Griffin #3
His men, who until now had been standing like statues, begin to move.
They don’t point guns, but the threat is there, implicit in every step.
They go from table to table, collecting the devices, and one man tries to protest, saying something about his lawyer, but Alexei’s security guard simply leans in and whispers something in his ear.
The man turns pale, hands over his cell phone, and says no more.
Only then, after order begins to be restored in the midst of my mess, does Alexei finally turn to me.
He walks around the wreckage of my car, his expensive shoes stepping on shards of glass without even looking away. He stops inches from me. I smell his perfume, expensive and clean, in violent contrast to my smell of blood, sweat, and street.
“Do you have any idea,” he whispers, “of the price of Italian marble?”
I stand there, bleeding, exhausted, my whole body screaming in pain, and the first thing he asks me is about the fucking floor.
I can’t help it. A crooked, bloody smile cracks my face.
“Don’t worry, boss,” I say. “I think the car insurance will cover it.”
I don’t think he liked the joke. He says, “You drove through the facade of a restaurant and terrified a dozen high-society witnesses that I will now have to buy or bury.” He leans closer, speaking low in something that sounds like a growl.
“This was a stupid, expensive, and noisy fireworks show in the middle of my territory. What the hell were you thinking?”
I hold on, feeling the blood run down my chin. He’s right, of course. I could have waited. But I’m not like that.
The pain makes me stagger a little, and I lean on the dented body of the car to steady myself. With my free hand, I take Seraphim’s folded paper from the back pocket of my pants.
Alexei raises an eyebrow, watching my movement with a predatory suspicion.
“Finding your rat was deliberate,” I say, unfolding the note. It’s stained with a little blood. “I had help.”
He doesn’t take the paper immediately. His eyes narrow, analyzing my face, then the note, maybe expecting a trap. Finally, he takes it from my hand.
I see the moment he connects the dots.
“This,” Alexei says, “was Seraphim?”
“Through an intermediary. But it was,” I say, still panting. “Seraphim acted behind Vasily’s back. A sign that he’s not loyal to your brother now—he’s not against you.”
Alexei reads the note in silence, and you can see, even from a distance, the microscopic movement of his jaw clenching.
It changes everything. The chaos, the blood, the car crashed between the tables—suddenly it’s just scenery for what really matters: the transaction of information.
I think the price of a secret was always more expensive than any glass facade, no matter how Italian the marble was.
His shoulders relax only a millimeter. His gaze lifts from the paper and pierces me, and there is no anger there. There is no theater of the outraged mobster, no direct threat, just an absolute calm of someone who is seeing an entire board instead of the pieces.
And it is in this calm that I feel the first wave of true panic. Because if there is one thing I learned from street fights, it is that what kills the most is who feels nothing. Alexei just waits for the moment to attack.
But the moment is not now. Because from outside comes, clear and inevitable, the sound that makes any one of our kind cringe: a siren.
First a small dot, shattering the night, then growing in echo. Everyone is looking the same—security, waiter, even the rich extras, all standing still waiting to see who bleeds first.
“Police,” I say, and the word comes out raspy. “Alexei, we have to get out. Now.”
There is no panic in any muscle of his face. He folds the paper carefully and puts it in his jacket pocket. Then he looks at me, and at the car, and at the bloody man on the table, and weighs it all on an invisible scale.
And then he just sighs. Subtle, paternal, like an adult tired of explaining to a stupid child why you don’t play with knives.
The siren gets closer, and now everyone in the restaurant starts to move.
One of Alexei’s security guards pulls something from inside his suit, and for a second I think it’s going to be a shootout—but no.
The man brings a cell phone, and Alexei takes it without even looking at him and puts it in the inside pocket of his jacket.
I try to move, but my body hurts in a way it never has before. The blood running down my shirt starts to get cold, sticking to the fabric to my skin.
“Alexei, for fuck’s sake,” I insist.
Blue and red lights create a disco on the sidewalk.
