Page 12 of Mafia King's Ruthless Obsession

But his next words stop my heart cold.

“It’s not ours anymore.”

The cup slips from my hand. Coffee erupts across the table, seeping into my laptop bag and dripping onto my jeans. I grab for the napkins, but my hands are trembling too hard.

“What?”

“Your actions have consequences, daughter,” he says with surgical detachment. “The Velvet Echo was forfeited as compensation to the Sokolovs.”

Compensation.

The word lands like a guillotine.

They traded the club—my legacy—like a debt marker. For what? My madness? My shame? The bodies I left behind?

“And who owns it now?” My voice is a rasp. I already know the answer.

“Igor gifted it,” he says slowly, like he wants to savor the humiliation, “to Vasiliy Volkov.”

Of course.

Because it wasn’t enough for him to own my body for a night. Now he owns the last piece of who I was.

The last thing they hadn’t taken.

“Papa—” The word breaks in my throat. I don’t even know what I’m asking anymore. Forgiveness? A second chance? Or just for him to stop hating me long enough to let mebreathe?

“You made your bed, Galina.” His voice turns glacial. “Now lie in it.”

The call disconnects.

The silence that follows is absolute.

I sit there drenched in coffee and humiliation, surrounded by people pretending not to stare, and wonder how much lower I can go before I stop being human.

But even as the shame burns, something else ignites beneath it.

Hate.

Cold.

Clean.

Useful.

New York thrums around me, loud and indifferent, a machine that doesn’t pause for broken things. My life is in flames, and the city doesn’t blink. But beneath the suffocating weight in my chest, something colder begins to form. Not hope. Not rage.

A plan.

I was punished for pride. For thinking I could bend the rules. So, fine, I’ll play the game. I’ll bow, I’ll crawl, I’ll bleed if I have to. But I’ll take it all back. One move at a time.

The Velvet Echo might wear Vasiliy Volkov’s name now, but the bones of that place were built with Olenko blood. It remembers me. The walls know my footsteps. The shadows still echo with my voice. And if I have to face the man who broke me to reclaim it?

So be it.

I toss a twenty on the counter for a three-dollar coffee. Old habits, old masks. The waitress stammers a thank you I don’thear as I walk outside. I blend in with the bodies at the bus stop, invisible in a city that once knew my name.

The bus groans through Brooklyn like it’s dragging my past behind it. Brighton Beach creeps up with every jolt and screech, its streets gritting their teeth beneath my heels. Designer stilettos on public transit—it’s a contradiction I refuse to give up. Let them stare. Let them wonder. I may look like a tragedy, but they don’t know I was once a queen.

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