Alexei
In the silence of my office, I restore order. Capital flows, supply lines, digital bets, surveillance cameras, salaries paid in cryptocurrency miles away—all converging here, where order is absolute, entropy contained by my will.
Rotten palaces fall because kings get distracted. I never get distracted.
The mess at the Krestoran is already under control.
The manager, media, and police were paid enough to keep their mouths shut for a whole year.
The witnesses were located, tagged in databases, and, when necessary, threatened.
Vania’s goon broke the code of silence and gave me enough to prove that Vasily was using him to get information on me.
He’s now folded up on a gurney in a public ER, with his nose stitched up by someone who doesn’t know how to ask questions.
The evidence provided will help convince my father.
Griffin’s disobedience is comforting in its stubbornness, but his usefulness has truly surpassed my most optimistic projections.
He is a force of nature: ugly, unpredictable, destructive, impossible to ignore.
I invested in this aberration, bet high, and the results started to appear even before the dividends.
Griffin is the spark that could set everything on fire, including myself.
But the bastard is impossible to control. And I hate losing control.
So, I decided… to trust.
A strange and intrusive word for me.
I’m surprised by the speed at which everything unraveled. Vasily, always so discreet, was the first to move after the commotion, sending coded messages through his men. He knows the walls are closing in on him.
In the end, what matters is who bleeds and who collects.
I finalize an acquisition contract for a space that looks like a ring.
Something large, luxurious, that can project a professional presence instead of sharing the garage-circus aesthetic that Karpov insists is better.
Until all initial investments are maximized, I will ensure a renovation and proper structure that passes legal inspections without major headaches.
Illegal fights keep their bettors fixed with their impersonal brutality, but I can maintain it under a legal facade. I will maintain it.
The logistics are almost entirely complete and communicated when my secure phone vibrates.
An unsaved number.
I answer without taking my eyes off the monitor.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Malakov,” the voice on the other end is a rushed, terrified whisper. Boris. Ivan’s goon. “It’s Boris. Sorry to call like this, but you said…”
“I know what I said, Boris,” I cut him off. “Get to the point.”
“It’s the boss. Ivan,” Boris stammers. “He… he found out about what happened at the restaurant, with the… the fighter. He got some of the men together. He’s furious, sir. He said… he said he was going to rip off the cripple’s other hand and send it to you as a gift.”
I stop everything I’m doing.
The news isn’t exactly unexpected—Ivan was never subtle, and the hatred between us was old, visceral, triggered by decades of idiotic competition and family grudges.
But has his hatred escalated to the point of ignoring my warnings about Vasily?
Hearing the death threat delivered like this makes me feel a pang of risk.
“And where is my cousin now, Boris?”
“He managed to locate the fighter… said something about a jukebox. He left a few minutes ago. With two others, sir.”
I end the call before Boris can contaminate my direct line.
Immediately, I pull up the screen that monitors Griffin’s vitals and location.
He’s motionless in a rundown bar in the port district, near the old train station—smells of mold, sawdust, and zero cameras, exactly the kind of hole where Griffin feels at home.
His vitals fill the screen. His heart rate is dangerously high, a peak of pure adrenaline. 180 beats per minute. A fight.
The risk. The impact on the chain of command.
The loss of my most chaotic asset, and what that means for the cold war that’s approaching.
And, on top of that, the unbearable feeling that Ivan has made a fool of me.
The recklessness. The direct disobedience.
And the fury that rises in my chest is so cold and sharp it surprises me.
Fuck.
I stand up. The chair slides back. I open my desk drawer, pull the Sig Sauer P229 from its black case, and an extra magazine of ammunition. I put the gun in the holster on my lower back and adjust my jacket.
As I cross the polished hallway, my secretary stares at me with discreet panic. I nod, and she doesn’t dare ask anything. No one dares.
In the elevator, I enter the private code that blocks all other floors and go straight down to the underground garage. My car awaits me: custom armor, immaculate white interior, the smell of new leather, and imminent violence.
I floor the accelerator. The roar of the engine drowns out even my thoughts. Every second is an eternity.
I pull up Griffin’s vitals on the car’s dashboard. High heart rate. I leave it in the background, accelerate, and try to call him.
