Page 154 of Violent Possession

Punches. More punches. One, two, three. The bone of his nose breaks under the skin, his jaw dislocates. The blood runs down my fist, staining the filthy floor. But he doesn’t give up; he never was one to give up.

With a burst of strength, he knees me in the kidney, and the impact is so great that I see black spots swimming in my vision. He kicks me, unbalances me, slides out from under me, and gets to his feet with surprising speed for someone his size.

Ivan advances, blind with rage. His face has become a blur of raw flesh.

He raises his fist, aiming for my face, the final blow that should seal the moral victory, the primacy, the redemption for years of humiliation. That’s where instinct takes the helm.

As his arm comes down, I reach for my lower back, feel the cold of the metal, and, automatically, I pull my gun.

Ivan freezes.

The gun is pressed against his forehead. The barrel touches his skin, sinking in slightly.

For a second, I think about pulling the trigger.

No one moves. No one breathes. The entire bar is an installation of suspended violence, a few millimeters from becoming an urban horror story.

I hold Ivan’s gaze. He’s there, sweating, trembling, more animal than man.

He knows I’ve never hesitated before. He knows I would do it. We both know.

Ivan’s two men, who until now had only been watching the carnage with a mixture of dread and empty obedience, move their hands to the holsters under their jackets. The reflex is automatic, the soldier’s instinct triggered by the smell of gunpowder, by the muffled sound of leather and metal. But neither of them draws. They stand there, frozen, paralyzed in the kind of nightmare that only exists in the annals of civil war: there, in the most miserable bar on the pier, their two generals have guns pointed, blood running, and there is no protocol for choosing a side. Shooting me would be suicide. Shooting Ivan would be a betrayal. And, in the end, henchmen aren’t made to think about destiny. They only know how to act or freeze. So they freeze.

Ivan swallows hard. A red drop runs from his eyebrow and drips onto the floor. No one moves. The silence weighs more than lead.

Ivan grinds his teeth. His mouth trembles, and it’s not just anger; it’s terror, and I immediately smell the fear, pure and distilled.

“Alexei,” he whispers. The arrogance finally shatters into a million pieces. “He’s just a mutt. A snitch. He’s not worth this.”

My attention shifts—I try, but I can’t help it—to Griffin, who is slumped on the floor like a broken doll, his back crooked against the nicotine-stained wall. He watches me without blinking, blood running down his chin, one eye already swollen shut. There’s no plea on his face, no hope, just the resigned waiting of someone used to taking beatings from life and people.

I wonder if he would prefer for me to kill Ivan. Or if he wanted me to die right there, just to end this infinite sequence of violence.

I realize that Ivan’s anger, looking at him again, has already lost half its force. The rest is just disappointment, a forty-year-old child begging to be taken seriously by the cousins who never respected his pain.

In that nanosecond of eye contact, I feel more pity than hatred for him. The weight of the years, of the Sunday dinners full of silence, of the times we pretended we were a normal family, settles in. Times when he, too, had used all this fury to help me.

A remnant of guilt under my tongue. I swallow it.

“You’re right,” I say, low. “He’s not worth this. He’s worthmore.”

The sentence short-circuits Ivan’s brain. The muscles in his jaw lock, his breathing quickens.

I lean closer. The barrel of the gun is still pressed against his forehead.

“He’smine, Ivan. And you don’t touch what’s mine.”

All the family’s unspoken stories flash by: the buried betrayals, the nights of fear, the pacts made with one’s own shame.

I realize my left hand is trembling with a fierce self-denial, an ancestral impulse to preserve what I have left, even if it’s a man on the verge of death.

In Ivan, a sorrow so raw appears that it makes me nauseous. This was it, it was always this: the pain of never being enough. The resentment of someone who lived in the shadows, who was thrown to the wolves and had to survive with no one to call a brother.

I feel for him, but I can’t show it. Not now.

“All this…” he whispers, “because ofhim?”

“This is because ofyou. Because of your stupidity. Because of your disobedience.” I tilt the gun, a millimeter at a time, away from his face. I don’t put it away. I keep it pointed at the floor, between us. I signal that the threat remains, that mercy is temporary. “This is the last time I’m warning you. Stay out of my way. Stay away from my business. And if I so much as dream that you came within ten meters of him again,” I say, with a nod toward Griffin, “I willendyou. Understood?”