Page 7 of Mafia King's Ruthless Obsession

Vasiliyi

New York hits me like a fist to the face—loud, ugly, relentless. The city doesn’t welcome. It devours. Horns scream like sirens in a war zone, and somewhere beneath the concrete heartbeat, I swear I can hear Siberia laughing.

Twelve months in a frozen tomb taught me how to breathe in silence. This place? It chokes me. The chaos, the stench, the heat pulsing off strangers who look too long or not long enough—it’s all wrong. Every sound feels like a warning. Every person, a threat. Civilization peels at the edges, and beneath my skin, the beast twitches.

Even in Nikolai’s luxury sedan, wrapped in stitched leather and air-conditioned opulence, I feel trapped. Caged in something that smells like wealth and weakness. The suit I’m wearing is armor, but it doesn’t stop the blood memory. My body still knows how to kill with nothing but hands and hunger.

The phone vibrates. One glance, and my pulse slows—not from relief, but recognition.

Igor.

The man I bled for. The man whose family I buried pieces of myself protecting.

The message is simple. Cold.

Igor: Meet me at The Velvet Echo. One hour.

Nowelcome back, brother. Nothank you for enduring hell. Just an order, like I’m on the leash.

I stare out the tinted window as the skyline slashes into view. Arrogant steel and glass pretending at permanence.

“Brighton Beach,” I mutter to the driver.

As we shift lanes, the city blurs into something older, meaner. The Velvet Echo rises in the distance—still standing, still dressed in borrowed power. Olenko blood built it. My blood bought it. A monument to betrayal, now stamped with my name.

And Igor?

Igor wants a meeting.

Which means he wants something.

And I already know I’m not going to like it.

The driver cuts through Brighton Beach’s neon-stained streets, and I study my reflection in the rearview mirror. A stranger stares back, wrapped in Italian wool like borrowed skin. The suit fits perfectly, but it can’t disguise what Siberia carved into my bones—the predatory stillness, the way my shoulders brace for violence even in silence. My FSB training feels like a half-remembered dream, replaced by instincts honed in darker places. After a year in the wild, my soul speaks a language of frost and iron, of empty white horizons where mercy goes to die.

Galina’s ghost haunts my flesh like a fever dream, her presence an infection beneath my skin. I force the memory down, but her scent clings like gun smoke after a kill. My knuckles are white around the phone, joints aching with phantom pressure. One night of weakness was enough—I need to remember why I’m here.

Family. Protection. Power. Everything else is just blood in the water.

The Velvet Echo rises from the street like a dark promise. It’s changed—someone’s draped elegance over its bones while I was away. Igor’s been busy playing architect with Olenko’s blood money.

Inside feels like stepping through a membrane between worlds. Quiet luxury drapes the space in shadows and suggestions, minimalist European decor a mask for older sins. Money and power hang thick in the air like incense in a demon’s church.

It all feels hollow. Like prison walls painted gold. There’s too much polish. Too much silence. The kind that comes when people are trying not to step on landmines. And the staff—too courteous. Either Igor hired new blood, or someone’s scared. Either way, it stinks of something I haven’t smelled since the FSB times.

A waitress materializes from the gloom, stopping just outside striking distance. “Can I help you, sir?”

Without the calculated gleam in her eye, I might have missed her purpose here. Her runway-ready appearance and tasteful dress are camouflage, like my own expensive armor. I let my gaze dissect her before offering the ghost of a smile.

“Is your boss in?”

She tilts her head, one perfect eyebrow arching. “And who should I say is asking?”

“Vasiliy Volkov.”

Recognition flickers across her features before her gaze catalogs my suit’s worth, measuring threat against presentation. She’s collecting intelligence—name, appearance, the particular quality of danger I carry.

“Follow me, Mr. Volkov,” she says, turning gracefully.

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