Chapter ALEXEI #3
On the screens before me, the financial records of these institutions parade by in a procession of accounting horrors: unsubstantiated entries, cascading operational losses, small but constant transfers, anonymous donations that never exceed the federal scrutiny limit.
The local press idolizes these places as safe havens for the destitute, ex-convicts, orphans, and the newly rehabilitated—but the balance sheets speak louder than any tear-jerking report.
The pattern is always the same. They open in the red, flirt with bankruptcy, but never go under.
They remain standing, stubborn and immortal, sustained by an underground flow of small amounts of cash.
The figures are too modest to interest the IRS, but too consistent to be purely random.
Instead of trying to launder dirty money, someone is draining resources to keep the benevolent facade running—even if it means operating indefinitely at a loss. It’s brilliant, in a way.
Vasily buys loyalty—and usually overpays. Ivan demands loyalty, and imposes it with physical violence. They both see the world as a competition of brute force and bribery, and doubt that any human relationship exists beyond those two. But Seraphim... he neither buys nor coerces.
I observe, line by line, what he plants: a new coat for an ex-convict, an orthopedic prosthesis for a child, a decent supper for a single mother left to her own devices.
Each small gesture is a drop of pure water injected into people’s moral desert.
A debt of gratitude that cannot be erased because it cannot be repaid. He builds a crowd of devotees.
I wonder: how many of Vasily’s men have already switched sides? How many of Seraphim’s men have done the same, by rough comparison?
How many frequent these charity houses in their spare time, bringing their child, their brother, their sick mother? How many owe favors to a specter who never appears in public, but always intervenes at the moment of greatest weakness?
And my biggest problem: how do you find this specter?
I could admire him for this. Seraphim operates in the symbolic field, so I need to adapt.
I’m about to put a plan together when the phone vibrates on the glass tabletop.
The sound is an anomaly in itself. This phone rarely rings. It’s reserved for the kind of emergency that can’t wait for an email.
I answer it, expecting nothing good. The voice is one of my men’s.
“Sir,” he says, with an urgency that doesn’t match his robotic profile.
“What is it?”
“It’s Karpov.” He pauses. “He was found outside his club. Beaten. They broke both his legs.”
I remain silent, processing.
I can picture it. Karpov, the proudest manager, always in a starched suit even on the midnight shifts, left like a dog on the sidewalk, his legs twisted at grotesque angles, and the club’s security guards not knowing whether to help or pretend they didn’t see anything.
I don’t need to ask. The signature is as clear as a confession. And it shares my blood.
“It was Ivan,” I state.
“...Yes, sir,” he confirms. “Multiple witnesses.”
I hang up without saying goodbye.
I stand there, staring at the screen. The handful of dollars that disappear from the St. Jude soup kitchen’s accounts mean nothing in the face of the spectacle of gratuitous brutality Ivan has just committed.
A part of me still wants to return to the cat-and-mouse game with Seraphim, but before that, I need to put out the internal fire.
My idiot cousin just declared war on his own allies, and worse: in public.
I take a deep breath, trying to regain my phlegm. But I already know: there will be no peace until I solve the Ivan problem. Only then can I return to my project of deconstructing the myth of Seraphim.
Before anything else, I need to take this imbecile off the board.
Ivan’s territory reeks of three things: sweat, dry leather, and veiled, stored, rotting anger. He has set himself up in a decrepit boxing gym at the end of the industrial district.
At first glance, it looks like one of those places where old ex-boxers train lost boys, but you only need to cross the threshold to realize no one there is learning to dance on their tiptoes. They train to stay on their feet even when their teeth have already shredded their entire mouth.
The ring is a pool of dried blood and plasma from the last twenty years, and the back wall boasts Soviet flags with ignorant pride, pretending they are a repellent for democracy. Ivan likes that. He wants to be a legend in his own time, no matter which.
I enter alone. My footsteps echo on the cracked concrete, and the sound of the place—muffled shouts, the crack of gloves, the damp thud of punches on heavy bags—dies down in concentric waves as I cross the threshold. A dozen pairs of eyes lock onto me.
Ivan is in the center of the ring, shirtless, his broad torso gleaming with sweat.
The wraps on his fists are grimy, some freshly stained with blood.
