Page 153 of Violent Possession
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 ofyou! And youprotecthim?”
“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. “Alwaysyou 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.
“Thenstopacting like an idiot.”
His fury condenses. And, without hesitation, he does what he always does: he reacts with violence.
He punches me.
His fist hits my face. My head is thrown to the side, and I taste blood before I process the pain.
I don’t react. Not immediately, not as expected of me—of someone “at my level”, as my father would say, or as the wretches watching me from there surely think, each one turned into a sadistic judge of the Malakov fate.
I raise my hand and touch my lips. I see the dark glint of my own blood on my fingers.
Myblood.
Ivan has managed what no one has dared to do since childhood. He made me bleed. Inpublic. In a shitty bar. In front of twenty witnesses who aren’t even worth the price of a bullet to silence them later.
I feel my face contort, involuntarily—I was never good at theatrics. I slowly turn toward Ivan. He’s there, panting, his chest rising and falling to the rhythm of a troglodyte. He’s shocked by his own feat. He can’t believe he was capable of it either.
I don’t waste more saliva. There are no more words in Russian or any other language that can mediate what needs to happen here.
I advance.
I return the favor.
The weight of ancestral rivalries, of never-verbalized contempt, condenses into punches, headbutts, elbows. Ivan hits me with another blow, this time to the shoulder, but I absorb it, letting my arm cushion the raw energy of the attack. I retaliate with a hook to the liver, precise, surgical, and his body bends, the air instantly leaving his lungs.
He tries to grab me, uses his greater weight, seeks the clinch, and tries to take me to the ground like in those amateur wrestling championships he dominated in childhood. Except I’m no longer the skinny kid, and he’s no longer the king of the school. I move out of his arms’ reach, land an elbow that catches him right on the temple. The whole bar turns into a nightmarish arena.
I throw him against the counter. Bottles explode, the smell of alcohol mixes with fresh blood, the shards fly like acid rain on our hands and arms.
There are muffled screams from a woman, maybe a drunk, but all eyes are fixed on the spectacle. Ivan pushes me back. I lose count of how many hits I take—around the third or fourth, the brain learns to ignore the immediate damage, to enter that zone of clarity that only death or victory can bring. I feel his knuckles tear my eyebrow, I see the blood run again, hot, staining the white collar of my shirt.
I dig my thumbs into his eyes. I feel the eyeball give under the pressure. Ivan screams, roars, and lets me go.
I take advantage of the space, reverse the position, pin him to the floor. His face is stained with blood and anger, his teeth bared, the look of someone who wants to devour me.
