Entangled with the Mafia Don novel Chapter 69

Davina’s POV

Just as the auctioneer’s gavel began its final, soul-crushing descent, a heavy, metallic thud shook the entire hold. The massive steel doors at the rear of the theater swung open, admitting a violent draft of freezing sea air and a man who radiated a darkness far more potent than the leering predators in the audience.

It wasn't the cold that made my blood turn to ice. It was the man who stepped out of the shadows.

Ivan Sokolov.

The world tilted, and for a second, I wasn't on a ship; I was back in the neon-lit haze of The Devil’s Club. I could almost taste the bitter tang of the drug he’d slipped into my drink. I could feel the ghostly weight of his hands on me, the way he had looked at me with that same sick, predatory hunger before Ezra had broken through the door and nearly beaten him to death.

My breath hitched in a ragged, agonizing sob. I recognized the way he carried himself—the arrogant, broad-shouldered swagger of a man who thought the world was his for the taking. He didn't sit. He strode down the center aisle, his boots echoing against the metal floor like the steady beat of an executioner’s drum.

"Twenty-five million," Ivan called out. His voice was a jagged rasp, the same voice that had whispered filth into my ear while I was too drugged to scream.

The atmosphere in the room shifted instantly. The other bidders pulled back like whipped dogs. Ivan reached the edge of the stage, looking up at me not as a woman, but as the "prize" that had escaped him once before. He began to climb the wooden steps, his hand reaching out, fingers curled as if to snatch the silk and drag me back into the nightmare.

I scrambled back, my heels catching on the sheer hem of the gown. I hit the stage floor, crawling backward until my spine slammed into the cold steel of the rear bulkhead. The terror I had felt before was a mere spark; this was a wildfire. If Ivan took me, he wouldn't just own me—he would finish what he started at the club.

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Ezra's POV

I watched Ivan Sokolov step into the light, and the last shred of my restraint—the thin, agonizing tether that kept the monster at bay—disintegrated. This was the son of the man who had ordered my men slaughtered in a hospital closet. This was the brother of the woman who had put a needle in Davina’s arm.

"The price is thirty million, Ivan," I said, my right hand resting openly, comfortably, on the grip of the Beretta at the small of my back. "And the price for touching her is your life. Do you have the funds for both?"

Recognition flashed in Ivan’s eyes like a lightning strike. His face contorted—first in a flicker of genuine shock, then into a jagged, lethal grin that revealed the madness beneath the Sokolov bloodline.

"Ezra De Luca," Ivan breathed, his hand hovering over the customized Glock at his hip. "You actually came for the bird. Tatiana said you were weak for her—that you’d traded your crown for a piece of broken glass—but I didn't think you were truly suicidal."

Behind me, the silence was broken by a synchronized, terrifying sound: the subtle *click-clack* of fifteen safeties being switched off as my men rose in unison. The "guests" around us began to realize they were caught in the crossfire of a god-tier war. Screams broke out as men in tuxedos dove under tables, spilling champagne and shattering crystal.

I didn't blink. I didn't look at the fleeing cowards. I kept my eyes on Ivan, and then I looked past him to Davina. She was trembling, her face pale under the makeup, but she saw the shift. She saw that the monster was no longer hiding; he was standing right in front of her.

"Ivan," I said, my voice dropping to a quiet, terrifying calm that signaled the end of all negotiations. "You have three seconds to get off those stairs before I paint them with your family’s blood. One."