GRIFFIN
Burning muscles, throbbing bones, stinging cuts. The fresh scent of newly laundered Egyptian cotton, the expensive perfume of someone who doesn’t sleep on ordinary sheets, and a silence, heavy and dense, suspended between two moments in time, awaiting the morning’s verdict.
When I finally manage to open my eyes, they burn with the gray light leaking through the cracks of the automatic blinds. Slowly, the memories of last night begin to reverse into the present.
There’s the bar, Vania’s furious face, the blood running hot from my eyebrow, Alexei’s dry voice, and then darkness.
I remember his firm hands, holding me. The sting of the antiseptic, the needle stitching my skin, his calm murmur as he worked.
And, most of all, his silhouette sitting in the armchair, in the dark, watching over me, because I had asked him to stay.
He must have left at some point after that, because I woke up alone with a note on the nightstand: Be back soon. Along with the note, pills and an untouched glass of water. The oldest lie in the world, but coming from him, it felt different.
Now, the sun is already up. I get up slowly, pulling on the first black t-shirt I find. It smells of imported cologne, and I feel ridiculous. Still, I wear it. I change the bandage on the cut on my forehead, take the painkillers.
I walk to the living room and every step makes the wound in my ribs protest.
Alexei is standing in the center of the office, with his back to me, staring intently at the screens. He’s wearing an impeccable suit, his hair slicked back, with the rigid posture. Even without seeing my reflection on the screens, he knows I’ve arrived.
“Painkillers in the third kitchen cabinet,” he says, without turning.
“Already took them,” I reply, leaning my shoulder against the doorframe.
He drags a news feed to the center of the panel. The headlines spin in Russian, English, Mandarin. I don’t follow the content, only recognize a few company names, a reference to an accident at the port, another to the closure of a factory in Finland. Alexei is always watching for patterns.
“What’s the plan?” I ask.
He turns, slowly. His gaze sweeps over me, analyzing the damage, cataloging the flaws. Behind the coldness, a trace of genuine concern.
“The plan,” he says, “is that you will stay here. You will eat, you will rest, and you will recover. You have a fight in the circuit soon, and I didn’t invest in you to see you lose because of my cousin’s stupidity.
” He says this without anger, as if injuries, humiliation, and confinement were natural parts of an athlete’s preparation cycle.
Protective, even. And that poisons me.
“No,” I say. “I’m not going to lie here like a broken display case while you solve everything yourself. I brought you Seraphim. I gave you the advantage. I’m part of this.”
“You were part of it,” he corrects. Now his voice is cold, cutting. “You fulfilled your function. Now your function is to recover. I will not risk my most valuable asset for a whim of yours.”
Asset. That fucking word again. After everything—the fight, the blood, the silent confession in my plea to be useful—am I still just an item on his spreadsheet? I let out a laugh.
“How many ‘assets’ have been in your bed before me? And how many of them did you throw away when they stopped generating profit?”
He takes a deep breath, once, twice, and only then looks at me again—that cutting blue is now opaque, tired, with fissures of humanity where before there was only calculation.
“That’s not what I meant,” he says, cracked by something that sounds a lot like disappointment. Not with me—with himself, maybe, or with the fact that he couldn’t maintain his professional distance for even thirty seconds.
“No?” I provoke, pressing further, because I don’t know how to back down when I see blood.
“Your ‘asset’ survived an ambush by your cousin and gave you the perfect weapon for this ridiculous war. An ‘asset’ stays on a fucking shelf, collecting dust and waiting for the next order. I’m the player who’s winning the game for you, Alexei. ”
He doesn’t react. Not that I can see. So controlled it’s violent.
Alexei turns, slowly, and faces the risk of admitting defeat head-on. He’s not the type to bleed on the floor. He breaks his fall with elegance. A tired, crooked half-smile touches his lips, the idea of losing control more comical than tragic.
“You are my most unpredictable and dangerous weapon. And that is exactly why you’re not going anywhere.”
I laugh, unable to stop myself. “You don’t even know how to curse properly, Alex. How are you going to try and keep me locked up in here, by drowning me in French perfume?”
“If I have to,” he says, and there’s a hint of humor in his voice. Then his voice becomes perfectly controlled again, as if it had never wavered. “While you were sleeping, I went out. I met with Seraphim tonight, Griffin.”
