Epilogue #2
I shake my head, slowly. I accept the doctor’s examination, who comes back and handles my flesh-and-bone arm with the delicacy of a watchmaker, while Marcus takes the remote control and turns up the TV volume until the room vibrates with the cheers of the crowd.
He starts narrating the replay like a 1980s radio announcer, interrupting himself to comment on my “technical level”, my “predator’s stance”, my “marketable psychopath face”.
He repeats catchphrases, analyzes the slow-motion replay, underlines every drop of blood that jumps from the screen.
“Did you see that, Griff? Did you see how he fell? This is going to go viral tomorrow, I guarantee it! It’ll be a meme, it’ll be a story to tell in bars, people will get tattoos of your face.
And the women, Griff… the women! You wouldn’t believe what these women would do to have you for one night.
The blonde in the front row almost fainted when you smiled at her.
Almost fainted! And the brunette in the VIP box, that Russian billionaire’s daughter?
She gave me her number, said she wants to ‘congratulate the champion personally’. ”
He makes an obscene gesture with his hands, then laughs loudly with his own joke.
“Tonight we’re drowning this place in champagne, you hear me? It’s your night as king! The night you stop being an animal and become a legend!”
I let out a low laugh. He, with all his talk of women and parties, has no idea that the only person I feel like kneeling for is the boss.
And, as if summoned by the devil, he appears.
I see him first in the reflection on the TV. A dark, motionless silhouette in the doorway. Alexei. He makes no sound. Just stands there, watching the scene.
In the time it takes me to turn my head and actually face the door, the atmosphere has already undergone a chemical mutation.
The nurse, who was previously dabbing peroxide on my arm, is now rigid, her eyes lost in the infinite.
The doctor, a guy with a proto-Stalinist mustache, holds a bandage halfway to the cut and seems to be silently praying not to be noticed.
And Marcus, poor guy, is still living in the previous timeline, the one where he is the epicenter of the room.
“We’ll take the blonde and the brunette, take them to the presidential suite at that fancy hotel.
I’ve already booked it! They can give you a bath, lick your wounds, you know?
They like that, this thing about taking care of the wounded animal.
It’s a fetish! We’ll have a champion’s orgy, Griff! Imagine the headlines!”
He gestures, sketching in the air like a crazed conductor, his golden smile wider than ever, saliva flying on the high notes.
Alexei lifts his chin, a minimal movement. The doctor is the first to understand. He drops everything. He doesn’t dare look back.
“They’ll fight over you, my boy! Pull each other’s hair to see who gets to suck you off first!”
The look of pure disgust on Alexei’s face upon hearing this is so priceless I almost burst out laughing.
The nurse hesitates, because her profession demands compassion, but she abandons the battlefield with a silent reverence, as if asking forgiveness for not having been better. They leave together.
Marcus, of course, only notices the vacuum when it’s too late. He turns, ready with some quip about “shitty service”, and then he sees. He sees Alexei. He sees the expression of ice, the tense line of his jaw, the celestial-blue glint of his eyes that don’t know how to laugh.
It’s the best part of my night.
I almost feel sorry for him. Marcus is terrified of the Malakovs.
I remember the first time he saw Alexei.
Marcus nearly fainted. He spent the next week sending me newspaper headlines about bodies found in rivers, with the caption “IT WAS THEM”.
He doesn’t understand how I can breathe the same air as one of them without having an aneurysm.
But his fear has always had a price. When he saw the value of the contract Alexei offered, he forgot about all the dead and could only talk about private jets.
Their relationship is this: Marcus trembles, and Alexei hates him. He’s never said it to Marcus’s face, of course. Alexei is too polite for that. But he has told me, more than once, that he considers Marcus “a grifting parasite who latched onto his one lucky bet”. A painfully accurate assessment.
What Alexei doesn’t understand is that, years ago, when I had nothing but a hole where my arm used to be, this same parasite gave me a couch to sleep on and convinced me that a cripple could still smash someone’s face in for money.
It’s a debt I’ve insisted on keeping, even against the boss’s wishes.
“Marcus,” Alexei says. Just that.
Marcus shudders. He tries to smile, tries to recover his persona, tries to exist again. “M-Mr. Malakov,” he stammers. “I was just… I was congratulating the champion. Your… your boy is a legend!”
