Griffin #4
“Take our guest,” he says, without even looking again at the rat agonizing on the table.
“I want him whole. I have questions.” There is no room for ambiguity: that human garbage would leave there breathing, but only until the point where he was useful.
“And keep him away from the curious. No press, no lawyers until I release him.”
The man nods, and two more security guards hurry to comply.
The rat’s groan turns into a muffled scream when they wrap a white linen towel around his neck and drag him out the back, but no one reacts.
Not the customers, who now pretend to talk about investments and vacations on the C?te d’Azur, nor the police brigade, which remains outside, closing the perimeter.
Alexei then turns to the rest of his entourage. “Go back to headquarters. No one follows me tonight,” he orders.
His gaze sweeps across the men’s faces like a cold blade, and one of them—perhaps dumber or more loyal—hesitates, opening his mouth to protest. The awe that Alexei fixes in the guy’s eyes is so brutal that the idiot swallows his entire protest along with a mouthful of saliva.
There is no possible contestation. The world learns to obey, or it dies.
Only then, with the stage clean and silent, does he turn to me. The movement is so smooth it doesn’t seem human. The ambient noise disappears: I no longer hear sirens, or glass being swept, or the grunts of the injured. There is only my own heart and Alexei, getting closer and closer.
He stops less than an arm’s length away. Expensive perfume, leather, imported cigarettes. Alexei’s gaze runs over my face—the cut on my eyebrow, the blood on my teeth, the sweat running down my neck—and down to the hand with which I still support myself on the dented body of the car.
“You made a mess,” he says, too calmly.
“You got what you wanted,” I retort. My voice comes out more raspy and precarious than I imagined. I try to straighten up, ignoring the sharp pain in my ribs. “Or are you going to tell me that the information wasn’t worth the price of a few plates?”
My bravado doesn’t impress anyone, much less Alexei, who looks at me from under his eyebrows with a mixture of disdain and clinical curiosity.
A ghost of a smile, a spasm, crosses his lips. “Your method was reckless.” He takes a step forward, and the space between us evaporates. The air around him has its own density; it absorbs sound, heat, logic. “You exposed yourself. You exposed me.”
“I solved your fucking problem,” I retort, my voice starting to really fail. “Don’t pretend you’re mad about the mess.”
“I’m not mad about the mess, Griffin. But silencing this will cause me a headache that could’ve been avoided,” he says, and now his voice is a whisper that gives me chills.
He raises his hand, and for a moment, I think I’m going to get slapped.
The touch, when it comes, is worse: his long, cold fingers touch my cheek, wipe away the dried blood.
“And my property was damaged in the process.”
The weight of the gesture is so indecent that I’m left breathless.
Before I can process the declaration of ownership, he grabs my arm forcefully. “I’m taking you home. We have to talk.”
He drags me through the now-empty corridors, ignoring the trail of blood and dignity that I leave behind.
The rest of the restaurant fades around us: customers, waiters, security guards, even the fucking ma?tre, all pretending that nothing happened, that they had never heard the name Malakov in their lives.
Each step is an outrage to my joints and my ego, but the alternative would be to leave me there, waiting for the second shift of police and paramedics. The firmness of his grip is the only thing that keeps me on my feet.
His car is parked under a gnarled tree, isolated from the others. A black, expensive, and fateful sedan, with leather seats that swallow me as soon as he throws me into the passenger seat next to the driver’s seat. The door closes, sealing the entire universe in that hermetic cabin.
Alexei gets in on the driver’s side and, without looking at me, puts the car in motion. He drives in silence for several blocks. The city lights pass like colored blurs, but the darkness inside the car is a pressure bubble that won’t stop growing.
I keep my gaze fixed forward as I feel his presence radiating from the side and the throbbing of my ribs with every minimal jolt on the asphalt.
“Do you think this is fun?” he lets out, finally, without taking his eyes off the street.
I laugh, or try to. A muffled noise comes out, and I taste new blood in my mouth. “Fun wasn’t the goal. But seeing the look on that cop’s face when his radio went off... that had its charm.”
“You could have died,” he says. “One wrong move. A stray bullet. A more desperate brother. Seraphim could have sold you a trap.”
“But he didn’t,” I say, turning my head to face him. His profile is a silhouette against the streetlights. Perfect chin, deep-set eyes, neat hair. A monument to self-control. “And I didn’t die. Now you know that Vasily doesn’t have Seraphim on a leash. It seems the balance was positive for you.”
“The balance is only positive because I controlled the outcome,” he retorts, turning a corner with a fluidity that belies the tension in his shoulders. “You tossed a coin in the air and hoped it landed on the right side. And I don’t work with luck, Griffin. I work with certainties.”
“So use me as a certainty,” I provoke, ignoring the taste of defeat that lingers after I speak. “You pointed me in the direction of a problem, and I’m solving it. Not your way, but I am.”
He drives for a few more blocks. The city center is a chaos of lights, cars, and lost people.
I try to find some distraction outside, but all I see are distorted reflections and rain accumulating on the edge of the glass.
The bleeding from my shirt begins to coagulate.
I wonder if Alexei planned to let me bleed to unconsciousness just to make the interrogation easier later.
He stops the car at a red light, and in absolute silence, he finally turns to me. The red light of the traffic light bathes his face, casting shadows in his eyes.
“What you did today,” he says, “was the equivalent of taking a stack of my money and setting it on fire in the middle of the street to get attention.
“I got the attention of the right person,” I retort without hesitation.
