"It seems like Mark and the others high-tailed it out of the city as soon as they were released. Terminated their leases, cut their phone contracts, even quit their jobs. Either starting over…or covering their asses before anyone could catch them." Nikolai's chuckle was low, humorless, swirling the water like it was an expensive wine.
His demeanor shifted—the lazy arrogance replaced with ice. His voice was cool, calculated, the smirk thin but sharp. "Slippery bastards. Almost like they were prepared for it. Which makes sense. Not their first rodeo running from debt."

The cubes clinked softly as he tilted the glass again, watching the ice bob and spin. His gaze sharpened, words dropping like stones. "These types of people use anyone and everyone as scapegoats. Endanger whoever they need to if it means saving their own hides."

The jab landed square on Lucien, hanging heavy in the air.

Lucien's chest tightened, his lips pulling taut as the words dug under his skin. He leaned back, forcing himself to listen despite every instinct screaming to shut it out. Beneath the smirks, the theatrics, the lazy posturing—there was steel here. This wasn't some ordinary guy.

Nikolai had approached him because Lucien was an anomaly in that trap they had cooked up that day.
The weight of it pressed down on him, heavy and sour.
"Yeah, I get it," Lucien muttered, bitterness grinding through his voice. His teeth clenched hard enough to ache. "They used me. No need to fucking rub it in."

Nikolai didn't react, didn't fire back. His entire demeanor shifted—work mode. The jokes fell away, the mask of a clown slipped just enough for something sharper, colder, to peek through.
"One of the reasons I approached you in the first place, as a customer in disguise," he said, his tone deliberate, eyes flicking briefly to the glass as he gave it another casual swirl. "I am… how do I put it…" His brows drew tight, rifling through mental drawers until the right phrasing landed. "I oversee the casino's earnings and losses. We investigate. We invest. And we manage agreements with companies who keep tabs on problematic customers that try to dodge responsibility. Loan bankers, credit card firms, insurance brokers—they send us lists. We look into them."

Lucien's breath caught, his chest coiled with unease. He listened anyway, realization dawning with a creeping chill: he hadn't been brushed by some small-time crook. He'd stumbled into people who tracked debts like predators tracked prey.

"And people like Mark don't just disappear," Nikolai continued, his voice flattening with certainty. "They leave a trail. And I'm the one who follows it. Sniffs it out and finishes what others can't."
The male waiter returned then, tray balanced with precise ease, and Nikolai slid back into his performance like slipping on a second skin. A rehearsed smile, smooth charm, even a wink—effortless. The stress of scents, gone like smoke in wind. "I'll take a number seven here, cutie. That'll be it for me." He carried on without breaking eye contact with the man scribbling his order down, casual as anything.

Lucien's jaw tightened as his eyes tracked the exchange—Nikolai's easy charm, his flirtations rolling off his tongue like second nature. His patience thinned to a hairline crack. Damn flirt. He almost rolled his eyes straight out of his skull. His order came out flat, blade-sharp, stripped bare of warmth. "Number 4."
But Nikolai wasn't done.

"Our job is to entice them, reel them in for a good time—spend a few bucks here and there. Win big, hoping they'd use it to pay their shit, right?" He sighed dramatically, shaking his head, tongue clicking with fabricated disbelief. "But what do they do? They do the fucking opposite. Go right back in and gamble it all again. Bam! Down the drain. Back to square one. Placed on the list of naughty people who just can't wrap it around their stupid fuckin' heads what it means to face the consequences of their debt."

His smirk returned, smug and sharp, curling as his words dropped like weighted hooks. "Unfortunately for you, my princess, you just happened to get swindled by a professional scammer. Though I'm surprised Mark used his actual name this time… he and his boys usually cycle through identities like underwear. Made tracking them a bitch." He chuckled darkly, the sound low, tinged with malice. "Maybe this time, I'll be the one to put a bullet in that bastard's forehead."

Lucien tried—God, he tried—to keep his focus on the unraveling story, on the tangled schemes and debts Nikolai tossed out like they were weather reports. But that single word cut through all of it.

Princess.

