ALEXEI #3
It could be convincing if I hadn’t done my homework.
“Invisible is what you’ve never been, Vasily.
” I retrieve the tablet from the table, swipe to the next screen, and display the org chart: thirty-seven names, dates, cross-referenced transfers, mapped routes.
“Here. One hundred and eighty thousand euros, transferred from your account in Lugano, passing through three intermediaries and landing directly in the front account of your executor. And the best part: the receipt is registered by biometrics. Your biometrics.”
The room falls silent, except for the sound of Ivan’s irregular breathing, which oscillates between anger and paralyzing panic. Vasily stares at the tablet, his smile dissolving, centimeter by centimeter.
“Any idiot can forge a statement, Alexei,” he risks another performance, but his voice doesn’t have the same polish.
“You were always good with computers. A useful skill for a basement rat.” He turns to his father, his eyes pleading for support that, for the first time, doesn’t come.
“He’s desperate. Istanbul ruined him, and now he wants to drag everyone down with him. It’s pathetic.”
“Pathetic is using your cousin’s name to cover your tracks.
Or do you want to compare now who the real shame of the family is?
” I pull the matte plastic card that Seraphim gave me on the rooftop from the inner pocket of my jacket.
I place it on the oak desk, sliding it across the polished wood until it stops right in the center, between the three of us. “This, for example.”
Ivan leans in, his gaze alternating between the card and my face, as if he could, from context, guess the next lines of the script. Vasily, on the other hand, recognizes the object immediately. The color drains from his face.
“Ivan, look closely,” I say. “Do you recognize this signature?”
Ivan picks up the card. His eyes trace the line of black ink under the plastic film. I see confusion turn into recognition, and then into a growing horror. That hesitant M, the drawn-out A. The signature he only makes under pressure.
“This is mine,” he stammers, looking from me to Vasily. “But I never… I never opened any account at M.I. Trust.”
“No, you didn’t,” I confirm. “But your name is on it. An account opened at Vasily’s request, which received funds from one of his companies.
” I touch the screen, opening the detailed transaction page.
Ivan Malakov’s name is highlighted. “An account that, conveniently, made regular payments to a certain Kirill Denisov… the so-called witness from Odessa.”
Ivan turns so pale he looks like he’s about to faint.
“That’s a lie!” Vasily slams his hand on the table, his whole body projecting the will to explode. “It’s a setup! You’re trying to turn Ivan against me!”
“I don’t have to,” I reply coldly. “You did that yourself. You always wanted Ivan to do the dirty work, so you could later pose as the savior, the responsible brother. And in the end, the glory would be yours. Never his.”
The silence that follows is deafening. Even Angélica, behind me, seems to have stopped breathing.
Ivan’s right arm is visibly shaking under the table.
The hatred sprouts, primitive, but it has yet to find a definite target.
His gaze goes from me to Vasily, then back to the tablet, to the card, to me again.
I see the moment the pieces click into place. He understands.
“Vasily…” Ivan whispers. “Tell me it’s a lie.”
Vasily opens his mouth, but no words come out.
Vasily can’t find a ready-made phrase, nor a plausible way out.
He looks into his father’s eyes for some lifeline, but receives only stone.
I could continue, crush him completely, but there’s no need.
The castle has already crumbled: all that remains is the historical record of failure, and no one in the family will forget Vasily’s face at this moment.
At the head of the table, the old man’s expression doesn’t change. But the anger that fueled his eyes is now of a different kind: no longer fury, but the absolute sadness of disappointment.
“You were always careless, Vasily,” I say, like a memory.
It is at this moment that the old man speaks. His voice is weak, but it carries the weight of decades of power.
“Enough.”
The word echoes in the room, final.
He turns to Vasily, and I see there, for the first and last time, all the disappointment in the world. It’s clear that nothing Vasily says will change his fate. My brother turns to his father, his arrogance undone, replaced by a childish fear.
“Father—“
“I gave you a name. I gave you power. And you used it all to rot this family from the inside.” The old man speaks with a clarity that rips through the silence.
He rises in his chair, his trembling hands gripping the oak carvings.
The effort makes him shake. “Let everyone here be a witness. The Malakov name no longer belongs to you. You will have no bodyguards, no business, no roof. Whoever wants your head, let them take it. To me, you died tonight.”
