ALEXEI #2
My blood instinct is to show him the scale of his mistake.
I remember Vasily, years ago, rehearsing a speech about the difference between men and animals.
He used to say that man is the only creature capable of transforming brutality into a symbol—of making violence a language. It’s poetic, futile poetry.
His provocation forces me to recalibrate everything. There’s no point in threatening or trying to buy someone who has already destroyed their own existential currency.
“You really do commit to your image, don’t you?” I say, and the calm in my voice seems to surprise him. “You leave your mark. Fortunately, I have people who clean. We can now proceed with the important part of this conversation.”
He rises, wavering but defiant. He assesses me.
“Now your rug is worth more. It’s a one-of-a-kind piece.”
Only then does he stand up completely.
“So the killer was yours,” he states. “The cameras. The doctor. All of it was you.”
“Almost,” I say.
Griffin smirks, a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“So what the fuck is your problem? Was this a test? Or just some fun for you?”
The smirk widens, and I realize he’s about to cross a new line.
“Do you get hard watching others through a fucking camera, is that it?”
He’s trying to drag me into the mud with him. His vulgarity doesn’t offend me; it amuses me.
“Your curiosity about my habits is revealing,” I say. “But you’re clinging to the wrong premise.”
I rise from my chair, slowly. He flinches back instinctively, a minimal movement, but one I register. He doesn’t break eye contact.
“I didn’t send that man. I merely created the ideal circumstances for my cousin, in his panic, to think that sending him was the solution. Vladimir was… an obstacle. Loyal to the wrong person. You… Iron Arm,” I taste his stage name on my tongue, “were the solution to two of my problems tonight.”
The realization strips him of his humanity, and the anger that returns to his face is different. Colder, more focused. He lets out a laugh and takes a step forward, no more than necessary to remind me that, for him, the acceptable limit is a moving line.
“You’re different from the others,” he says.
I can only imagine all the fights that brought him here: perhaps a childhood of wringing rats’ necks, an adolescence of knocking out teeth in a portable toilet, a small and violent life.
“They always tremble first. You just wait. Thinking you can bullshit your way to the end, right?”
“You are not the end.”
“It’s just the two of us here,” he says, stopping an arm’s length away from me. “If I just turned your ‘obstacle’ into a puddle of blood on the floor, what makes you think I wouldn’t do the same to you right now?”
He’s testing me, searching for a crack in my composure. He won’t find one.
“You probably could,” I say. The honesty of my answer seems to surprise him. “But I know how this ends if you kill me now. You know it, too.”
“There’s always a Plan B for you people, isn’t there?” he says through gritted teeth.
I look at his hand, then back to his eyes. They burn like plasma, but behind it, there’s a shadow of doubt. Parentheses of humanity.
“You would attack me. There would be a fight. Blood. Maybe you’d even break my neck before anyone broke down that door. And then what?”
I take a minimal, subtle step. Now he is the one being invaded.
“Let’s assume you escape. What happens next?
A man with a metal arm, wounded, penniless, hunted for killing not one, but two men from a very important family.
Every hitman, every corrupt cop, every street gang would be after you.
Your life would be reduced to running, until the day you couldn’t anymore. ”
I stop, very close to him now. The smell of his sweat and blood is palpable.
“Or,” I say, lowering my voice even more, “you can stay here. In this room. Drink a glass of my whiskey. And find out what happens when, for the first time, your survival becomes an investment for someone who understands what you were made for.”
This time, he doesn’t laugh. He scans the room, examines the rug, then the crystal decanter, and finally my eyes. He’s calculating if it’s a trap, a humiliation, if there’s some sadism embedded in the offer. Maybe there is. But there are no lies.
“You’re not the first one to try and use me as a fighting dog,” he says. His voice has lost its certain edge. “Doesn’t always end well for the owners.”
“Am I negotiating with a fighting dog?”
He bites the corner of his mouth, a nervous spasm that is a smile. He has a hunger for a fight, but not for obedience. Perfect.
I turn my body, walk back to my chair, and sit down, gesturing to a pair of crystal glasses on the table. “If you want to, kill me. Just don’t waste the whiskey.”
Griffin doesn’t move right away. He’s wrestling with the calculation, which is why I’m betting everything on him.
Finally, he moves to the opposite armchair, never turning his back to me. He sits down in the chair across from my desk, unceremoniously, and allows himself to sink into the backrest, his knees falling apart naturally. His muscles relax into the soft upholstery. He is expansive.
