Page 133 of Violent Possession

The younger police officer approaches. He enters, pointing his gun at the floor, ready to raise it at any second. He scans the room with his eyes, and it’s at that moment that Alexei decides to move.

He walks past the man I threw on the table, completely ignoring his groans. He doesn’t talk to me or to his own security guards.

He goes straight to the police officer.

“Good night, officer,” he says, with the smile of someone who has just been interrupted in the middle of a real business dinner. “How can I help you?”

The police officer swallows hard. You can see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “Everyone needs to remain in the establishment until backup arrives. I need you to step away from the car...” He sees the man on the table—the rat—and grabs his communicator. “We need to call an ambu?—“

“Excuse me,” Alexei interrupts. He takes his cell phone out of his pocket—the one given to him by his security guard—, presses a number, and holds it to his ear. On the other side, someone answers immediately. Alexei speaks low, in Russian.

What the fuck is he doing?

It’s a short call. He hangs up, puts his cell phone away, and looks back at the police officer, now with a calmness that could only be artificial, but it’s not.

“Your captain will give you new instructions,” he states.

The silence that follows is dense. Alexei doesn’t take his eyes off the police officer, not for a second. The man swallows hard, his confidence evaporating under the weight of that look.

And suddenly the police officer’s radio crackles.

His name is called, urgent, direct instruction. He answers, listens. His face turns white, colorless.

And then, as if summoned by the devil himself, the radio on his shoulder comes to life, the captain’s static, urgent voice calling his number.

The police officer looks at Alexei, who gives him a social smile. And I... I lean completely on the cold body of the car that I myself destroyed.

Dizziness. And it’s not just from the pain.

The police officer lowers his weapon, and even though he tries to maintain his posture, you can see that he’s lost.

I remember the weight of Seraphim’s hand on the back of my neck when I was fifteen, pushing us into a dark alley that stank of garbage and rain. He was panting with a wild smile on his face, alive with the thrill of escape. For us, the police were the end of the line, a force of nature that could only be overcome with speed and luck. Running was the only answer, the only form of power we knew.

After that, running became just a dirty habit. There was no more thrill of escape, just the need to disappear. I remember leaving fight money behind because the flashing lights outside meant the game was over. I remember jumping a barbed wire fence behind a bar to avoid a cell because of a fight I couldn’t even remember how it started. My whole life has been a series of back doors, dark alleys, and looking over my shoulder.

Now, I open my eyes. Outside, more police cars arrive, and none of them enter. They wait. The restaurant’s radio, on for background music, continues to play an old British ballad, and it all seems so mundane it’s comical. The rich gather their belongings back, the waiters start cleaning up the broken glass.

Alexei commands the law. He makesthe worldrun to him, and the difference between these two universes is so vast. It lights something sick and hot inside me, an ember of excitement that burns beneath the pain and fear.

The police officer, now pale and submissive, can only affirm with a nod of his head. He withdraws, babbling orders into the radio clipped to his shoulder, and takes with him all the hope of resistance that hung in the air. Normality returns to the restaurant with a surreal speed—a hostess hurries to reassure someone who is threatening to have a heart attack, and even the maître, previously impaled between the prideof the establishment and humiliation, resumes his role as a professional host.

Alexei doesn’t waste a second. He turns to one of his men, the same one who handed him the cell phone, and gives an order.

“Take our guest,” he says, without even looking again at the rat agonizing on the table. “I want him whole. I have questions.” There is no room for ambiguity: that human garbage would leave there breathing, but only until the point where he was useful. “And keep him away from the curious. No press, no lawyers until I release him.”

The man nods, and two more security guards hurry to comply. The rat’s groan turns into a muffled scream when they wrap a white linen towel around his neck and drag him out the back, but no one reacts. Not the customers, who now pretend to talk about investments and vacations on the Côte d’Azur, nor the police brigade, which remains outside, closing the perimeter.

Alexei then turns to the rest of his entourage. “Go back to headquarters. No one follows me tonight,” he orders.

His gaze sweeps across the men’s faces like a cold blade, and one of them—perhaps dumber or more loyal—hesitates, opening his mouth to protest. The awe that Alexei fixes in the guy’s eyes is so brutal that the idiot swallows his entire protest along with a mouthful of saliva. There is no possible contestation. The world learns to obey, or it dies.

Only then, with the stage clean and silent, does he turn to me. The movement is so smooth it doesn’t seem human. The ambient noise disappears: I no longer hear sirens, or glass being swept, or the grunts of the injured. There is only my own heart and Alexei, getting closer and closer.

He stops less than an arm’s length away. Expensive perfume, leather, imported cigarettes. Alexei’s gaze runs over my face—the cut on my eyebrow, the blood on my teeth, the sweat runningdown my neck—and down to the hand with which I still support myself on the dented body of the car.

“You made a mess,” he says, too calmly.

“You got what you wanted,” I retort. My voice comes out more raspy and precarious than I imagined. I try to straighten up, ignoring the sharp pain in my ribs. “Or are you going to tell me that the information wasn’t worth the price of a few plates?”