The verdict is irrevocable, stripped of any warmth. There is no mercy, no room for another plea for clemency. The old man doesn’t even look at me: the sentence has already been given, the fate already written, and all that’s left is the fulfillment of the ritual.
One of the security guards in black, planted near the door since the beginning of the evening, moves forward in an automatic sequence. He prepares to grab Vasily—to remove him by force, dragging the symbolic corpse into exile.
The patriarch’s hand rises, trembling in the air, and the gesture is also final.
“No. He leaves on his own.”
Silence.
Vasily doesn’t look at anyone. He doesn’t seek help in the shadows of the hall, nor in the depths of his own soul.
He just stands up, carefully, fearing that one false move would make his entire body crumble.
He smooths his jacket, rebuilding the armor of dignity for the last time, and walks to the door.
The cousins and uncles take a half-step back. The corridor opens for him, a gauntlet of contempt and fear.
When the door closes, what remains is silence. A heavy vacuum where my brother’s future used to be. Across the room, the scattered flock of my relatives is frozen, processing the verdict. My father seems to have aged ten years in ten minutes, sunken into his throne of leather and oak.
I have won. The word is hollow, tasteless.
On an impulse I don’t fully understand, my hand moves discreetly to the inner pocket of my jacket. The burner phone. The link to the apartment.
I slide it out below the level of the table. There is a single, unread notification.
Come back home.
Three words. An order wrapped in a plea, from the only asset who would dare give one to me.
Griffin, likely bruised and impatient, is in my apartment, waiting.
A strange, subtle warmth spreads through my chest, a counterpoint to the glacial chill of the room. My expression doesn’t change for the vultures watching me, yet something inside of me settles.
The victory suddenly has a purpose.
I blank the screen and slip the phone back into my pocket. I look at Ivan, who is still standing, trembling with an anger that has nowhere else to go. Then, I look at the old man, who now withers back into his chair, the weight of the decision already bending him.
Power has changed hands. The family name, and everything that entails, no longer belongs to the exile.
I retrieve the tablet from the table, and Vasily’s too—a merciful gesture, a final kindness to my destitute brother. All the evidence was sent to my father the moment this meeting began.
I turn to leave, because the confrontation is actually already over.
On my way out, Ivan grabs my arm. The touch is hesitant—he’s struggling not to apologize, not to cry, not to scream. “Alexei,” he begins, but I don’t let the sentence form.
“I know,” I cut him off.
I release Ivan and let him deal with his own demons. I cross the room, the eyes of the relatives fixed on me, each one trying to calculate the new balance of power. Behind me, I still hear Ivan sniffling, like an animal that has lost its pack.
Angélica looks at me. Her eyes shine with an admiration mixed with fascination and terror. She says nothing; she doesn’t need to. The gesture of respect is more eloquent than any congratulations. I walk past her, without a word, and head for the hall.
There, the remaining Malakovs watch me in absolute silence. The echo of the night, of the decision, has already taken over everything.
I think of Vasily—of the cold loneliness that awaits him outside, of the void that will devour him without witnesses.
On the other hand, I think of myself: of what I have become, of what I will still need to become, of the sacrifices I will make to justify power.
I remember the rooftop, Seraphim’s card, the taste of blood and smoke in my mouth.
Victory is not clean, it never was. But it is mine.
It’s easy to interpret these nights as the end of an era. I know, by instinct, that everything that was cut today will grow back, in even stranger forms.
In the end, that’s all Vasily ever was: a scared child, breaking his own toys in the hope that someone, finally, would look at him.
The family limousine is parked right beside, its black body reflecting a distorted image of the mansion and all its past. The driver doesn’t dare open the door, doesn’t even blink. Smart enough not to get involved in the scene of disgrace. But I don’t get in.
He’s there.
I step away from the entrance, giving enough time for anyone who wanted to follow me to give up the idea.
Vasily is on the sidewalk, a few meters ahead, his shoulders outlined under the fabric of his jacket, rigid as if waiting to be shot in the back. There’s no one around—no security guards accompany him anymore, no car waits for him.
He is alone, exiled the moment the sentence fell.