He smiles when he sees me, a dirty smile.
He steps down from the canvas with the surprising lightness of a large animal, and without wiping his face, he spits a trickle of blood onto the floor.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Ivan proclaims, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Lost your way to the bank? No one wears a suit here, Leshy.”
The laughter from his men is brief and nervous. They know Ivan likes an audience, but they also know the show could end in tragedy at any moment. I keep walking until we are two meters apart.
No one else breathes loudly. The gym belongs to Ivan—except for the minutes I’m in it.
“Did you have fun today, Ivan?” I say. “Put on your show? Did you feel like a man breaking the legs of a manager who owns most of our drone expansion route?”
His jaw clenches, tense. “He deserved it, Leshy. He let a Volkov into our perimeter. You think I forgot? Our last name is Malakov. Someone needed to teach him what that means. And since you were too busy playing with your new social experiment—who, by the way, reeks of a traitor—I did the dirty work that had to be done. No need to thank me.”
“You call that dirty work?” I feel a short, empty laugh escape my throat. “You destroy because you don’t know how to build anything. That ‘arrogant manager’ closed a multi-million dollar contract for us less than twenty-four hours ago.”
“Fuck the contract!” Ivan exclaims, puffing out his chest. “Paper means nothing if people don’t fear us. You hide behind numbers, but you stick a fucking rat among us! I just cleaned up some of the mess.”
“It’s useless when your business partners can’t walk to sign the checks, you imbecile,” my voice finally rises, but it doesn’t waver. “You inspire pity. You only use brute force because you don’t have the brains to use anything else!”
“At least I have the balls to get my hands dirty!” he yells, pointing a thick finger in my direction.
“Unlike you, who sends others to do it and hides!
And your cripple, huh?! What are you going to do about him?
! The guy is unstable—people have a lot to say about him, that he destroyed a fucking jukebox out of nowhere—“
Ivan casually asking around about Griffin irritates me, but not as much as what he implies. “You talking about instability, for fuck’s sake?” I interrupt, at the same volume as him, and he retorts:
“You’re a coward, Alexei!”
“Am I?” I turn to Boris, the largest of the thugs, an ogre in a loose suit with the expression of someone who took a lot of beatings in childhood. “You. From now on, you work for me.”
Boris pales, and Ivan looks like he’s about to explode, but he can’t. Not there, not at that moment. “He’s my man,” Ivan growls.
“He was,” I correct him, without taking my eyes off the terrified brute.
“Your only job now is to follow this imbecile. He breathes out of rhythm, you call me.” I approach Boris, my voice a poisonous whisper that everyone can hear.
“If he gives me one more problem, I will blame you. I will go to your house, Boris. I will sit at your dinner table with your wife and your two children, and I will explain to them, in detail, how their father failed me. And then I will burn it all to the ground with all of you inside. Are we clear?”
Boris nods his head, trembling. “Yes, sir.”
Ivan is red with frustration. The loyalty of his men—just like mine—belongs to the Malakov name, and not to anyone in particular. That has always been the problem.
“From today on,” I continue, “you don’t touch anything without going through me. Or you’ll have more than broken legs to worry about.”
Ivan takes a step forward, and for a second I think he’s going to attack me right there. But no. He just grinds his teeth. “This isn’t over, Alexei. I swear to God—“
I ignore the threat. It’s always the same. “You will shut the fuck up and listen to me,” I interrupt him, louder than I would have liked. “Did you know they found the body of your witness from Odessa?”
He tries to hide it, but the fear is in his eyes. He didn’t know. The gesture is minimal—the pupils dilate, the body involuntarily recoils—but it’s there.
“Vasily will want to know what you have to do with it,” I say, low enough for only him to hear. “Maybe I’ll tell him myself.”
He doesn’t answer. He knows he can’t. In this family, the only thing more dangerous than opening your mouth is opening your mouth to the wrong man.
I turn and start to leave.
“I’m going to kill you, Alexei!” he yells at my back.
“Get in the fucking line.”
I walk out, leaving him to be watched by his own men.
After leaving Ivan to marinate in his own humiliated fury, my destination was already set. The original plan was to give him time to acclimate. But Ivan is a child who throws a tantrum until all the toys are broken. And I needed, above all, my most volatile piece back in the game.