ALEXEI
Ididn’t touch the body. All I did was retrieve, from a pile of guts, the disposable cell phone I’d given him while he was alive, and remove a microcamera from the sink. The rest I’ll leave for someone else to deal with.
Griffin wasn’t discreet. There was blood everywhere, and even the chandelier crystals had red splatters. At least the body is recognizable. It would be a problem if it weren’t.
Good. I needed him to show that rebelliousness, I just didn’t expect to see such a violent outcome.
I wonder what the poor wretch said to Griffin that made him mad enough to tear and rip someone’s delicate stomach.
The work is dirty enough to be confused with Ivan’s doing. Vasily will look at the mess and attribute it to his out-of-control cousin. And, honestly, I don’t even need to take him there. It’s a short matter of time until he tracks Kirill back to the hideout where I sent him—his grave.
With chaos sown, I return to my personal office, a few minutes away from where Griffin now lives. I open the laptop on an impulse—curiosity, perhaps. I need to confirm that he really accepted the keys, even though I know he did. The window with his apartment feeds opens.
He’s there, yes. But he’s not alone.
He’s with a blonde woman in a tight dress. It bothers me to see someone else’s hands on him, claiming an intimacy that belongs to no one. It shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. She’s just a prostitute, perhaps, or someone he met in a bar.
This act of childish defiance is petulant, but I understand. Griffin is not made for moderation—such physical force always overflows into something, and sex is just another territory where it drains.
And I find myself unable to look away.
And, besides all the insubordination and discomfort… he is a spectacle.
He is disproportionate in everything. Shoulders too wide for the narrow room, muscles tense even in delivery, every vein in his arm seeming about to burst. The muscles in his back contract when he pushes the woman against the door, and he has them all defined by years of survival.
There is nothing delicate in his way of touching—it is crude, mechanical.
But that is precisely what captures the gaze: the absolute coherence between structure and act.
Even the way he breathes has weight, as if the air entered and exited in a rhythm meant to intimidate.
He is grotesque, and for that very reason fascinating; an entire anatomy subordinated to the idea of excess, the opposite of everything I sought to build in myself.
It is impossible not to observe—it would be naive to pretend otherwise. Griffin is a handsome man. Even when he was dirty, bleeding, staggering, it was still impossible not to notice. Certain faces, certain bodies, impose their presence by force, and his is one of them.
But then he raises his face. To the camera. To me.
Of course he knows I’m watching. He’s always assumed it, and that’s why he exaggerates, theatricalizes. He transforms even the most primitive act into a tool of communication. And, by extension, of power.
It was naive of me to think this would come down to insubordination, a physiological rebellious impulse. It’s Griffin. Things are never that simple. It’s a deliberate provocation, a rudimentary form of display.
Ridiculous, I think. Ridiculous…
And yet my eyes linger on him. There is something indecent in observing such brute force that allows itself to be used like this, without shame.
It is this perception that he’s showing off for me that bothers me. It’s different from the feeling I get from the woman’s hands touching him. This time, it’s a raw electricity. My blood heats up, and a familiar and irritating pressure grows in my groin.
It’s ridiculous. My body reacts with humiliating predictability. His provocation works—appealing to a primitive impulse.
The image of Griffin, sweaty, defiant, and completely aware of my presence, is the most potent damn spectacle I’ve ever seen.
I close the laptop.
I remain still, staring at the black, lifeless surface. His image still burns in my retina; the sound of my own breathing is heavy, irregular.
None of this should affect me this way. I’m used to dealing with extreme stimuli, with situations ranging from the absolute aesthetic of mathematical control to the visceral anarchy of the physical world.
I know, from experience and theory, that every desire is predictable, modellable, reducible to electrical impulse and chemical discharge. With Griffin, it’s just… stronger.
I force myself to get up from the chair. I walk to the bar and pick up the crystal decanter. The sound of whiskey falling into the glass is part of a familiar ritual. An antidote, a way to extinguish unwanted heat.
I drink a shot in one go. The liquid numbs the surface of thought, but Griffin’s image only gains more clarity. He pursues me with his gaze, with his gesture.