I feel my breath catch. He went. Alone. After everything I did to get Seraphim to the table, after the risk, the humiliation, the pain—he crossed the bridge without me. My blood boils. I feel childish.
“You went alone? After everything?”
“After everything,” he repeats, and his mask truly cracks. He approaches, stopping in front of me, slowly. I stay, gritting my teeth, waiting for the professional barrier between us.
But no. What comes is just a hand—warm, firm, unexpectedly gentle—cupping my face, forcing me to look at him up close. I don’t even want to resist.
His touch is affectionate in a way that disarms me. His thumb traces the line of my battered jaw, his other hand open at the nape of my neck, firm, anchoring me there.
“I went,” he says, low. “Precisely because it was after everything.”
I don’t understand. The anger dissipates quickly with his touch.
“You did your part,” he continues, his eyes fixed on mine, and there’s no lie there. “You did the impossible. The risk that followed… was mine. Not yours. My responsibility was to ensure you were safe. And I don’t break my promises.”
His words cut through me in a strange way. My entire body is reduced to a single point: his hand, holding the back of my neck, saying without words that the world can explode outside, but I will stay exactly where he decides. Because he wants to protect me.
I don’t know what to say. The words disappear. I break down. Literally—my body gives way. I lean forward, rest my forehead on his shoulder, feeling the cool fabric of his shirt mixed with the warmth of his skin, and I breathe deep, hoping his scent will erase what’s left of my pride.
His fingers lace into my hair, at my nape, holding me there, against him. A silent way of saying you stay here.
We stay like that, motionless, for a few seconds too long to be casual. If I fell right there, he wouldn’t let anyone but himself pull me up from the floor.
“You already ruined his plan, you know,” Alexei whispers. He speaks with a poorly disguised pride.
“What are you talking about?”
“Vasily,” he replies. “His grand strategy depended on Kirill being alive to be the witness who would incriminate my cousin. And you killed him. You removed the centerpiece of his game without even knowing it.”
At the time, it seemed like just settling a score, a favor. Now, I understand: it was a checkmate in their game. I feel a wave of satisfaction, but with it comes the terror of what it means.
“I just followed your orders. That’s good, isn’t it?” I ask.
“It’s good and it’s bad,” Alexei muses, his hand still on my neck. “It’s good because his original plan is in ruins. It’s bad because now he’s cornered. And a cornered man is unpredictable.”
I close my eyes, smelling him—the expensive fabric of his shirt, his skin, him.
It drags me back to all the previous nights, to every time his life and mine were separated by only a line drawn in the flesh.
It’s a complete and abject surrender, the kind of thing that would have disgusted me years ago.
Now it just makes me want to sink deeper.
His arms wrap around me, firm, and we stay like that for a long time, in the silence of the office.
I don’t feel anger, I don’t feel that automatic impulse to sabotage my own comfort before it’s taken from me. I don’t feel the need to be anything other than what I am at this exact moment.
The pressure of his embrace carries away the residue of violence still bubbling under my skin. And it works. For one whole second, there is only him.
“Griffin,” he whispers.
I know, by the tone, that the truce is over.
I pull back just enough to look into his face.
Alexei is wearing that expression of absolute impassivity.
Up close, with his hands still on me, I see the cracks: the nervousness at the corners of his eyes, the slight tension in his jaw, the pang of fear camouflaged as concern.
He doesn’t like talking about uncertainty.
“My father has called an emergency council in response to the rift between my cousin and me.”
“You were expecting that?”
“I was expecting at least another forty-eight hours,” he says with a bitter disdain in his voice for having underestimated his own family’s unpredictability. “If something goes wrong tonight,” Alexei continues, and his voice is so calm it borders on cruel, “if I don’t come back by dawn…”
I already know what he’s going to say. I don’t want to hear it. The irritation rises from my stomach at the inevitability of this script, at the tragic screenplay embedded in every decision we make.
I open my mouth to argue. He silences me with a look.
“...there’s a safe behind the painting in the bedroom. The code is the year the Berlin Wall fell. Inside, you’ll find a passport, keys to a car that’s not in my name, and the details of a Swiss bank account. It’s enough for you to disappear forever. Take it. Vanish. And don’t look back.”