Page 149 of Violent Possession

My feet take me to the only kind of sanctuary I really know: a shitty bar, where the world makes less sense, where all the saints will die of cirrhosis, and no one gives a damn about your name.It’s familiar territory, one of the few places in the city where my face is known enough to be ignored.

I walk in, unhurried, pretending I have some right to exist there, and I’m immediately swallowed by the bad music from a crooked jukebox—the same one I broke—the hollow sound of pool balls, and the buzz of drunks.

The bartender, a bald guy with a scar running across his mouth, sees me. He stops cleaning a glass and his face closes up. A silent warning for types like me, who confuse bars with boxing rings.

“Look who’s back,” he spits out, full of disgust, his eyes taking a quick inventory of the things I could break. “Came to finish the job with the rest of the furniture?”

I sit at the bar, staring at the dirty mirror behind him. It reflects a dozen ghosts: patched-up people, ex-fighters, retired whores, and me, in the center of the frame, all twisted from bruises. “Just here for a drink,” I say, and toss a fifty on the counter. “Vodka. The cheap stuff.”

He looks at the bill, then at me. “Fixing the jukebox cost five hundred bucks. And the owner still wants your head.”

I laugh, but only on one side, because the other still hurts.

“Tell the owner I’m working for people who pay a lot more than five hundred bucks for a headache,” I say, making a point of showing the black card Alexei gave me just for this, waving it in the air. “Now, the drink.”

He doesn’t like it, but he likes talking to me even less, so he takes the money, turns his back, and grabs a bottle with no label. He serves the shot in a small glass. “Just don’t break my glass, for fuck’s sake.”

I take the shot. It burns like acid—the taste of cheap crime is always the same. I swallow it down, scan the bar, and find the same extras as every other night: an old couple playing dominoes, a man with a dirty face lost in some slot machinegame, a guy in a cap and leather jacket scribbling in a little yellow notebook.

With every sip, the conversation with Seraphim comes back. The way he looked at me, with no hope, but still with that stubborn undercurrent of faith from someone who’s seen me perform worse miracles. I did it: he’s going to cooperate.

The taste in my mouth isn’t victory. It’s a mix of pity, anger, and a little bit of stupid pride. He’ll survive. Maybe he’ll even reinvent himself, again.

The image of his sad smile, of the hesitant hug, repeats in my head.We were always idiots.

I think of Alexei. I feel a stupid urge to call, to tell him, to hear his voice, even if it’s just to receive another order. But no. Not now. I’ll go back to the apartment, look him in the eye, and tell him I held up my end of the bargain. That his investment was worth it. He deserves to hear the news that I succeeded, that Seraphim will cooperate, but he deserves to hear it from a whole man, not a drunken rag.

A bald guy with a barbed-wire tattoo on his neck challenges another guy to a best-of-three. The bets fly: money, cigarettes, favors. No one there bets on their own life because it’s worthless, yet everyone bets on anything that gives meaning to the now. The bald guy misses the decisive shot and curses the cue, the table, the cue’s mother. I laugh, and I feel peace. This is real life. Simple, brutal, without angels or demons.

I get up, dragging my stiff joints. I decide to go home—the apartment—before the world collapses.

I check the street through the window before leaving. The rain is threatening to fall, holding off. The streetlights flicker.

That’s when they walk in.

They make no effort to hide; on the contrary, they parade toward the bar with pride.

The two biggest ones come first, broad shoulders and gloved hands, but it’s the third figure, slightly behind, who commands the show.

Vania.

The entire bar goes silent.

Vania enters, a short, cold smile already prepared for the audience. He’s wearing a suit jacket that would cost everyone here a month’s rent, and it doesn’t hide his brutality. The thin beard, the nose broken so many times it’s crooked, the bloodshot eyes of someone who can’t sleep without pills. His gaze finds me before he even reaches the bar, and I know this circus is personal.

“Well, look at this,” Vania says, too loud for the place. “I didn’t know purebred dogs came to sniff their own asses so far from home.” He walks toward me. “I was told you owed an explanation,cripple. And I came to collect.”

I take a deep breath and rest my metal arm on the table.

“What do you want?” I say.

Vania doesn’t care about answers. He laughs and gestures to the two guys with him. They block the door, selecting the audience. The bar remains in absolute silence, except for an old man at the jukebox who is still trying, in vain, to make it play some seventies hit.

“My cousin may tolerate you, but I… I’ve never liked a traitor,” he says. “But you stepped intomyterritory and put your hands on my men… you steal Alexei’s wine, and he doesn’t give you a beating. So the next day you put your hands on what isn’t yoursagain.”

The audience—junkies, gamblers, whores, retirees—pretends not to see, but everyone is waiting for the show and can smell the blood coming.

His gesture is minimal, but the two goons move before my mind can process it. The first one charges straight ahead. I usethe table as a shield; the stool breaks against his shins. The sound is ugly, the fall is worse. The second comes from the side, thinking he’ll catch me by surprise. My elbow catches him right in the nose; I feel the cartilage give, a hot spray of blood hits my arm.