I hate losing control. The body demands contact, shock, perhaps a fight or a fuck, anything that transforms abstraction into flesh. I force the alcohol to wash it away. I have other things to worry about.
Vasily, the Volkovs, the expansion to the south. The number of a phantom account, an angel’s name. Actions that demand my full attention.
I sit back down at my desk. Numbers, routes, bank statements. My world. Concrete, predictable.
I rub my temples, forcing my focus back to the screen, when the door is opened just enough for Ivan to pass through.
He slides into the room, closing the door softly behind him. I’ve never seen him do that in his life.
His posture is wrong. His shoulders are hunched, his hands are shoved into his pockets instead of crossed over his chest. He’s quiet.
The sight is bizarre. There is no fury in the way he looks at me.
I lean back in my chair. He approaches the table.
“Vania,” I say. “You look worried.”
He finally moves, rubbing his damp palms on his thighs, unable to look me in the eye. It’s a pose so out of character that I barely recognize the cousin who grew up crushing chicken necks with his bare hands.
“It’s Vasily,” he begins, softly. “He’s acting strange. Very strange.”
I keep my expression neutral, though inside I feel a pang of satisfaction. Ivan is fragile, and the crack has widened. “Strange how?”
“He doesn’t talk to me like before. He only calls to ask about routine things—how many men are at the pier, who made the last deposit, when the next shipment arrives, that kind of crap.
He doesn’t even look me in the eye. He asked about Vladimir three times in five minutes, and I even caught him intimidating one of my guys, grilling him with questions.
If I didn’t know better, I’d think Vasily was already counting me as dead. ”
He stops, then. Swallows hard. At the mention of Vladimir’s name, his eyes fill with a strange shadow, a childlike guilt.
“Lyosha...”
The diminutive, coming from him, forces me to look beyond the muscular, hypertrophied subject I’ve had to endure for decades.
“...I need to tell you something.”
He comes closer. Pulls up the chair in front of my desk and sits down, his shoulders slumped. Vania, who used to destroy toys in anger and then apologize without knowing how. Things like that don’t change, do they?
“Odessa,” he says. “Vasily’s contact... was a federal agent. You know that, right?”
That’s what they’ve been trying to force me to swallow. Vasily with his ready answer—local traitor, gratification from some bribed henchman. Everyone conformed, except me. Now, Ivan pronounces the name as if swallowing glass.
“I know.”
He nods. “So. We didn’t eliminate all the loose ends.”
There’s nothing that scares Ivan more than admitting a mistake.
“There was a guy. Port manager. Kirill. Vasily said it was better to keep him alive, that he’d serve as a scapegoat if the police got too close. He ordered him to be paid to disappear. But… that Volkov agent? The one with the metal arm. He went to the same hotel as Kirill, so I just…”
The silence lengthens, and I realize he expects an interjection from me, a reprimand that returns the script to familiar territory. I refuse, offering only the vacuum. He hates silence more than anything.
“…I just panicked, okay?” His voice comes out sharper than it should, and Ivan notices. “The Volkov guy in the same place as our only witness? It was obvious they were going to get him. I sent Vladimir to handle it. Silence them.”
Ivan never tolerated his own failure; he’s accustomed to being useful, to being the arm that executes the impossible. In the absence of that usefulness, he’s a cornered animal.
“You know what it means to have a missing port manager?” I say, my voice low.
“Do you have any idea how big a hole that opens in the supply chain?” I don’t wait for an answer.
Ivan is good with small numbers, scales, and bags of concrete, not with logistical abstractions.
“Why the hell didn’t I know someone so sensitive was alive?
” I drag out the phrase, intentionally. He shrinks further.
“It was your brother,” he fires back. “He said you have a hot temper for this, that you’d want to eliminate the guy and he needed to make sure you wouldn’t mess up the plan.”
It’s unbelievable how much my younger brother can manipulate Ivan decades away, instilling obedience somewhere in his frontal cortex.
He continues, “Vasily said to keep it just between us. But... but now I’ve lost control. They’ve disappeared, Lyosha.”
Of course. Both are dead.
(Rest in peace, Vladimir. You really were loyal to the wrong man.)
“…Your witness disappeared?”