GRIFFIN #4
He dangles it once, his eyes fixed on mine, and then, without warning, throws it in my direction.
It’s a good throw, especially for someone who doesn’t seem to have broken a sweat in his entire existence. My hand goes up and catches the key in the air. Clearly expensive.
“And what’s this?”
“Your apartment. Two floors down, furnished and secure. Under my surveillance.”
So casual it’s indecent.
“What if I don’t want it?”
“And what’s your alternative? Go back to basement fights for two hundred dollars a night, hoping the next man in my family who tries to kill you has better luck than the last?”
A reality he himself created.
He turns to the mirrored bar in the corner of the room. Confidence, perhaps arrogance. He gives me space to decide, to create the illusion of choice.
Alexei takes out two crystal glasses and a translucent bottle of vodka, a label I’ve never seen in any market. He pours half a shot into each glass and swirls the liquid before looking at me again.
“I am offering you protection, comfort, and purpose, Griffin. Take the key.”
He slides one of the glasses towards me, as if sealing the deal.
I could simply turn my back, throw the key in the trash, and run to the ends of the earth, but I know it would only be a matter of time until he found me.
This is an excuse.
A part of me wants to see how far I can push myself before being destroyed.
I hold the glass. The vodka is cold enough to numb my tongue. I swallow it whole, and Alexei replicates the gesture, his eyes never leaving mine.
When he speaks again, it’s in a lower voice.
“No one will touch you there. Not even me. Not without your consent.”
There’s no way he’s serious. He plants the image in my head on purpose: him, touching me. And then he offers me the illusion that I would have a choice.
He sits on the edge of the table, arms uncrossed and an open posture like someone who has already decided the opponent’s fate and can now enjoy the company.
“Have you ever met anyone like you, Griffin?”
“What?”
He just tilts his head.
What kind of question is that? I think of all the creatures who crossed my path, boxing trainers, gang members, brothel madams, and prostitutes. Men and women patching pieces of themselves together.
“No.”
He smiles. “Neither have I.”
Alexei pours another round.
“You’re dangerous, if I’m not careful.”
I don’t expect respect from Alexei. No one expects respect from a Malakov, only efficient disdain. That’s why, when he looks at me with that blue fissure of someone who truly sees, I falter.
He swirls the glass between his fingers.
“You’ll get used to it,” he says, and his voice is gentle now, which is a thousand times more disturbing than his threats.
Used to what? To luxury? To the cage? Or to this fucked-up tension between us?
I don’t answer, so he finishes his drink, sets the glass on the table, and returns to executive mode.
He opens the same drawer as before and pulls out a single sheet of paper. He places it on the smooth surface of the marble table and slides a fountain pen to his side.
“What’s that?” I ask, already knowing I won’t like it. “The contract for me to sell you my soul in triplicate?”
He almost laughs. He doesn’t vocalize it, but the corner of his mouth gives him away. “Please,” he says, with that minimal, irritating smile, “read it. We have all the time in the world.”
I pull the paper towards me. Small print, real estate jargon, all neatly done.
Blah, blah, blah, “Blackwood Properties LLC”, blah, blah, blah, “resident”, blah, blah, blah, “liability for damages”.
It’s a normal rental agreement, and there’s no Malakov name anywhere, just impersonal clauses.
The absolute denial of connection. If shit hits the fan, no one will ever prove anything.
“Blackwood Properties LLC,” I read aloud. “Who the hell are these guys?”
“Just a holding company. It’s irrelevant. The only name you need to worry about is yours.”
“Right. And how long does this… ‘hospitality’ last?”
“As long as necessary. As long as you are useful.”
Funny how he turns a rotten deal into a poisonous compliment. “Useful.” All I can offer, deliver, sacrifice. At least the bastard is honest on that point. Which brings me to the real question: what happens when I stop being useful?
There will be nothing left of me. When it’s over, I’ll just be another forgotten record, like all the others who crossed this man’s path and disappeared without a trace.
“Fuck it,” I murmur, picking up the pen. A unique, personalized piece, like everything else there. Offensive luxury.
I am forced to seal the agreement of my own obsolescence. I sign the paper, and it all boils down to being “useful”.
Right arm. It’s my dominant hand, but control is never total. The prosthetic thumb trembles, and the pen tip slips. I don’t remember the last time I had to write with this thing.
I hate this. I hate this goddamn piece of metal.
