Asher cocked a brow at them and they immediately parted for him.
Nikolai was loose about his clientele. He didn’t care who came in as long as they had cash to lose.
So the bouncers momentarily stopping him from going in had been a pure panic response as everyone was technically let in.
Everyone but a rival Mafia King of course.
Walking into the casino felt like walking into an entirely different world.
Hundreds of flashy lights were the only things lighting up the large building, and the fact that there were no visible windows to be seen might have something to do with that.
Although it was in the middle of the day, the casino was packed, and from the state of some of the patrons, it looked like a great deal of them just never left the casino.
He strode past several rows of pinging slot machines, attracting attention by merely existing.
He walked past a stripper pole with a naked woman on it, the dancer losing her grip as he walked by.
But her audience barely noticed because they were staring at him in stricken horror.
Asher really had no destination, he planned to walk deeper into the casino until someone stopped him or Nikolai showed up.
He got what he wanted shortly after, a nervous man approached him.
"Mafia King Nikolai will have an audience with you, sir..." He cleared his throat afterward, standing awkwardly.
Asher slowed to a stop, silently waiting for the man to make good his word, only to have the thug squirm under his stare.
"Where’s the audience?" He asked dryly.
That snapped him into action, turning around and briskly walking forward.
Asher easily kept up, his hands in his pockets. No one had even bothered to ask him to keep his weapons out of the casino.
Although, Nikolai definitely seemed like the type to make firearms a common commodity.
The second layer proved his suspicions.
They barely spent a few seconds in it before heading up to the third floor but it was enough to pick up on the roulette tables, the slew of scantily clad women, and the boatload of drugs.
"Sorry about the stairs," The mobster said like he was giving a tour of a high-end hotel. "Mafia King Nikolai hates elevators."
Asher could have gone the rest of his life without knowing that piece of information.
Their journey of climbing stairs ended on the third floor, and he was led to a room where Nikolai sat with a poker face on.
"Wouldn’t kill you to put an elevator in," Asher quipped as soon as he was past the threshold of the door.
The thug who had brought him there looked alarmed by that, the door slamming in his face.
"Planning to become a regular?" Nikolai asked casually, deep blue eyes shrewd.
Asher took another step forward and then froze at the sensation of cold metal on the back of his neck, a wicked grin on his face.
"Can’t. I’ve got poor money management," He carried on their casual conversation.
"Shame, that’s just what my casino needs," Nikolai said as he lit a cigar.
Asher took another experimental step forward, not at all surprised when he felt another gun poke him in the side.
"If you’re not here to make poor money decisions, then why are you here?" Nikolai’s voice and eyes hardened on the last word, smoke obscuring his features for a few seconds.
"Merely returning the favor," Asher shrugged.
Nikolai narrowed his eyes at that, it was such a cliche that Asher would barge in on his turf just because he had also done so.
But it was the crazily impulsive Alpha so it tracked.
"What? Did Caspian get sick of you and run off?"
Asher’s jaw clenched at that, while being himself, Nikolai had crushed a sensitive nerve under his expensive shoes.
His scent switching up made the guns pointed at him tremble a bit.
Nikolai smiled slow and cruel, "Did I hit a nerve?"
"Hardly," Asher said coldly, walking forward without a care for the weapons aimed at him.
He walked right up to one of the sofas up against the wall and sat on it, his fur coat taking up most of the sofa space.
From the couch, he could see that there had been way more than two people behind him, and they all had guns pointed at him.
He ignored them like they were part of the furniture, refocusing on Nikolai who didn’t bother sitting behind a desk.
The Mafia King was simply perched on a chair positioned at the center of the room.
He turned slightly to the side to look at him, the tip of his cigar burning a blood red.
"If you’re looking for him, I don’t have him," Nikolai doubled down.
"I don’t remember saying I was." Asher gritted his teeth.
Coming here had seemed like a great idea at first, the perfect distraction.
But everything had gone wrong from the start.
First, getting in had been way too easy, Nikolai didn’t even seem surprised to see him.
And to make things worse, their conversation was focused on the very thing he wanted to forget.
"Right," Nikolai muttered, "Yet you didn’t bring him with you for a social visit."
Asher struggled to remain composed, he knew that Nikolai was digging deep because of his initial reaction.
"Is this a social visit?" He asked coolly.
Nikolai looked amused by this, even if all the odds were in his favor, he would never have bet on Asher showing up to his casino.
Clearly, something was wrong, and he wouldn’t call himself a licensed therapist but he was blunt and that was as good as any.
"You fucked up and got Caspian pissed at you?" He pushed.
Nikolai didn’t make it a hobby to keep tabs on the Mafia King’s love life but if he was still with the eccentric male Omega, that was telling enough.
Asher hadn’t been monogamous until he bought him, and the Alpha was miserable enough to pay him a visit.
It was too amusing to not be nosy.