“So talk, investor. What do you gain by keeping me alive?”
I smile. He is a sight to behold.
I pour two fingers of aged whiskey into a glass. I slide it across the desk to the edge. He takes it, sniffs it, and hovers the glass before his lips, never taking his eyes from mine.
“My family is too large,” I say. “You know what I’m talking about. There’s a micro-management of power tainted by a discrepancy of ideas. Past a certain degree of importance, every alliance comes with an undeclared termination clause, no matter the names involved.”
He lets out a pained half-laugh before downing the glass of whiskey in a single gulp. “What, you’re going to send me to kill your own cousin?”
“Maybe.”
He falls silent. This time, the exhaustion is noticeable. His body finally gives in to the pain. I see the bleeding below his chest growing. He wouldn’t get very far anyway.
I take a gray handkerchief from the outer pocket of my suit. I extend it to him.
“Negotiate before you bleed out,” I say.
He takes it, presses it against the wound, and smiles at me.
“Is this armchair a Tabriz original too, boss?”
I smile back. Boss—the word suits his voice.
“No. Stain it, please.”
For a few seconds, he just breathes.
The silence between us stretches into a tightrope, and I realize he’s measuring exactly how much of his own pain he can still use as currency.
“…You got another good doctor?” he says suddenly, his voice low and serious.
I nod. “The best. Do you accept?”
He looks at the empty glass, then at me. The flame in his eyes flickers, contained behind a wall of pure, pragmatic survival instinct.
Then he says, with the absolute honesty of someone who can no longer bluff with their life, “I accept.”
“Do you keep a stock of these?” Griffin asks, looking at me, testing if he still has anything left to lose. “One for each type of wound? Is this one the stab specialist?”
The doctor, oblivious to the irony, begins to clean the cut on Griffin’s ribs. He’s different from the one who treated Griffin at the hotel.
“The other is a general practitioner on retainer for emergencies. This one is a surgeon,” I explain. “A man only needs to know what is necessary for his function.”
The doctor irrigates Griffin’s cut with a clear liquid. The smell of antiseptic mixes with blood, sweat, and the damp leather of the upholstery. I think Griffin is going to scream. But he just sinks deeper into the armchair, gritting his teeth.
“You know,” he says, as the doctor readies a needle and thread. “Since we’re trading business secrets, can I know your name? Or do you prefer to keep playing the game?”
The provocation is a demand for equality, a final push before surrendering control completely. I decide to grant him this coin, even if its value was debased centuries ago. “Alexei,” I say, without a single muscle moving in my face.
Griffin repeats it, chewing on the name, testing it in his mouth. “Alexei.” He shakes his head, almost respectfully. “Didn’t they give you a last name, Russian?”
I appreciate his insolence. He has no idea what he is asking.
“Malakov,” I say.
The doctor continues stitching, but time itself seems to hesitate, waiting to see what Griffin will do with this information.
Nothing. It’s as if I had confessed to being a “Smith” or a “Kowalski”.
He just stares at me, his eyes dry, pupils dilated, with no visible reaction.
He is either truly that ignorant of the world he intends to survive in, or there is something so monstrous within him that not even the Malakov family name strikes fear into him.
The doctor begins to clean the wound on his stump, a notoriously sensitive area. He cleans the inside of the stump, where small fissures threaten to become infected. That’s when the facade crumbles.
Griffin chokes. It’s involuntary, a strangled cough, and he raises his good hand to rest it lightly on the doctor’s forearm. A gesture of interruption, almost... polite.
The doctor pulls back, respectful. Griffin completely loses his footing.
He leans forward. His gaze lowers, slow and heavy, to the center of my office. To the grotesque red stain he left on my rug. To his “unique piece”.
And I understand everything. The choke, the gesture, the fixed stare. He’s rewinding the tape, replaying his ultimate act of defiance—the blood smeared with contempt—and calculating the new, astronomical cost of that gesture: soiling the ground of a Malakov.
The realization of the sheer scale of his own recklessness is suffocating him from the inside.
The “sorry” he murmurs is so low the doctor doesn’t even react. Only I hear it. He continues, “What did you say?”
I allow myself a minimal smile. “Malakov. I thought the name might be familiar in your line of work.”
“Malakov.”
He swallows.
“I think... I know the name, yes.”