Page 180 of Violent Possession
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 meetingwith 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.”
His voice is a mix of disapproval and invitation. I’ve quickly picked up this habit of ordering too much food with the new no-limit card he gave me.
“No,” I insist, restless. I turn in my seat, my legs thrown carelessly. “I’m talking about thebestrestaurant in the city. Real food. To celebrate for real.”
Alexei is the kind of man who calculates all the risks before any move—including those involving trivialities like dinner. I know this. I also know that he hates losing control, that the lack of predictability throbs under his skin like an allergy. I see him calculating all the possible health code violations and security risks that my definition of “best restaurant” implies. It’s the same face he makes when I suggest watching an action movie with more than two explosions.
“…Alright,” he sighs, with the resignation of a man who knows he’s going to regret it.
I smile and rub against the leather of the seat with a childish anxiety. “You don’t even need GPS, boss. Just drive. I’ll be your co-pilot.”
The Mercedes glides toward the rotten heart of the city. Under my instructions, we start swimming against the current. The glass and steel buildings give way to stained brick facades, graffiti, neon signs piled on top of each other. The luxury boutiques evaporate, replaced by pawn shops, bars with bulletproof glass, beauty salons that stay open past midnight. The luxury car, once a moving throne, becomes a moving target.
I notice the way Alexei holds the steering wheel, the knuckles of his fingers white. He is calm, but only on the outside. Inside, I know he hates every second of this—hates being exposed, hates that every corner is an unknown, hates depending on me to navigate a world where he is king only on paper. But there is also excitement: that dangerous tension that only someone who hasbeen both predator and prey at the same time can recognize. I love provoking that in him.
I also think about how easy it would be to end it all here. A group of kids his bodyguards failed to see, a makeshift rifle, and that’s it: the end of the Malakov dynasty, a headline in the tabloids, and me with a new hole in my chest (or head).
But Alexei’s presence by my side gives me a strange security. He is capable of bending reality to his will, making everything revolve around his own axis. That’s his superpower. Mine is to survive the explosion when that gravity fails.
In the last six months, Alexei has changed, and I have been the main spectator of this process. Since the family meeting, since the division of the empire was stamped with blood and a handshake, he has finally seemed to breathe. Now, with Vania playing emperor on the other side of town, the war has been replaced by a border. It’s not peace, but it’s predictability. Alexei’s men stopped dying out of nowhere, summary executions became a spreadsheet, meetings now have coffee breaks and digital minutes. I see in him traces of a serene man—or, at least, a less paranoid one. It’s easier to relax when the enemy is in another zip code, and not on the couch next to you.
What he can’t digest is Vasily’s disappearance.
No one talks about it, but his brother’s absence leaves a hole in the empire. An exile is expected to disappear, I told him. But it’s no use. A ghost enemy is a collective trauma, a virus of paranoia. I see Alexei replaying this mentally, sometimes staring into space as if it were possible to extract Vasily from the void just by the force of will. But he never comments on it. Not out loud.
The car finally parks in front of a metal door with no sign, with peeling paint, between a tire shop and a religious articles store. I point with my finger, triumphant.
“This is it,” I say, with a taste of poetic revenge.
He stares at the “facade” of the restaurant for a good ten seconds. I can hear the gears in his head turning, calculating the probability of us leaving here with food poisoning or a stab wound.
“Are you sure?” he asks, dangerously neutral.
“Trust me,” I reply, and get out of the car before he has time to change his mind.
The place is called “Aunt Mary’s Corner”. The entrance is a small extension of grimy tiles, with a curtain of colored beads that makes a sound like rain when you pass through. The room has four colorful plastic tables, all crooked, and a ceiling fan so old it creaks with every rotation. The smell of garlic, grease, and industrialized spices is so intense it makes me want to cough.
Alexei enters behind me, and everyone turns to look. The boss, in his navy blue suit, black tie, and general’s posture, looks like a penguin lost in the Sahara. He pretends not to notice, but I see the physical discomfort: the way he adjusts his jacket, as if the fabric could protect him from the invisible threat of the poor people around.
We sit at a red table, which wobbles with every movement. The tablecloth is plastic, printed with generic fruits, full of stains and a cigarette burn near the edge. Alexei looks at the burn with a kind of forensic fascination. Although he is the kind of man who can order decapitations and negotiate arms treaties in three languages, the trenches of real life disconcert him more than an armed ambush.
“Relax, boss,” I say, leaning over the table with a smile. “They wash the dishes. Most of the time.”
He gives me a warning look. His prudishness is a fetish.