The sound of it struck like a lit match to dry tinder. Lucien sucked in a sharp breath, jaw locking, temples pulsing as fury scorched his veins. His glare burned across the table, lips parting, the heat threatening to spill over before he forced it down, grinding into a simmering growl.

Why that word? Why always that fucking word?

He seriously couldn't understand this bastard's obsession with calling him that pet name. The blonde prick had the face of a fallen angel and the tongue of a devil—no wonder every syllable dripped mockery. Princess. Fucking princess. In his head, the insult flared raw, unfiltered. Call me that again, you peroxide-stained bastard, and I'll snap your jaw so wide you'll be sipping soup through a straw for the rest of your life.

Yet despite all of that fury, Lucien wasn't stupid enough to let it all bleed out now, not when he finally understood just what kind of bastard sat across from him. Reckless as his anger was, he wasn't suicidal. Still, restraint didn't ease the storm. Nikolai's words gnawed at him, claws digging deeper the more he replayed them in his head.
Casino earnings. Investigations. Prepared lists.

His frown carved deep, slicing across his face like a scar. "What you're telling me is that—you're… one of them? But I'm not—fuck—" His hand curled into a fist against the table, knuckles bone-white, fury trembling through his frame as at last the puzzle pieces locked together.

"Why the hell did you approach me then?" The words tore free hot and jagged. "Did those bastards tell you I'd be the one paying? Is that it? Did you have a deal with them?"
His palm slammed flat against the table, rattling cutlery, sending a wineglass quivering. The nearest conversations snapped into silence, diners' heads turning like vultures scenting blood. Lucien didn't give a damn. Let them stare. Let them see. His chest heaved, ragged and wild, every breath a desperate restraint against shouting the roof down. To be played like this—like some gullible fool, dragged into their schemes—it was humiliation carved bone-deep.

"You knew everything," he spat, the words laced with raw fire. "You had the whole picture, but you let them drag me in anyway. You let me bleed while you watched. Why?" His voice trembled, not with weakness but with blistering betrayal, every syllable razor-edged. His eyes blazed, molten, searing through Nikolai as though hatred alone could scorch him to ash. "You think this is fucking funny? That I'm just some joke to you?"
His lips curled back, words dropping to ice, sharp enough to flay flesh. "It wasn't them who screwed me over. It was you. You let it happen."

And all the while Lucien raged—voice shaking the walls, eyes burning holes across the table—Nikolai sat idle, watching him as if the whole tantrum were nothing more than background noise. Occasionally, he lifted his glass of water for a slow sip, unbothered, as though he were indulging a child throwing toys across the floor. It was inevitable, really. The favors had never been in Lucien's favor, and Nikolai had long grown accustomed to being the lightning rod for someone else's frustrations.

The legs of his chair shrieked against the floor as he shoved back, standing in one violent motion. Lucien's body vibrated with fury demanding release, every muscle taut, every nerve screaming. His glare poured down on Nikolai like fire aimed to consume. The way Nikolai looked so unbothered, made him feel so small and stupid.
"So here's how this is going to be," he bit out, each word measured, deliberate, loaded with venom. "You pay me back my money, Nikolai. Every last fucking penny. And then you stay the hell out of my life."

He didn't wait. Didn't grant the blonde a second to reply, to flash that mocking smile, to play his games. His glare burned one last time, a final scorching heartbeat, before he snapped again, voice carrying through the frozen hush of the restaurant.

"Have the lunch by yourself. And don't ever contact me again." And then he was already walking out on him.
Not once did remorse cross his features. Not a flicker of guilt surfaced for the hell Lucien had endured. Instead, a wry smile curved across his lips, lazy and unhurried, as he waited out the storm. Patience was a weapon too, and Nikolai wielded it effortlessly until the inevitable came—Lucien's parting snarl, the sharp scrape of a chair, and his fiery exit through the restaurant's doors.

And Nikolai took a soft breath.

The air still smelled like him—warm, sharp, maddeningly sweet. It clung to the back of his throat, threaded through the steam rising from the tteokbokki, soaked into the fabric of his clothes. Even gone, Lucien lingered, a ghost that refused to leave.