Chapter GRIFFIN #4
I wait. Tachycardia is already familiar when he’s this close.
He raises his hand, slowly, and runs his index finger over a scar above my collarbone. It’s the lightest touch I’ve ever felt, and yet it makes me want to run or attack or scream. Or all at the same time. He traces the line of the scar to the base of my neck, and then stops.
He looks at the metal necklace I never take off. It’s a cheap, old necklace, and the surface layer has already disappeared in several spots, leaving only copper and greenish stains. The St. Michael necklace Seraphim gave me.
The tip of his finger traces the outline of the small medal, the faded figure of the angel imprinted on it.
“Saint Michael the Archangel,” he says, quietly. “The captain of God’s armies. Are you a Christian?”
Every question Alexei has ever asked me had a purpose, an angle, a tactical objective.
What did Seraphim tell you? Whose side are you on?
How’s your leg? Do you know how to play chess?
Each one was a way to collect data, to evaluate the asset, to calculate the risk of the investment.
They were questions about my function, my loyalty, my utility.
But this one?
There’s no tactical advantage in knowing my spiritual beliefs. It has no market value. It’s a useless question for a mafia boss.
And, consequently, it’s the first question he’s asked me that is just about me.
And I don’t know what the fuck to do with that.
I swallow hard. A ridiculous lump forms in my throat. The heat rises up my neck, a sudden, stupid shame. I look away, at the metal of the medal, just to avoid his gaze.
To talk about it is to confirm his theory that I’m just another follower of a cult, that every piece of my identity is, somehow, tied to Seraphim.
And I think it is.
I just don’t want him to know.
“Uh... no,” I say, steadying my voice again, forcing neutrality. “I’m not.”
His gaze remains on me, patient. Waiting. He knows there’s more.
“He was,” I say, quietly. “Seraphim. He... believed in the Bible. God, angels, miracles, all that shit.” I let my gaze fall on the medallion hanging from my neck—St. Michael, the warrior angel, paladin of orphans, protector of the damned. “He gave me this.”
When I look back at Alexei, he’s studying me. I almost laugh, because there’s nothing hidden in me: I’m all scar, all exposed trauma, a walking collection of diagnoses.
Neither of us says anything. He just pulls his hand away, a slow, solemn gesture, as if respecting a sacred space between the saint and the heretic.
Alexei gets up and goes to the bar in the corner of the room. He takes a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. He pours two glasses in absolute silence, with only the noise of the television. When he finishes, he turns and hands me one of the glasses. I take it.
His posture relaxes a little. His chin is slightly raised, his eyes fixed on me.
I take a quick sip and feel the alcohol burn my throat, go down my chest, create a trail of fire to my stomach. The heat is so intense I have to bite my lip to keep from coughing.
“Tell me what you found,” he says. “Was the trip worth the blood you lost on my floor?”
The question dismantles me from the inside, because there’s an invisible kindness there. He wants to know if it was in vain. If I, Griffin, made the risk worthwhile. And I, who have never been useful to anyone, feel a fucked-up, shameful pang of pride.
I look back at the glass and swirl the liquid, trying to buy time before answering. I don’t want to give him ammunition, I don’t want to expose everything, but I can’t lie either.
“You were right,” I begin. “The network exists. A lot of people pay back favors they think can’t be repaid.”
“What else?” He keeps his voice low, but now he comes closer, sits in the armchair across from the sofa.
“There’s a loose thread,” I say. “It’s not one of the new ones. It’s from the old circle. I thought the guy had killed himself, but it seems he’s alive.”
“Who?”
I hesitate. Not out of suspicion, but because if Seraphim is still going unnoticed, it’s for a reason. “I need to confirm. There’s a lot of smoke, and if you go after the wrong person, you’ll alert half of Eastern Europe.”
“You want to do it your way.”
“That’s what you let me out for, wasn’t it?”
I let him see that I’m serious, that I’m no longer just a disposable asset on his cost sheet.
Alexei tilts his glass toward me. “I’m trusting your judgment, Griffin. Don’t make me regret it.”
Honestly, I was prepared for a fight, for a war of wills. I had my defenses up, answers on the tip of my tongue.
But trust? That was never in my script. Not my father, not my colleagues, not Marcus—especially not Marcus. Anyone who trusted me died. Or worse: I snitched on them.
I try to process what he’s just given me, but it’s difficult. It feels like a trick. It must be a trick. But there’s something new in the way he looks at me now. Respect? Weariness? I don’t know. But it’s there.
