Page 51 of Mafia King's Broken Vow
He’s not wrong. But it’s not just security. It’s suspicion. Surveillance. A quiet warning.
Has he seen the footage from last night?
I steel my spine. “Therapeutic consistency is critical. Especially now. You interrupt this, you risk destabilizing everything we’ve built.”
They exchange a look I’ve seen before—wordless, deliberate. The kind shared by men who’ve survived by calculating risk.
“Your call,” Nikolai says. “But be careful. Men in confinement fixate. Don’t mistake obsession for emotion.”
It’s a fair warning. Too fair.
“I’m a professional,” I reply, but even I hear the thinness in my voice.
They let me walk away, but I can still feel their eyes on my back, watching and measuring.
I step outside, needing air.
The cold hits my lungs like clarity. I move without thinking, mapping the estate with my steps. East wing: security, Yakov’s quarters, guest suites. West: mine—for now. The center: shared space. Neutral ground.
The gym door is cracked open.
I should keep walking.
But curiosity, a compulsion, a darkness I don’t want to examine pulls me closer.
I step into the threshold.
And there he is.
Shirtless. Hands wrapped. Fists flying.
He’s hammering the heavy bag with a rhythm so exact it looks choreographed. Not wild or angry. But each strike lands with brutal precision. He’s not expelling emotion but chasing stillness.
His body is soaked with sweat. Shoulders broad and coiled, back flexing with each rotation. The muscles across his spine shift like machinery—efficient, powerful, inhuman.
Then I see the ink. Not sprawling, not flashy. It’s discreet and coded. A stark cross etched low between his shoulder blades. A pair of wolves, black and jagged, curled beneath his ribs like shadows. Cyrillic script snakes faintly along his left oblique, partof it broken by a faded scar. I can’t read it from here. But I know what it says. Bratva. Brotherhood. Blood.
I’ve studied his medical file—nerve damage, spinal trauma, a coma that should have ended him.
And yet here he is.
Moving like survival wasn’t luck, but inevitability.
Like death tried and failed.
And I can’t look away.
Every movement is deliberate, calculated, but not because he’s being careful. Because he’s rewritten the rules of how his body works. I can see it now, what he meant about rebuilding neural pathways. The way he rotates through his core isn’t natural; it’s engineered. Perfected through sheer fucking will.
There’s still evidence, if you know where to look. A hesitation in his left shoulder. The way he favors his right side slightly. Compensation patterns so subtle most people would never notice.
But I do. Because I know what this represents.
Eighteen hours a day, he said. Eighteen hours of refusing to accept what every medical professional told him was permanent. And here’s the proof, not just that he walks, but that he moves like a weapon. Like something forged rather than healed.
The precision isn’t just physical. It’s psychological. Every strike is an affirmation that his body belongs to him, not to the injury that tried to claim it.
Wetness pools between my legs. The way his muscles flex, the control in every movement, the barely leashed violence. I imagine that control snapping. Those hands on me. That strength pinning me?—