Alexei doesn’t move an inch. The air around him takes on the chill of a deep cave. He has the perfect posture of someone who is always prepared for the next act—be it a handshake or a point-blank shot.
“Get out.”
The dismissal is so final, so absolute, that Marcus doesn’t even try to argue. He mutters a pathetic “yes, sir”, throws me one last confused and terrified look, and practically runs out of the room with his gold chains swinging.
Only when the door closes behind him do I say, “Hey, boss.”
I’m smiling. And it wasn’t conscious.
Alexei turns to me, and the ice in his face melts in a slow, calculated stage, revealing small cracks through which tiny signs of warmth, of interest, leak out. Only I can recognize the difference.
He advances. His shoes make no sound on the marble. I think he would make a point of floating, if it were possible.
He stops less than half a meter from me. There is no air barrier that doesn’t disintegrate under his blue gaze, and it’s impossible not to notice how he examines every new cut on my face, every swelling, every trace of blood.
“The fight was… acceptable,” he says, low. In his language, it’s a romantic poem. “But your defense in the third round was careless.”
For some reason, that makes me laugh. “Sorry, boss. I’ll remember to be more careful next time a Ukrainian giant tries to rip my head off.”
His response is a barely visible arch of an eyebrow, the kind of micro-expression that only reveals itself to someone who has spent a lot of time in the same enclosed space.
“You’d better remember.” He allows this threat.
“We have a meeting with the Japanese sponsors in forty minutes. I want you clean, presentable, and silent by my side.”
I think about obeying. Playing the part of the trained dog, delivering what he expects of me: silence, respect, utility.
But there’s a strange energy vibrating inside me—maybe it’s the residue from the fight, maybe it’s a hunger for something that isn’t blood.
I get up from the bench, my whole body protesting, and stop so close to him that I can feel the static electricity from his cold wool suit.
The height difference between us, though small, has never seemed so pornographic.
“Forty minutes?” I repeat, feigning innocence. I extend my metal hand and hook it into the lapel of his expensive jacket, pulling him closer. “That’s a lot of time, boss…”
I kiss him. It’s languid, slow, a silent thank you for coming, for existing. I feel his lips curve into a half-smile against mine.
He pulls back just enough for me to see his eyes rolling through possibilities, weighing consequences, and then he speaks, his voice huskier than before, “Later.”
I see the poorly disguised desire, the eagerness he denies with his mouth but can’t hide in his eyes.
I pull him back, kissing him again, this time with more hunger, nibbling his lower lip. “Not even a quickie? To celebrate my victory?” I whisper against his mouth.
This time, he laughs—a puff of air in the middle of the kiss. He raises his hand and places it on my chin, holding my face with a firmness that is pure caress. He gently pushes me away.
“Later, Griff,” he repeats.
He gives me one last look, one that says more than any words, and then he steps away, turning to get a clean towel for me.
I stand there, my body aching and my heart racing. I bite my lip, the taste of him still on my mouth, with a stupid smile on my face. The boss.
My boss.
After the meeting with the Japanese—plastic smiles, choreographed bows, and promises of millions of dollars floating in the air like cheap perfume—I feel drained, a rag hastily sewn into a suit twice as expensive as my entire life.
The executives’ gazes were blades trying to decipher me.
Instead, they found a lab animal, just waiting for a collapse.
I just want to black out, to bury myself under Alexei’s Egyptian cotton blanket, to feel the anesthesia of his body, to breathe the synthetic calm of the penthouse apartment with a view of the sea.
But I want to see the boss out of his comfort zone. To see the king without his crown, walking barefoot in the gutter of his own empire. The idea makes me laugh to myself.
The city flows by outside: in the rich neighborhoods, it’s all lights, banks, skyscrapers—a polished cardboard landscape.
Just one turn, at every intersection, and the city’s skin breaks, letting the veins leak out: popular commerce, a line of motorcycle taxis, street vendors selling smuggled cigarettes, real human beings piled on the sidewalks.
I feel a perverse itch of pride seeing Alexei like this, out of his natural habitat, looking at humanity through a microscope lens. “I know the perfect place to celebrate our Japanese contract,” I blurt out, on impulse.
Alexei, at the wheel, raises an eyebrow in a movement so small only someone obsessed with him would notice. Me, in this case. “We already have wine and a delivery feast at home, Griffin.”