Two police cars stop abruptly in front of the restaurant: an old, departmental sedan, and an armored SUV, the kind they only use when they know there’s going to be trouble.
Four police officers get out of the first car, looking confused, and only two from the second, but those two look like they’ve already killed someone.
The older of the police officers puts his hand on his holster and advances, but doesn’t enter. He’s waiting for something.
I do a quick calculation of the escape route.
I can get out through the back if I can stand to run to the kitchen.
But knowing Alexei, the place must already be locked from the inside, and any attempt to escape would just be an invitation to become a sieve of ammunition.
The other option would be to surrender now and hope that, in the middle of the confusion, someone forgets to handcuff me.
But the pain in my ribs tells me that if I lie on the floor, I won’t get up again.
The younger police officer approaches. He enters, pointing his gun at the floor, ready to raise it at any second. He scans the room with his eyes, and it’s at that moment that Alexei decides to move.
He walks past the man I threw on the table, completely ignoring his groans. He doesn’t talk to me or to his own security guards.
He goes straight to the police officer.
“Good night, officer,” he says, with the smile of someone who has just been interrupted in the middle of a real business dinner. “How can I help you?”
The police officer swallows hard. You can see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Everyone needs to remain in the establishment until backup arrives. I need you to step away from the car...” He sees the man on the table—the rat—and grabs his communicator. “We need to call an ambu—“
“Excuse me,” Alexei interrupts. He takes his cell phone out of his pocket—the one given to him by his security guard—, presses a number, and holds it to his ear. On the other side, someone answers immediately. Alexei speaks low, in Russian.
What the fuck is he doing?
It’s a short call. He hangs up, puts his cell phone away, and looks back at the police officer, now with a calmness that could only be artificial, but it’s not.
“Your captain will give you new instructions,” he states.
The silence that follows is dense. Alexei doesn’t take his eyes off the police officer, not for a second. The man swallows hard, his confidence evaporating under the weight of that look.
And suddenly the police officer’s radio crackles.
His name is called, urgent, direct instruction. He answers, listens. His face turns white, colorless.
And then, as if summoned by the devil himself, the radio on his shoulder comes to life, the captain’s static, urgent voice calling his number.
The police officer looks at Alexei, who gives him a social smile. And I... I lean completely on the cold body of the car that I myself destroyed.
Dizziness. And it’s not just from the pain.
The police officer lowers his weapon, and even though he tries to maintain his posture, you can see that he’s lost.
I remember the weight of Seraphim’s hand on the back of my neck when I was fifteen, pushing us into a dark alley that stank of garbage and rain.
He was panting with a wild smile on his face, alive with the thrill of escape.
For us, the police were the end of the line, a force of nature that could only be overcome with speed and luck.
Running was the only answer, the only form of power we knew.
After that, running became just a dirty habit.
There was no more thrill of escape, just the need to disappear.
I remember leaving fight money behind because the flashing lights outside meant the game was over.
I remember jumping a barbed wire fence behind a bar to avoid a cell because of a fight I couldn’t even remember how it started.
My whole life has been a series of back doors, dark alleys, and looking over my shoulder.
Now, I open my eyes. Outside, more police cars arrive, and none of them enter.
They wait. The restaurant’s radio, on for background music, continues to play an old British ballad, and it all seems so mundane it’s comical.
The rich gather their belongings back, the waiters start cleaning up the broken glass.
Alexei commands the law. He makes the world run to him, and the difference between these two universes is so vast. It lights something sick and hot inside me, an ember of excitement that burns beneath the pain and fear.
The police officer, now pale and submissive, can only affirm with a nod of his head.
He withdraws, babbling orders into the radio clipped to his shoulder, and takes with him all the hope of resistance that hung in the air.
Normality returns to the restaurant with a surreal speed—a hostess hurries to reassure someone who is threatening to have a heart attack, and even the ma?tre, previously impaled between the pride of the establishment and humiliation, resumes his role as a professional host.
Alexei doesn’t waste a second. He turns to one of his men, the same one who handed him the cell phone, and gives an order.