ALEXEI #4
I walk toward him slowly, letting the gravel announce my arrival.
I stop beside him, careful to keep enough distance so it doesn’t seem like clemency.
He doesn’t turn, nor does he show surprise.
Maybe he was expecting this meeting, maybe he doesn’t know how to deal with a world that doesn’t revolve around our domestic wars.
“Where are you going now?” I say without raising my voice. There is no joy in his defeat, only an absolute weariness.
He hesitates, and only after a few seconds does he answer, corroded, low, but firm in a new way. “As far away from you as possible.”
We stand in silence. A man saying he has nowhere left to go, and so he will run as far as his instinct allows.
We stay like that, side by side. I wait.
Not to pressure him, but because I know that if there is any truth, any remnant of sincerity in this story, it will sprout now or never.
He has been trained his whole life to manipulate, to survive, to never show weakness.
But absolute defeat has the power to strip even the most astute of men.
“Why?” I ask. “Why destroy everything, Vasily?”
He finally turns to me. The movement is slow, painful, and his face, framed by the crooked light of the lamppost, looks younger than ever—the same boy who, thirty years ago, pushed me down the stairs just to see if I would cry.
The same boy who hid behind his father’s office door, afraid of being beaten.
“He always pitted us against each other, didn’t he?
” he says, in a whisper. “Since we were children. One had to be the smart one, the other the charming one. One the brain, the other the facade. He never let us just be brothers.” He looks down at the ground.
His posture, once so rehearsed, crumbles.
“I wanted to humiliate you, not cripple you. I never wanted you to be mutilated, Alexei. It was never about that. I wanted, just once, for you to look at me and see an equal—a brother, not an obstacle.”
There, deep in his eyes, I see that it’s real: the fear, the repression, the absolute lack of self-worth.
What he wanted, in the end, was always a little respect, a little recognition.
And now, when there’s nothing left, he can only confess it.
He puts his hand in his jacket pocket, and by reflex, I prepare my body for an attack, some gesture of self-defense.
But all he pulls out is a crumpled pack of cigarettes.
He offers it to me—the old, automatic gesture of cousins and brothers who grew up together at parties, funerals, baptisms—and then retracts his arm, remembering that we are no longer on the same side of the world.
He lights the cigarette, taking a deep drag. Sunken eyes, trembling lips.
“You know what’s funniest, Alexei?” he says, exhaling the smoke. “In Istanbul… I never wanted the men to die. That wasn’t the plan.”
I remain silent, watching him.
“I didn’t betray you,” he says, now looking me in the eye. And the worst part is, I believe him. Istanbul… “You never spoke to me as an equal again. You never looked at me without pity or contempt. In Odessa… I just wanted to create a problem that would force you to come to me. To ask for my help.”
He laughs, without joy.
“Pathetic, isn’t it? Seraphim had already told me you would figure it out. That, in the end, I wouldn’t be able to hide my objective. He was always right about us both.”
That was it. Seraphim was right after all. The motivation behind the betrayal, the sabotage, the risk.
I really believed that Vasily was a traitor in Istanbul.
The wind blows the leaves across the garden, and I smell the cigarette mixed with the smell of wet earth. It’s a night for a funeral. The deceased is alive, and deep down, he has never been more alive than now.
I take a deep breath and look at him, at the failure he has accepted himself to be. “You wanted a rival who would take you seriously,” I say. “Congratulations. You got one.”
He looks at me, his eyes welling up, but he doesn’t cry.
“Your mistake,” I continue, “was thinking that everything was a game of feelings. Attention. Recognition. It never was. It was always about competence. You just weren’t good enough to play with me.”
I turn to leave, because the conversation is over, because there is no possible redemption for anyone.
“You won, Alexei.” He speaks without raising his voice. “But you’re going to lose everything just the same.”
I stop, my back to him, and think about responding, but there’s no point. What I needed to say has already been said.
I leave him there, alone with his cigarette and the wreckage of a life, a ghost at the gate of the house that rejected him.
I turn and walk back to the car, with weariness weighing down my every step. There is no euphoria in victory.
When I’m halfway there, the heavy sound of the mansion doors opening echoes behind me.
First, a silent stream of relatives. Uncles, cousins, their wives.
They emerge as isolated individuals, hurried shadows who avoid eye contact.
When they pass me, some just murmur my name, almost inaudible, “Alexei,” as if the new title of power already weighs too heavily on their tongues.
Others avoid even that, looking at the ground, at the sky, at their hands, anything but me.
I see in their eyes the panic disguised as prudence, the urgency to build new alliances before Vasily’s corpse gets cold.
They are judging me, weighing my authority on their personal scales, trying to guess how many days they will last under the new regime.
Most of them flee to their anonymous Mercedes or armored SUVs, the doors slamming in sync, engines starting at the same time.
I imagine how they will tell this night’s story to their children, their mistresses, their lawyers: “Alexei got rid of the crazy one,” they will say, or perhaps, “one of the heirs doesn’t even forgive his own brother.
” Each one draws their own narrative of survival.
Only then do I realize that someone has been left behind on the illuminated portico of the entrance.
Angélica.
She doesn’t hurry, doesn’t hide, and doesn’t try to compete with the funereal parade of relatives.
She stops at the top of the stairs, the entrance light framing her silhouette.
She is the only one who looks me straight in the eye.
I play along: I stop in my path, wait for her to come to me.
She descends the steps with the precision of an auditor.
When she gets close, she maintains the exact distance to feel safe, not submissive.
“They have a new czar,” she says.
I laugh a short, dry laugh. “Not yet. Ivan is still a Malakov.”
She folds her arms, and a crooked smile appears at the corner of her mouth. “Yes, but the old man’s speech was… like a will. You should have stayed to listen. It sounded like he was already reading his own epitaph.”