He doesn’t answer. The number starts to climb erratically. From 180 to 190. 195. 200.
A sign of massive hemorrhage. If the total blood volume in the body plummets, the heart works at its limit to send the remaining blood to the brain and vital organs.
At any moment, Ivan will finish the job and send me a grotesque package just to show off his victory.
I think of Griffin, on a floor covered in shit and blood, facing death with the same crooked smile as always. I think of Ivan, the idiot who never understood the new world, so predictable and animalistic, it makes me ashamed to carry the same blood.
I turn the corner hard enough to lift the Mercedes’ front axle. The tires scream, the black asphalt gleams under the cracked streetlights.
I see the place. It’s worse than I imagined. A corner bar with a failing neon sign, the very picture of decay. It’s the kind of ruin I would turn into a bonded warehouse or a drone station.
I stop the car a few meters from the door.
I don’t wait for my men, who are minutes away. This is personal.
I get out of the car, and the night air hits me, cold and damp.
The “music” leaking from the bar is a generic, loud rock song.
I notice the damp chill of the pier coming from the dead docks.
I hear the unmistakable sound of violence.
I feel the eyes of the neighborhood zombies following me, drawn by the car, the cut of my suit, the walk of someone who doesn’t fear bullets.
I adjust my jacket and walk toward the door with a calm I don’t feel inside.
The wooden door is already cracked and marked with shoe prints. I kick it. A single blow. The hinge gives; the door slams against the inside wall. Twenty pairs of eyes study me in panic or euphoria, and the entire bar freezes.
But the sound of flesh being pummeled doesn’t stop.
I see the scene. It’s grotesque even by Malakov standards: two of Vania’s goons leaning against the wall like trash. One of them has a destroyed face, just cartilage and blood. The other holds his arm at a right angle, as if it had been dislocated by a hydraulic press.
In the center of the room, Ivan is on top of Griffin—half of his face already unrecognizable, propped against the remains of a shattered pool table—punching him relentlessly.
Griffin tries to lift an arm to defend himself, trembling, trying uselessly to hold Ivan’s fist. He’s already out of strength.
The sound of the punches is deafening. The audience barely breathes.
A strangely pure hatred takes hold of me.
“Vania,” I say. “Stop.”
It’s an order. And everyone in the room knows it. The customers, drunk or sober, try to shrink until they disappear. Even the goon with the crooked nose widens his eyes.
Ivan doesn’t even look at me.
“Get out of here, Alexei,” he spits. “I’m cleaning up your trash.”
And he continues to punch Griffin. Blood splatters on the table’s torn felt, painting red circles on the filthy floor.
I process all possible outcomes: dialogue, threat, bribery, sudden death. None of them satisfies the taste of bile rising in my throat. I’m tired of the choreographies of power.
I don’t say anything else. In three long strides, I cross the distance between us, grab the collar of my cousin’s expensive jacket, and rip him off Griffin. His body is heavy, but not as heavy as the contempt I feel.
Vania stumbles, but doesn’t fall.
He turns to me, his chest rising and falling, his face a mask of disbelief and hatred.
“Are you fucking crazy, Alexei?” he yells, pointing at Griffin, who can barely keep his eyes open. “This son of a bitch attacked one of my men! In front of you! And you protect him?”
“The man he attacked was a rat, Vania,” I say. I deliberately place myself between him and Griffin. “He was selling my transport routes to Vasily. Using your name and your operation as cover.”
The sentence hits Ivan, but it doesn’t solve anything. I see his anger transform; now it’s something else, more brutal, more desperate.
“I can’t take this shit anymore,” he roars.
“Always you two! You and Vasily, with your fucking games! I’m just the clown.
The foreman to clean up the trash you leave behind.
It’s never about me, it’s always about you.
I’m a Malakov too! My father died for this family, and all I get is a supporting role!
You think I’m stupid, right? The idiot who’s only good for fighting! I’m not!”
It’s the outburst of years of humiliation, swallowed dry during Sunday lunches and emergency meetings, every time he heard his own name spoken with contempt. I see a child: big eyes, a borrowed shirt, waiting for acknowledgment even from a street dog. I feel sorry for him.
I let him finish. The silence that hangs is rotten, full of ghosts.
I straighten my tie.
“Then stop acting like an idiot.”