“And gave you the advantage over your brother. You say you hate chaos, Alexei, but you sought me out in that arena. You bought me.” I feel the warmth of the blood running down my collar and wonder if any trace of it shows on the outside, if the stains have already become visible, a flag of defeat or defiance.
“What did you expect? A little dog that sits and rolls over when you tell it to?”
I see a microscopic flaw in the mask. A muscle in his eyelid, an almost imperceptible movement of his lips. The light turns green, the car moves forward, and I believe it was all my imagination that Alexei is really made of stone.
“It’s not the first time I’ve said this,” he says. “You’re not a pet, and I certainly didn’t buy a dog. I bought a weapon. That shoots in the direction it’s pointed.” He turns the wheel, heading the car down a side street whose entrance I would never have noticed if I weren’t sober.
The lampposts cast intermittent flashes on the windows, and every time a light passes over my face, I feel like I’m in a bad movie interrogation, waiting for the next torturous question.
Alexei drives with a calmness that makes my stomach churn.
The car goes down a narrow ramp, enters the underground garage of the place where I’ve slept for the last few days—his apartment.
He parks in a spot with no neighbors. He turns off the engine, but makes no move to get out immediately. He stays there, looking straight ahead, the steering wheel in his hands, his glass eyes reflecting the blue dashboard.
His face, normally carved in indifference, now shows a thin crack.
“You destroyed the balance of weeks of work in less than twenty minutes,” he says. “I made deals, forged alliances, kept every one of my family members in line so they wouldn’t explode before the right time. I still don’t know if you’re a bigger threat to me or to them.”
He unbuckles his seatbelt with a click and gets out of the car, the door closing slowly. I stay there, holding my breath, feeling the blood already starting to run down to my fingers.
When I finally get out, the cold wind of the garage makes me shiver, and I can barely stand.
He doesn’t help me, just watches me as I drag myself out.
The silence in the private elevator is even worse than in the car. There is nothing to look at but my own reflection: swollen face, black eye, cut mouth, torn clothes. Next to me, Alexei looks like a statue: no marks, no sweat, no sign of humanity aside from that thin cut.
The apartment door opens directly into the living room, minimalist and as sterile as I remember.
With the world carefully locked outside, Alexei says, “Take off your shirt.”
I stand still for a second. “I’m not one to obey tricks, Alexei.”
He walks to the kitchen, pours two glasses of vodka, then turns slowly, his eyes fixed on me. “I need to see the extent of the damage you’ve done to yourself. Or would you prefer that I tear it from you?”
I force myself to pull the fabric over my head, ignoring the pain that runs through the nerves in my arm and the scraped skin. The blood dries and sticks, tearing scabs and bringing back the metallic smell that never leaves me. I throw the shirt on the floor and look away to see my real situation.
The broken glass from the car—and from the crash—tore too many parts of me.
He walks up to me, vodka in hand. He hands me a glass—both shots are generous, but his disappears down his throat at once, while I can barely hold mine without shaking.
The alcohol burns in my mouth, then goes down, numbing my insides.
He lightly probes my rib. The touch is cold, but no less invasive.
“Nothing broken, but you’ll swell up within two hours.”
I try to smile, but I don’t have the energy. “Does the anesthetic work better if I finish the glass too?” I say, raising mine in a pathetic toast.
“Sit down.”
This time, I obey. I sit on the revolving circular stool near the kitchen counter, and he goes to the small bar in the back, gets a black box, brings it back, and opens it: inside, bandages, gauze, tape, scissors. A first aid manual for reckless idiots.
“How many of these do you have?” I say.
He circles me, analyzing every cut, every bruise that is already starting to bloom.
When he finally touches my rib, his fingers are firm, pressing on the exact spot that makes me flinch. An involuntary shiver runs through me.
“What is it, Alexei?” I let out, sharpening my tone because the pain and the alcohol and the taste of blood in my mouth make me irresponsible. “Afraid of breaking your new toy before you have a chance to play with it?”
And it all happens in an instant.
Alexei’s arm comes from behind and grabs me by the back of the neck, without warning, without hesitation—brute force from someone who knows exactly where and how to squeeze so as not to break, just to subdue. He lifts me from the stool and pushes me against the kitchen wall.
The impact reverberates through my entire body, and I feel the strip of skin where my shirt tore burn under the contact of the cold surface.
I try to break free out of pure reflex, but he stiffens his grip, fixes my chin against the wall, and only then lets the air circulate.
I could really fight, but something in his gesture sends a clear signal that the goal is not just physical domination.
“Do you want to test me, Griffin?” he whispers in my ear. “Do you want to know how far my self-control goes?”
I feel the palm of his other arm slide down my back, slowly descending to my waistline. The touch has something clinical about it, but it also has a trace of methodical violence that is all his own.
He holds me there, his body pressing against mine, and there is nothing but accelerated breathing and the creak of my pride trying to resist being crushed.
I let out a muffled laugh. “Are you going to teach me a lesson, is that it? Are you going to show who’s the boss of the fucking playground?”
I try to turn my face. He prevents it with ease.
“You’re so used to being beaten that you don’t recognize when someone wants to save you from yourself,” he says. “Or do you only work based on punishment?”
I think of all the nights I went into the ring ready to die because at least there someone was paying attention.
My whole life, outside of Seraphim, I was told I was a plague, a disease.
Alexei, at his worst, is telling me that I’m a problem he wants to solve.
And I realize that I don’t want to run away from the only one who gives me a fucking reason to stay.
I bite my lip. “Try your luck, boss.”
My muscles relax against him. I let him touch me.