Page 113 of Violent Possession

“You were right,” I begin. “The network exists. A lot of people pay back favors they think can’t be repaid.”

“What else?” He keeps his voice low, but now he comes closer, sits in the armchair across from the sofa.

“There’s a loose thread,” I say. “It’s not one of the new ones. It’s from the old circle. I thought the guy had killed himself, but it seems he’s alive.”

“Who?”

I hesitate. Not out of suspicion, but because if Seraphim is still going unnoticed, it’s for a reason. “I need to confirm. There’s a lot of smoke, and if you go after the wrong person, you’ll alert half of Eastern Europe.”

“You want to do it your way.”

“That’s what you let me out for, wasn’t it?”

I let him see that I’m serious, that I’m no longer just a disposable asset on his cost sheet.

Alexei tilts his glass toward me. “I’m trusting your judgment, Griffin. Don’t make me regret it.”

Honestly, I was prepared for a fight, for a war of wills. I had my defenses up, answers on the tip of my tongue.

But trust? That was never in my script. Not my father, not my colleagues, not Marcus—especiallynot Marcus. Anyone who trusted me died. Or worse: Isnitchedon them.

I try to process what he’s just given me, but it’s difficult. It feels like a trick. Itmustbe a trick. But there’s something new in the way he looks at me now. Respect? Weariness? I don’t know. But it’s there.

And the worst part is, I want to live up to it. I want to justify his choice, to show that Icanbe trustworthy. This disgusts me as much as it excites me.

I take another sip, a bigger one now, pretending the alcohol can erase this ridiculous feeling of being seen, of being validated by someone I should hate.

I’ve never been more aware of my own body than I am now. Of the pain pulsing in the stump, the muffled throbbing in mythigh, the new warmth in my chest. The more I try to ignore it, the more everything screams.

I don’t realize I’m trembling until Alexei picks up the first-aid kit again and throws it in my lap.

“Change the bandage before you sleep,” he says.

“Yes, sir,” I mock, but my hand is shaking.

He finishes his whiskey and gets up. I recognize every nuance of this gesture: the strategic withdrawal, the tactical retreat. He’s going to his office, or his bedroom, or whatever room has a thick door and enough insulation to keep the rest of the world out. It’s a calculated retreat, a shell of coldness over what, a moment ago, was human.

I stay on the sofa, with the bandage throbbing on my leg and the feeling that everything that happened in the last few minutes was a glitch in Alexei Malakov’s personal Matrix.

But I don’t accept the ending. Not on this note. Not now.

“Hey, boss,” I call out.

He stops halfway to the door, his hand already inside his jacket, reaching for his phone to solve some other fire in the Malakov empire. He doesn’t answer, but his whole body slows down.

“So...” I say, gesturing between the sofa and the armchair where he was sitting. “Does this count as our dinner?”

The tone is a joke, but the taste is acidic. Sarcasm has always been a shield, but half of me wants to see if it still works.

He doesn’t react. For a nanosecond, I think he’s going to ignore me completely and disappear from the room. But then I see it: it’s not a smile—it rarely is—but a micro-spasm at the side of his mouth, his exclusive Morse code for “you have been noticed”.

He ignores the joke, but answers what matters.

“Did you eat?” he asks dryly, straight to the point. I laugh because I never thought this man’s concern would be expressed like this.

“No, boss. Unless the menu for tonight includes cotton, gauze, and the last shred of my dignity, which I swallowed along with the whiskey.”

He ignores me again, which is already an answer. He then walks to the kitchen, which is less a kitchen and more a laboratory of brushed steel.