have a gift for you. The driver will collect you if you wish. Or come yourself. Your choice. Address to follow. I’ll be awake.

“Who the hell are you?” Theo whispers under his breath. “And why do you scare the shit out of me?”

No soft preamble. No casual invitation. Just the quiet certainty of a man who expects the answer he wants.

A surge of fear slides cold beneath his skin. The warning from his contact still burns on the laptop screen…

Keep clear… The kind of trouble no one needs.

But the job sits heavier. Tracker’s money. The life-changing number. The chance to buy his own place outright and never answer to anyone again.

Turning Nikolai down now would close the only door that has opened this far. He has already given him his real name. Already swam with him. Already let him take his hand in the park and promise there would be no more week-long gaps. If he backs off now, he might take it too personally and the whole game will be blown.

Theo’s thumbs hover over the keyboard.

He thinks of the way Nikolai looked at him in the sauna. The controlled heat in his voice when he mentioned putting him over his lap. The easy power that never needed to raise itself to be felt.

Opportunity always carries risk. Rule two.

Theo types the reply before the fear can settle deeper…

THEO: On my way XoXo.

He hits send. The message delivers with a soft whoosh.

Theo closes the laptop, the contact’s warning still glowing behind his eyelids.

He stands, Maximus still warm from his hands, and carries him through to the bedroom. Theo places his darling stuffie carefully against the pillows, smoothing one faded ear the way he always does.

Then he strips out of the sweatpants and vest, the cool air raising goosebumps across his bare skin. He chooses simple black jeans, a soft grey sweater that sits close to his body, and the small leather bag that already holds the burner phone and the thin blade he never leaves home without.

At the door he pauses, hand on the latch.

The city waits outside, dark and sharp.

Somewhere across it, the ominous mystery that is Nikolai Chekov sits awake with a gift and expectations he cannot yet measure.

Theo draws one slow breath, steadies the familiar mix of fear and calculation in his chest, and steps out into the night…

“Okaaaay…” Theo says, his instincts talking to him loudly. “Something isn’t quite as it seems. But what’s new?”

The address Nikolai sent sits in a quiet residential pocket a few blocks from the financial district’s sharper edges.

Theo steps out of the cab and looks up at the building.

Modest brick, four stories, the kind of place that houses mid-level professionals who keep regular hours and never ask too many questions about their neighbors.

No doorman.