Chapter GRIFFIN
GRIFFIN
The organizer grabs my left wrist and raises my arm. The man on the ground doesn’t move. The crowd screams, and, in a corner, Marcus is with both thumbs up, probably already counting the money.
But I barely register him.
There are no puddles of beer on the floor. No loose nails on the stage. The ring ropes are clean. The fucking air conditioning works, making the air breathable. It’s too clean a place for the kind of dirt that happens here. It’s sterile. Alexei’s work.
There’s a dark glass mezzanine up high. The VIP area. The owners’ perch. I saw him and his cousin, Vania, go in there before the first round. The whole fight was for them. The rest is just noise.
The mezzanine door opens. Men in suits I’ve never seen before, older, smelling of money. Alexei talks to them. He has that tense, social dinner smile in front of Vania, shaking the men’s hands. Vania comes out right behind him, exchanging greetings.
Then Alexei remains, alone, as the others leave. Leaning on the glass balustrade.
His eyes finally fall to meet mine across the noisy hall. The business smile he wore with the others disappears. What replaces it is something different. A small, almost imperceptible smile, but it’s not cold. It’s not condescending. It’s... satisfied. Almost proud.
A stupid, unwanted warmth spreads through my chest, rising up my neck. Idiotic reaction. I hate it. I hate the way my body reacts to this crumb of approval from the man who bought me.
I look away, back to the noisy crowd, trying to understand. His words at dinner come back to me. “Brute force is a product that sells.” “Serious sponsors.” “For our profit.”
I was displayed. Is he using my violence as marketing to attract these men in suits? He expands Karpov’s business, makes it bigger, richer, more professional.
But why, if Alexei, prim in that impeccable, clean suit, seems to detest dirt?
The locker room is also cold and sterile, smelling of antiseptic. If I hated the last one, I hate this one more. There are even security guards at the door to make sure only Marcus and I come in here. It doesn’t look like the places I grew up in.
I sit on the metal bench, the noise of the crowd outside finally starting to fade in my head. Alexei’s smiling, satisfied face... Expanding the circus. For our profit.
“GREAT GRIFFIN!” Marcus was saying, pacing the locker room.
He looked like a kid who just got his allowance from his dad.
“THE KING! THE BEST!” he shouts and slaps me on the back that nearly knocks me off the bench.
“I take back EVERYTHING I said about disappearing from Sacramento! If we keep having these fights, we’ll be billionaires, stumpy! ”
He paces back and forth in the small space, gesticulating with his hands.
“We ate it like nothing! The night is ours, champ! We have to celebrate. First round of whiskey and the hottest women in town, all on me!”
A loop of the same thing. The cycle of violence, money, and oblivion... this shit feels empty today. Hollow. The ritual of the flesh.
“No, Marcus,” I say. “I’ll pass tonight.”
He stops with his mouth open. “Pass? Are you sick? We just got rich! What else do you have to do?”
Before I can answer, the locker room door opens. Two men in impeccable black suits enter. They are Alexei’s men.
Marcus sees them and scowls. “What the hell is this, again?”
“Mr. Griffin,” one of the men says. “Mr. Malakov awaits you.”
“Wait.” The color drains from Marcus’ face. He whispers the name as if it were a plague. “Malakov… ?” His eyes widen, going from me to the men in suits. His euphoria disintegrates. “This was the investor? A Malakov? Holy shit, Griffin...”
He turns to the man.
“Which one?! The brute?”
The man doesn’t answer. Marcus turns to me.
“Griffin?”
I understand his panic. Names like “Malakov” don’t circulate out loud. They are whispered in alleys, ghost stories to scare small criminals—and big ones, I guess.
“It’s just a business meeting, Marcus,” I lie. I start gathering my things, picking up my dirty shirt from the floor.
I notice the state of my hands. Dripping blood. The post-combat adrenaline no longer has a reason to stay, and the pain begins to appear. Face, ribs.
“Business? With a Malakov?” he shouts. “Griffin, you don’t understand, these guys own the fucking city! I’m your agent, I have to know where you’re going! Last time you almost killed me with worry!”
Almost, yes. Worry that his golden goose had been cooked too soon.
And yet... I remember. Him finding me in an alley in Fresno, months after the amputation. Me, a fucked-up guy, smelling of infection and cheap booze. He didn’t have to help me. But he did. He was the only parasite who stayed when I had no more blood to give.