“Today, maybe. Tomorrow, the conspiracies begin.” I look around, at the gate, at the garden, at the windows of the house. I know that somewhere, someone is already on the phone, writing the next chapter of the coup. “No one survives here without preparing their own antidote.”
Angélica nods. “Want some advice?”
“You always have some.”
“Don’t wait too long.” She looks back at the mansion, then returns her eyes to me. “They’ll test you before the weekend is over. If you have plans, move your pieces before they do.”
“It’s already done. Tomorrow, the first thing will be to audit all the accounts Vasily touched. Review every line of every contract, every agreement. I’ll call Ankara and isolate any compromised contact.”
Her eyes narrow in a gesture of approval. “That’s why I bet on you.”
“You bet on yourself, Angélica. You just used my name on the ticket.”
Her smile widens. “And it was a winning ticket. If you need someone to deal with the internal vultures, you know where to find me.”
“You’ll be the first to know,” I say.
It’s enough. She understands the promise contained in those words.
I let her go first, watching her steps get lost in the damp gravel. One last look, and she disappears among the shadows of the cars.
I take a deep breath, my chest finally expanding, and I’m preparing to get into the car when I hear my father’s voice—not as strong as before, but still impossible to ignore.
“Alexei.”
The entrance light now reveals the old man, leaning on Ivan’s shoulder. The contrast between them startles me: the father, diminished by illness and old age, and Ivan, a trembling giant, the hatred on his face already replaced by doubt. They wait for me as if they actually want to talk.
I approach them.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Vasily is gone,” says the old man. “But his businesses remain. The laundries, the schemes, the accounts. Without him, we’ll have a hole in six months.”
Ivan lets out a humorless laugh. “A hole is an understatement. It’s a fucking tidal wave. Half of our profits passed through his hands.”
I see the calculation forming in the old man’s eyes. He’s trying to understand if he will survive what he has just created.
“Everyone’s sure you’ve blown up the family,” Ivan adds, “and now everyone’s going to eat dirt together.”
They couldn’t be more wrong.
“Vasily’s ‘labyrinth’ was an open sewer,” I say. “Inefficient, risky, and outdated. He used methods from the nineties. I was already building the solution.”
I take my tablet out of my pocket again, the same one I used to condemn one brother. Now, I will use it to take his kingdom. I open a file and turn the screen to them. A detailed org chart of a clandestine fighting circuit, headed by one name: Karpov.
“This,” I say, “is the future. I’ll legalize more than half of the structure in two years. I’ve already closed an exclusivity contract with Titan Energy. Vasily only cleared the way.”
Ivan looks at the diagram, his mouth open, and only now does he realize how much he underestimated everything. “…That’s why you—“
He connects the dots. My sudden interest in Karpov’s scheme, which he thought was just about Griffin.
“The money is already flowing. Vasily’s network won’t be missed,” I say.
The old man examines the screens, looking for typos that could invalidate my victory. He finds none. He just lets out a long sigh.
Ivan puffs out his chest, ready to explode in protest. “But—but fighting is my thing,” Ivan tries, in a voice that mixes childish anger and threat.
The old man speaks over him, “Blood will flow before the first month is out.” The certainty in his voice disconcerts me, because never, not even in his days of delirium, did I doubt that Ivan would trade any cent of profit for a bloodbath and fame.
And, by extension, that I would have to clean up the mess afterward.
“The circuit is yours because you understand what can’t be taught,” says the old man.
He points to Ivan with what’s left of his trembling hand.
“The streets are yours because you will die in them, but you will die as a Malakov. That is your inheritance, Ivan. So, do what you want with it.” To me, he says, “What’s left of the modern world is yours.
The contracts, the laundering, the millions that no one sees. ”
Two dogs running in opposite directions, both tied by the family’s leash. The old man ends the audience with the dignity of those who have buried too many brothers.
“You are Malakovs,” he says. “My brother is dead. Our inheritance is among the sons that are left. I don’t need to remind you what happens to those who play against their own bloodline.”
Ivan receives all this with an expression of pride etched on his face. He never wanted to rule, only the right to destroy. And now he has permission.
The east is his: the ports, the warehouses, the docks, the monopoly on direct violence. The west is for me: the offices, the offshore holdings, the invisible lawyers, and above all, the Circuit, the only part of the machine that still excites me.
The old man turns and, with slow steps, disappears into the gloom of the hall.
Ivan follows him with his eyes, and when we are alone under the dripping awning, he looks at me, full of that childhood malice, but also something deeper, a resentment that only ferments inside those who have always been relegated to second place.
I realize, with a touch of vertigo, that now there is no longer a judge.
“It’ll be fun to see how long you last,” Ivan says. Behind the bravado, there’s someone who has finally been given a blank check to crush his prodigy cousin. “The Circuit is a pretty toy, a shame it won’t even last until Christmas.”
He spits on the ground, adjusts his jacket, and leaves, disappearing among the damp lights of the parking lot.
There is no real victory. That is the only true tradition of the Malakov family. But, for now, I will allow myself to wear the label—victory.
I’m sure my part in the story will be no less cruel than the others’.
The limousine is waiting for me, with the driver in a black suit standing outside, holding the door open. I get in with an automatic gesture, feeling the cold leather on my lower back. The cabin glass is opaque, and the insulation is total.
The asphalt streams past the window, and I type orders on the tablet, firing off messages to my men, to Karpov, and to every pawn and bishop who hasn’t yet realized the board has been flipped.
For a second, I can hear Vasily’s laugh, dissolving in the rain.
You won, Alexei. But you’re going to lose everything just the same.
Maybe.
But tonight, I won. And tomorrow, the work continues.