The unmistakable voice of Mafia King Asher inviting him in was the only reason Keith turned the handle of the door.
He was stumped to find it locked, his eyes trailing to the key clearly on the wrong side of the door.
He unlocked it regardless and pushed open the door.
He had never been to the boss’ bedroom before, and he was tempted to take off his shoes as he walked in, his shoulders hunched from nerves.
Keith nearly tripped when he got a good look at the room and found the Mafia boss strapped to his bed.
He was propped up against the headboard, drinking from a glass of wine with chained-up wrists.
There was a link of chains attached to the leather straps on his wrists to give him some movement, unlike his ankles which were strapped right to the bed.
Keith had to pause to take in the image before him. Mafia King Asher looked completely unbothered by this strange situation so he decided to ignore it as well.
"Sorry to bother you, boss," He mumbled, keeping a respectful distance.
Now that he was in the presence of his Mafia King, he was starting to think that bringing this information to him was a little stupid. It could have been a prank.
It didn’t help that Mafia King Asher managed to look dangerously intimidating even while he was incapacitated.
"Get it out with," Asher said dryly.
He had been surprised not to see a maid, other than Jael, those were the only visitors he got.
Asher should have put an end to this but he was entertained. He needed to see how long Jael intended to drag this out for - which was maybe a rather bad habit of his.
His second-in-command had been shouldering all the workload for the past two days, he should start cracking pretty soon.
"Uh..." Keith cleared his throat, self-conscious. "I uh... got a message from Toma, one of our suppliers." He mumbled, moving his weight from one leg to the other.
The weight of the boss’ stare was crushing.
"He said they’ve got something important of yours, that will be a good enough incentive for us to renegotiate." Now that he had started talking, it was easy to get the rest of his words out.
"They were trying to increase prices by fifty percent at the last exchange, we weren’t about to let that happen..." Although Keith knew well that the boss already knew about this, he found himself telling him again, rambling because he was anxious.
Asher’s jaw hardened, "Did they mention what they had?" He asked calmly, taking another sip of wine.
Unaware of how volatile Asher was, Keith cleared his throat one more time.
"They didn’t say, they just described it as valuable and fragile." He repeated the message he had gotten.
"Right." Asher said shortly, barely stopping himself from crushing the fragile glassware in his grasp. "I’ll handle this. There’s no reason to relay it to Jael."
"Sure thing, boss." Keith saluted, hurrying out of the room.
He wasn’t going to question the boss’ orders, he didn’t even wonder how the Mafia King was going to get free of the bonds holding him down. He was just happy to clock out.
Just as he got back in his car, he got a call from Jael. The boss had told him not to bother telling Jael but he had to tell the second-in-command something.
"Report," Jael barked into the phone, making Keith flinch.
"I just got an important message from one of our suppliers. I already relayed it to the boss though and he said he’ll handle it." He quickly narrated, relieved that he could give the audibly pissed Beta some good news.
"You did what?" Jael snapped.
"I told the boss?" Keith said in a small voice, he wasn’t sure what he did wrong.
There was a short moment of silence, Jael’s voice measured when he spoke again. "Fine, what was the message about?"
Keith had been about to tell him that the boss had said not to tell him but he would rather not be yelled at again. He just wanted to order takeout and spent the rest of the night playing games.
"It was from Toma, he’s trying to force our hand to accept their offer by claiming he has something important of the boss-" The call dropped then.
Keith had to double-check to make sure the Beta had truly hung up, it had happened so suddenly.
He frowned, wondering if the message was more important than he had given it credit for. Anyway, he had done his part by relaying the message to the important people.
He was going to take his well-deserved leave.
Jael cursed loudly as he barreled his way out of the club, he knew that rerouting his calls to voicemail was a bad idea.
But holding an important meeting while his phone went off nonstop was next to impossible, filing was even worse.
He practically jumped behind the wheel, tearing out of the parking lot.
His job before this was receive calls and make sure that orders were given to the right people, and said orders were performed smoothly.
He wasn’t a man of finesse... well neither was Asher but the Mafia King made his difficult duties look effortless.
He was wearing himself thin, and he knew it was only a matter of time before he gave in and let Asher go.
It might already be too fucking late though.
For the first time in days, he tried Caspian’s number. He hadn’t been planning to call the Omega at all, he planned to ignore him until he wandered off on his own.
But he had somehow managed to wander right into danger, and Asher was aware.
It was like the prompt to a bad joke.
The call rang endlessly and then dropped without a response, and he wasn’t surprised at all.
He tried calling Asher next and the call didn’t even go through, his device switched off.