Page 145 of Violent Possession

“Why did you come after me, Griffin?”

No nostalgia, no irony. Every time he used that name—Griffin—it was like this: a tired emptiness.

I let out a breath. I’m also more exhausted than I expected. “You know why.”

He pulls a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket. “It’s true I have no sympathy for any Malakov,” he says, placing a cigarette in his mouth. He lights it. Takes a slow drag. “But one of them is threatening you. I align with the side that isn’t actively trying to kill you.”

I expected a negotiation; I expected strategy, power plays, territory drawn on the ground between us. Instead, I get this. The man who mutilated me years ago now places himself, once again, exclusively between me and the abyss. There’s something grotesquely cyclical about it. The contradiction throbs in my chest, so absurd, so deep, that the words get lost. Anger, gratitude, a rotten affection I tried to bury. All tangled up under my sternum.

He offers the same cigarette to me.

Without thinking much, I take it.

I take a drag. Let the nicotine clear my head.

“Cain told me about your conversation,” he continues. He finally looks at me. His eyes are clear, icy. “I don’t see Alexei as the villain. You’re right—it would be a losing fight.”

The weight of the confession disarms me. I’m not prepared for this. Seraphim was never one for such bluntness, always preferring theatrics—manipulating, suggesting, dragging his interlocutor to the breaking point. But now, the tone is different.

“Then whyVasily?” My voice cracks on the first syllable, but I drag it out anyway. “If you know he’s going to put you against Alexei, why take his money?”

He looks at the cigarette, then at me, then at the moss-covered wall. It gives the impression that he’s analyzing all possible answers, each one a bomb about to explode, and he has to choose which one will kill us more slowly.

He takes the cigarette back, so quick and precise that I barely feel the touch of his fingers. He takes a drag, and when he exhales, the smoke comes out thick, murky.

“I’m not his ally. It was a job. Things grew, Myrddin,” he says. “I no longer look after a bunch of teenagers stealing bread. The network is bigger. The needs are different. And that requires a kind of money that is…” he pauses. “There’s no honest way to accumulate so much power, so much money. There never was. The only question that matters isn’t where the money comes from, but where it goes. I honestly don’t care where the money comes from. Whether it’s from Vasily, Ivan, or the devil himself. I only care where it goes.”

A part of me wants to explode, to scream that he’s faking it, that there’s still a piece of Seraphim that believes in the purity of intentions. The other part—the part that survived all this—recognizes the terrible truth of what he says. It was always like this. It will always be like this.

But all I can hear is the echo of my conversation with Cain.Where did you think the money came from?

The image of him, washing himself for hours, scrubbing his skin until it bled, comes back. My throat tightens.

I go to his side, lean on the balustrade, and look out at the city.

“And back then?” My tone comes out bitter, childish—it’s impossible to hold back. “The money… for Theo’s sister. For the house. To keep everyone alive. Did that not matter either?”

Seraphim looks at me,reallylooks, and I see the crack. For the first time in years, the marble facade gives way. He didn’t know that I knew. He didn’t expect me to throw that past in his face, not with such precision, not with such anger. He looks away, and shame consumes him in a boyish way.

And I just stand there, feeling the open wound of a decade on my skin, throbbing under the scar.

“Cain told you, did he?”

He bites his lower lip, a strange and vulnerable gesture from someone who made elegance a shield.

“I just wanted… you weren’t supposed to have to deal with that.”

He seems smaller, more fragile. I’ve never seen him like this. I’ve never seen him look guilty.

“Why did you never tell me?” I ask. “Why didn’t you trust me? I would have helped. I would have doneanythingfor you.”

He turns to me, and I see shame. A deep, corrosive shame.

“I did trust you,” he whispers. His eyes are wet. “Myrddin, you were the only person in my entire life that I truly trusted. And that’s exactly why I could never share certain things with you. I just… I just wanted to protect you from that.”

I think about saying I understand. But I don’t understand a fucking thing. Between Seraphim and me, there has always been this abyss.

When I finally look away, I realize how much I’m shaking.