Chapter GRIFFIN #3
He doesn’t even move. There’s something in his eyes that isn’t anger, nor contempt, nor anything I can truly identify.
He stands up, going to the window, pulling the blinds with a gesture so annoyingly controlled, without noise, without haste.
He looks outside, at the city. Is he really going to leave me here just to prove a point?
That I’m nothing more than a number on a damage spreadsheet?
I hear my own heart, loud, beating too much. Bile burns again. Is he going to discard me now? Erase me from the map?
My head is heavy, my left hand trembles, my leg complains. I think about getting up, about running, but I know I’m not going anywhere. Not now.
Alexei remains still. The blue light of the city outlines his silhouette in a way that recalls those religious paintings, only he isn’t the saint, I’m not the martyr. I don’t want to be.
It seems like he’s considering something, weighing pros and cons. What’s left for me besides this? Only Seraphim himself, and the memory of a time when I could still sleep a whole night without a fucking paralysis, a nightmare, a memory?
When he finally speaks, his voice is low.
“The man you idolized,” he begins. “What was he doing working for my brother?”
I don’t understand. I truly don’t understand. I wonder if I misheard, if the pain jumbled my senses. Seraphim? Working for Vasily?
I laugh, or try to, but the sound is more cough than laugh. “You’re crazy,” I say, and the phrase dies in my mouth because the hole in my head starts spewing horrible possibilities.
Wasn’t Seraphim a ghost from the past? Wasn’t he a wound, a myth, a scar?
He didn’t just come to warn me, he came to watch over me, to guard me from afar, to make sure I didn’t throw myself into a lion’s cage with no way out.
That’s what I wanted to believe. But Alexei is saying something else.
He’s claiming that Seraphim is involved in the Malakovs’ game.
Fuck, Sera...
It’s exactly the kind of story Seraphim would make sure to hide. He always said that power was behind the scenes, in what couldn’t be named. So why wouldn’t he have an agreement, or a deal, or a fucking pact with the devil himself?
And if he’s with Vasily, he might be in danger because of Alexei. Because of me.
The question escapes my mouth before I can hold it back. It’s a stupid, desperate impulse.
“Is he... is he safe?”
Alexei slowly turns from the window. The expression on his face chills me. There’s only the cold confirmation of a suspicion. The disappointment, again.
“You still idolize him.”
Yes. If I placed Seraphim as the sun, then all my eternal orbits will be around that. No matter how much I’ve run.
I could deny it. I could say no, that I idolized him, but that died along with my youth, or my arm, or my pride. But there’s nowhere left to run, no smooth surface to slip on. Alexei made sure to remove all exits.
“What do you want me to say, Alexei?” I whisper. “I know.”
I expect him to discard me.
I hear a sigh. Long, heavy, frustrated. Even Alexei is exhausted by my stupidity.
“I need to know whose side you’re on, Griffin.”
That’s it. No threats, no negotiations, no speeches.
I watch Alexei close the distance between us in two steps. He stops at the edge of the bed, and his scent is sweet, pleasant; an expensive perfume that tries to hide, but can’t, the smell of gunpowder and burnt plastic.
“My brother tried to kill you tonight. He’s moving against me, and you’re right in the middle of it. So, for the last time... are you on my side, or are you on my brother’s side?”
I think of Seraphim, the way he spoke, the light laugh that always came before methodical destruction. I think of Alexei, the cold, impersonal way of someone who likes to watch his opponent crumble from the inside out. I think of myself, what’s left, what can still be called “me”.
I look at Alexei. He’s the only one still here, the only one who hasn’t run and hasn’t hidden. The only one who demands, at least, an answer from me.
“I’m here,” I say. And it’s the cleanest truth that has come out of my mouth in years. “Aren’t I?”
Alexei stares at me for a long moment.
“The doctor will be here in an hour to check your stitches,” he says. He walks to the door. “Rest.”
Then, he leaves the room, leaving me alone with this fucking humiliation.
I lose track of time.
Perhaps there is no time here. Perhaps there is only empty space between the doctor’s visits (always hurried, always afraid), the changing of my dressings, the arrival of meals I barely touch.
The sun and moon dissolve into the city lights, all beyond the bulletproof glass, and inside this luxurious aquarium nothing is real except the pain and the brutal absence of any human sound.
My body, at least, does its job: it rebuilds, hardens, closes itself off. Pain is a companion, but it’s nothing new.
