15. Nikolai
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.
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.
The diner sits exactly where instinct told Nikolai it would be, alone on a stretch of outer road where the city finally frays into scrub and low warehouses.
The metallic roof catches the last of the evening light.
Above it the sign is old and honest: red and green lettering that has faded but never been replaced.
Nikolai parks across the gravel lot, engine off, and simply watches through the wide front windows…
“Show yourself,” Nikolai whispers, his voice full of quiet intensity. “Come on traitor, reveal yourself to me.”
Inside, the place is half full. Truckers in heavy jackets occupy the counter stools. A pair of elderly regulars share a slice of pie in a corner booth. Two younger customers who look like they took a wrong turn off a more fashionable avenue nurse black coffees and speak close to one another.
Ordinary people living ordinary evening hours.
None of them are Theo.
Nikolai is close to accepting that the long shot has failed when the bathroom door at the rear swings open.
Theo steps out. He looks smaller than normal somehow, his shoulders slightly hunched, dark hair covered by a baseball cap, the same quick eyes scanning the room once before he slides back into a rear booth.
Nikolai’s breath locks for half a second.
This is the moment. He tries to arrange his thoughts into something cold and ordered… the questions he will ask, the tone he will use, the precise sequence of consequences. Instead the older, deeper instinct rises and simply takes over.
Nikolai opens the car door, steps out onto the gravel, and walks toward the entrance with no plan beyond reaching Theo. His heart beats hard enough that he feels it in his throat.
Nikolai imagines Theo spotting him through the glass, bolting for the fire exit, vanishing into the dark lot. The image only makes him move faster.
By the time he pushes through the door the little bell above it jingles like any other customer arriving for coffee. Nikolai walks straight down the aisle and sits opposite the boy…
Theo’s head snaps up. Shock drains the color from his face. Before he can speak or stand, Nikolai’s right hand moves under the table, draws the pistol from its holster, and presses the muzzle firmly against the outside of his thigh. The angle is hidden by the tablecloth and the booth’s high back.
To anyone else they are simply two people talking…
“Hello, Theo,” Nikolai says, voice low and flat. “What a surprise it is to see you here. You need to talk. And for your sake, you must be honest with every word.”
Immediately, Theo’s hands begin to tremble on the tabletop. He does not look at the gun.
He looks at Nikolai.
Then the words come…halting at first, then steadier, the entire chain laid out without visible calculation: Tracker’s initial approach, the size of the payday, the way the job had shifted once he met him, the moment he realized he no longer wanted the money, the note he left in the bookstore because he knew he had already lost.
Theo does not ask for belief. He simply tells it as he sees it. Or that is certainly the impression he gives to Nikolai.
Nikolai listens in silence. When Theo finishes he studies his face for any remaining lie and finds none he can name.
Nikolai’s gaze drops to his left wrist. The platinum bracelet is there, exactly where he once fastened it.
Something sharp and unwanted moves through his chest—an old, inconvenient pang that has no place in the arithmetic of betrayal.
Is it possible the boy is telling the truth?
Nikolai does not answer the question either in is mind or out loud.
“It’s time to leave,” Nikolai says. “Do not try anything funny. I’ll gun you down here and now, which I think you understand is well within my wheelhouse.”
Nikolai keeps the gun close against Theo’s side as they stand. His other hand closes around the boy’s upper arm—firm, controlling, public enough to look like ordinary guidance.
They walk out of the diner together.
The little bell sounds again behind them and then gravel crunches underfoot. The evening air is cooler now, and Nikolai knows what he must do.
The truth is that it could yet go either way.
“Take me to the motel room,” Nikolai tells him.
Theo’s voice cracks...
“Please,” Theo says, his voice weak and desperate. “Mercy. Just have mercy on me…”
Nikolai does not slow…
“Your fate has already been decided, mylashka.”