And the worst part is, I want to live up to it. I want to justify his choice, to show that I can be trustworthy. This disgusts me as much as it excites me.
I take another sip, a bigger one now, pretending the alcohol can erase this ridiculous feeling of being seen, of being validated by someone I should hate.
I’ve never been more aware of my own body than I am now. Of the pain pulsing in the stump, the muffled throbbing in my thigh, the new warmth in my chest. The more I try to ignore it, the more everything screams.
I don’t realize I’m trembling until Alexei picks up the first-aid kit again and throws it in my lap.
“Change the bandage before you sleep,” he says.
“Yes, sir,” I mock, but my hand is shaking.
He finishes his whiskey and gets up. I recognize every nuance of this gesture: the strategic withdrawal, the tactical retreat.
He’s going to his office, or his bedroom, or whatever room has a thick door and enough insulation to keep the rest of the world out.
It’s a calculated retreat, a shell of coldness over what, a moment ago, was human.
I stay on the sofa, with the bandage throbbing on my leg and the feeling that everything that happened in the last few minutes was a glitch in Alexei Malakov’s personal Matrix.
But I don’t accept the ending. Not on this note. Not now.
“Hey, boss,” I call out.
He stops halfway to the door, his hand already inside his jacket, reaching for his phone to solve some other fire in the Malakov empire. He doesn’t answer, but his whole body slows down.
“So...” I say, gesturing between the sofa and the armchair where he was sitting. “Does this count as our dinner?”
The tone is a joke, but the taste is acidic. Sarcasm has always been a shield, but half of me wants to see if it still works.
He doesn’t react. For a nanosecond, I think he’s going to ignore me completely and disappear from the room. But then I see it: it’s not a smile—it rarely is—but a micro-spasm at the side of his mouth, his exclusive Morse code for “you have been noticed”.
He ignores the joke, but answers what matters.
“Did you eat?” he asks dryly, straight to the point. I laugh because I never thought this man’s concern would be expressed like this.
“No, boss. Unless the menu for tonight includes cotton, gauze, and the last shred of my dignity, which I swallowed along with the whiskey.”
He ignores me again, which is already an answer. He then walks to the kitchen, which is less a kitchen and more a laboratory of brushed steel.
He opens the refrigerator door, the cold white light spilling onto the floor. And he just stands there, as if in the parallel universe of the open door, he could find an answer to anything.
I get up, with difficulty, and follow him, dragging my leg and leaning with my good elbow on the kitchen doorframe. A test of territory.
“You’ve only got vodka and water in there,” I state, and I can’t keep the laugh in.
He doesn’t turn around. “Yeah.”
I laugh for real, and the whole thing echoes, because I bet no one laughs like that in his house. Not him, not the shadows, not any guest who lasts more than five minutes.
The all-powerful Alexei Malakov, prince of the mafia, owner of half the ports and one hundred percent of the corpses that have fallen in this city in the last five years, has fuck all to eat at home. This breaks something in me, or fixes it, I don’t know.
Slowly, he closes the refrigerator and turns to me. A real smile. Small, hesitant, cracking that hard, cold surface.
“What are you laughing at?” he asks, and his voice has a... human lightness to it. He must feel the strangeness of the situation, too.
I shrug, still smiling, and say nothing, because the answer is everything and nothing at the same time.
I cross the kitchen, ignoring the pain in my body, and stop inches from him. By reflex—or because he always wanted to—his hands find my waist, squeezing firmly enough for me to know exactly what he wants.
I kiss Alexei.
The taste of whiskey and cigarettes, mixed with the smell of freshly washed, expensive skin, invades me with a clarity that makes me lose my balance.
He pulls me close, and I feel the heat of his body dissolving the cold of everything around.
My hand goes up, finds its way to the nape of his neck, and I tangle my fingers in his soft hair.
His hand moves up from my waist to my back, and I feel every finger, every line.
“Order food,” he whispers against my mouth. “Whatever you want. Use my card. The number is saved in the terminal.”
Then he pulls away, the mask of control sliding back into place, but not completely. His eyes are still soft.
“Say it’s for the gallery on the ground floor. I need to make some calls,” he says, returning to Alexei Malakov mode, CEO of the underworld. But now it’s impossible to unsee what was exposed.
He turns his back, crosses the hallway, and I’m left alone in the center of the kitchen, leaning against the refrigerator, feeling the latency of his touch burning on my waist.
Fuck, this man...