Alexei appears here sometimes. Working on a laptop in the armchair or just watching the city from the window. He doesn’t touch me. He barely speaks to me. He just... observes.
For me, it’s worse this way. I’d rather he hated me openly, that he screamed, that he took out his frustration and fear and wounded pride on me.
But no—he opts for ice, for absence, for this glacial distance that makes me feel less than nothing.
And I watch him back, trying to understand what goes on behind those eyes that have once again become dark and impenetrable.
In the corner of the room, there’s a wooden chessboard.
The pieces are arranged beside it, disorganized, waiting for a game that never happens.
Every time, my gaze returns to the black knight, which stares back at me with mockery.
I never understood chess. In the neighborhood where I grew up, we played checkers, dominoes, games where the punch is quick, not this thing about thinking twenty moves ahead.
After who knows how long, I can’t stand the monotony anymore. I stumble to the board on my good leg, limping, and pick up the black knight. Heavy, cold. Honestly, feeling it is better than reading the twenty newspaper articles about executions Marcus sent me, saying they were the Malakovs’ doing.
“Do you know how to play?”
Alexei’s voice, coming from behind me, makes me jump. I turn around.
He’s at the office door, arms crossed and a clean expression. He caught me by surprise, but I won’t give him that satisfaction. I slam the knight on the table, feigning indifference.
“I know how to break it with my hands,” I say. “I can barely read, let alone play chess.”
He doesn’t laugh at my shitty joke. Instead, he approaches. “Sit down.”
I stare at him, suspicious, but sit in one of the chairs.
“Do you at least know the names of the pieces?” he asks, picking up the white king, the tallest and most flamboyant piece.
“Everyone knows that one,” I say. “The king.”
“Good.” He spins the king between his fingers, without looking at me. “He is the most important and the weakest piece. He only moves one square at a time. If he is captured, the game is over.”
He sits in the chair opposite mine, with the board between us. He returns the king to the table.
He runs his slender fingers over the fallen pieces, quietly. You don’t have to be a genius to conclude that chess is Alexei’s kind of game, but he stares at it as if chess is the last thing on his mind right now. A memory, perhaps. A decision.
He’s been giving me this cold shoulder since the conversation about Seraphim. To think I’d be a traitor because of him… I can’t even blame him for it.
“What’s wrong?” I say.
He continues feeling the pieces, lifting them, studying them.
“The story I told you at dinner,” he begins, without looking at me, “about you being an enemy agent... it got out of control.”
He takes a deep breath, and it’s the first time I’ve seen him look so... tired.
“My brother found your juvenile records. He gave them to my cousin.”
He picks up a rounded white piece and places it on the second rank of the board.
“He wanted to poison him against you, to make me seem reckless for putting someone with a history of being a ‘snitch’ in our midst. My lie about you… amplified that. And it ended up serving my brother.”
I stay quiet. I let him speak.
“What he didn’t know,” he says, and now his eyes meet mine, “is that I discovered the name of the man you informed on, his codename, as the same as the intermediary he used to betray me in a past operation. Seraphim.”
He speaks without emotion, without blinking. And I realize, suddenly, that he is explaining himself. He is explaining himself to me. Which, coming from Alexei, is a confession of weakness.
I look at the board. At the black pieces on my side.
“Why are you telling me this now?”
He gives a sad smile, which lasts less than a blink. “There’s a chance that, in the end, you won’t be on my side. I’d rather you listen to me before I have to cut your throat.”
I look at my own fingers, and at the black knight, now abandoned on the table.
“I didn’t know,” I say, and it’s true. “About Seraphim. About what he did with your brother. It’s been more than ten years since I last saw him.”
I reach out, pick up a black piece identical to his, and place it on the second rank, mirroring his move. His eyes widen, light up. More receptive.
“If it’s true, then all he did really was warn you. He’s trying to protect you, or to use you.”
I think of Seraphim, the way he looked at me as if he saw the whole future, but said nothing. I never quite knew if he was guarding me or sacrificing me. But this… this is how it has always been.
Alexei observes my every micro-expression, as if writing everything down in a mental diary. “And, if that’s the case, you’re not as good a liar as you think,” he says, as a compliment. “But you are an excellent survivor.”
I laugh, dryly. “Must be the trauma.”
He picks up other identical pieces. Places them side by side.
“...What if I was with your brother, Alex?”
I mirror the pieces.