I stand up, ignoring his panic. I look at Marcus. Betrayed and terrified.
“I’ll call you later,” I say. It’s another lie.
I follow the men in suits out, with the sound of Marcus’s desperate voice calling me
Alexei’s eyes catch me the instant I enter.
He’s across the room, different from that executive automaton who made me sign my soul at dinner.
The expensive suit is gone, and in its place, he wears a dark dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, all put together to give off a casual air that only works because he’s not casual.
I see the bluish translucent veins of his arms, and the feeling it gives is like seeing a piece of porcelain that could shatter with any wrong touch.
He holds a wide glass of neat whiskey with ice.
It hasn’t even been two hours since I was dripping blood, and now I’m part of another kind of show.
Alexei’s men took me from the locker room to a hotel suite that smelled of money and lemon.
A doctor cleaned my cuts and gave me a few stitches on my eyebrow.
It wasn’t the same as last time, but it came from the same mold: efficient, no questions asked, and never looking me in the eyes.
New clothes were laid out on the bed. Someone else’s clothes; someone formal, luxurious.
A dress shirt that makes me uncomfortable, but that is exactly my size without anyone asking anything beforehand. A costume.
The elevator was panoramic. As it went up, I tried to understand the script. Fight, blood, quick wash, VIP party. The cycle never changes, only the role changes. Luxury mascot, domestic monster to impress some big shot in a suit.
Now, clean and patched up, I face a private lounge on the top floor of a luxury hotel.
Vania is there, in a corner. He doesn’t look like the same guy from dinner.
Here, he’s smiling, gesturing, and talking loudly with another guy.
The same men in suits I saw on the mezzanine are scattered around, talking quietly. And Alexei.
All eyes end on him, even when they pretend not to look.
I approach the group, and he turns to me. The smile is the same as on the mezzanine, small, contained, only now warmer. He studies my face, and before I can come up with any phrase, his hand rests on the small of my back. Firm, warm; raising the skin, igniting some nerve in me.
I lean in and whisper just for him to hear. “What the fuck is this now?”
“The celebration,” he whispers back. “You impressed them. All of them.”
The way he pronounces the words sends shivers down my spine. He’s too close.
I think about grabbing the glass from his hand, throwing the liquid in his face, and raising the hell he expects so much.
But no. I just stand there, still. An idiot with tachycardia.
I try to convince myself it’s just post-fight adrenaline, but that’s a lie.
That adrenaline never came. There’s a growing urge in me to do the opposite of what I should.
I can feel the warmth of his body through the fabric of his shirt, his scent. Whiskey and some expensive perfume. He’s elegant, dangerous, and, in this light, fucking handsome.
I want to shut his mouth with mine and see what the hell that arrogance tastes like. It’s a stupid, suicidal idea.
And I’ve never wanted to do something so much in my life.
It’s Alexei who breaks the spell.
The warm touch on my lower back hardens into a command, guiding my body from where my will ends and his begins, to face the room.
“Gentlemen,” Alexei’s voice rings out, calm and projected, drawing the attention of the other men. “I’d like to introduce our champion of this cycle.”
His hand on my back tightens slightly. Stand still. Let them look.
“Griffin.”
And they look at me. They see the stitches on my eyebrow and I see the dollar signs forming in their eyes.
It’s Vania who approaches first. I instinctively brace for impact, but instead of a threat, he breaks into a wide, brutal smile. He slaps me hard on the back.
“Good fight, Iron Arm,” he says. “You broke that guy in half. That’s fucking entertainment.”
A pat on the back is a gesture that would be of friendship anywhere, except here. I’m tempted to return it, to give back with double the force, just to see where it goes. This is the same man who threatened me with death a few days ago. The same one who looked at me with pure hatred.
One of the men, an older one with a gold watch, smiles at the corner of his mouth as he watches me, looking first at my face, then at the prosthesis, then at my face again, waiting for a reaction. He begins to approach us with a glass of brandy in his hand.
“He wanted to know about your arm,” Alexei whispers to me, discreetly. “Make something up. I’ll fix it later.” His hand pushes my lower back in a quick, intimate, and corrective touch.
The phrase hits me on two levels. First, the realization: he knows it’s a shitty subject for me. Second, the order: he’s giving me permission, or rather, an instruction, to lie.