I try again. The pen nearly tears the paper, because force is the only adjustment I can control in this.
I don’t want to lift my head, but I know he’s watching. I know he sees every second of my humiliation and is storing it to use later.
I want to explode the pen in his face. There are worse things than losing your hand to a mafia subordinate. Perhaps being at the mercy of the only man who can turn a mechanical gesture into public humiliation.
The pen tip slightly tears the paper.
I will never get used to the violence of my own movements.
“Shit,” I hiss, low.
“Having trouble?”
I don’t ask for help, but he doesn’t ask permission either. He moves. Suddenly, my field of vision is just his shadow, cast over the contract.
The hairs on my arm bristle. I feel his presence before he touches: a magnetic field, a pressure.
He leans in until his breath brushes my ear, and with a simple gesture, covers my prosthetic hand with his—long, thin, elegant fingers, opposite to everything that makes me up.
It’s enough to take control of the entire arm, reconfiguring the joints and the tension of the synthetic tendons.
I hate that he knows exactly how to do this.
“Allow me,” he whispers close to my ear. Each syllable slides down my spine. I should fight. I should.
But I don’t fight.
He adjusts the grip of my metal fingers around the pen with a precision I can never achieve. His other hand rests firmly on my shoulder, pinning me in place. His breath brushes my neck. My heart hammers against my ribs.
“Relax,” he commands.
The pen slides better now, obeying the calibrated force of his hand. He guides the movement of my carbon fingerprints, the stroke clean, firm, too beautiful to be mine. The name appears on the paper: a hybrid script, part mine, part his.
When we finish, he doesn’t let go immediately. He presses his thumb on a metal joint as if he wants to imprint his signature on me. I smell him—cedar, leather, and mineral vodka—and my face is burning. Anger, perhaps shame, perhaps… something obscene, a desire in wrong proportions.
“See?” he murmurs, too intimately, his warm breath on my neck. “We make a great team.”
It’s unbearable.
I pull away sharply, pushing the chair back with a harsh sound on the marble floor. I stand up, and he straightens, adjusting his shirt sleeve with a calm that fills me with hatred, as if he hadn’t just invaded every inch of my space.
“You should have that prosthetic maintained,” he says, casually. Casual. “The calibration seems off.”
The observation is so clinical, so… normal. He could have called me inept, and it would have been better.
“I’m not one of your machines, Malakov.”
He stares at me for a long second, and instead of mockery, I see that genuine, fucked-up curiosity in his eyes.
“Of course not,” he says. “A machine wouldn’t have a pulse.”
He definitely felt it when he was pressed against me. This shit is humiliating.
“Then don’t treat me like a pet.”
“That was never my intention. I don’t treat my animals with such interest, Griffin.”
He gestures towards the door.
“Go rest. You will have obligations with the Circuit soon.”
I hate his control, I hate the way he reads me, and I hate, more than anything, this thing that his proximity ignites in me.
I pick up the key and the card from the table and leave without another word.
This goddamn hellhole is infested with cameras. And the son of a bitch Alexei didn’t even try to hide it. Again.
I walk into the bathroom and laugh. On the ceiling, right in the center. A camera in the bathroom. Seriously? What’s his deal? Does he expect to see me taking a dump? Or does he have a shower fetish?
Does he really watch this shit? I imagine the all-powerful Alexei Malakov, on his goddamn marble throne, in the middle of a conference call with the Japanese mafia, and suddenly he raises a finger.
“One moment, gentlemen.” He presses ‘mute’ and minimizes the smuggling spreadsheets to open the bathroom camera feed, just to see some fucked-up guy with a black eye brushing his teeth.
The place is exactly like Alexei’s, just two floors closer to hell. Minimalist, cold, impersonal. There isn’t a single item out of place, a single sign that anyone has ever lived here.
I throw myself back onto the king-size bed. The mattress is firm, the sheets are made of cotton that probably costs more than my last month of life. Everything here is made to be comfortable, but all I feel is the barbed wire of a cage.
I pull the black card from my pocket. Nameless. Cold. It’s chic, smooth plastic, and fits perfectly between his fingers. In mine, it feels like desecration. Fine bourgeoisie that at least doesn’t pretend to be good people. This shit isn’t for me, it’s for him.
Alexei’s hands. Thin, long fingers. Hands that never had to break a nose or throw a punch. Hands that only touched money, crystal, and, apparently, my fucking prosthetic.