Page 156 of Violent Possession

His fingers stop inches from my face, hesitate, then touch me. A romantic gesture, were it not for the brutality of everything we’ve been through. His fingers are calloused and rough, and the touch is disconcertingly gentle, reverent. His thumb brushes my jaw, where Ivan hit me.

“He hurt you,” Griffin whispers, and there is something frighteningly honest in the sentence; a confused, amazed realization.

I don’t know how to react. The pain doesn’t matter—it never mattered, not to me—but the fact thatGriffinsees it unnerves me.

“One Malakov fighting another,” he continues, the trace of a smile growing, even if only at the corners of his mouth. “If I weren’t so fucked up, I’d find this…hilarious.”

His laugh is dry, a low rumble that ends before it starts.

I hold his wrist. I keep his hand on my face. The gesture is intimate, perhaps even dangerous. For me, at least, since I never let anyone get this close, and Griffin knows it—I can see it in the way his smile falters that he understands he has crossed an invisible line.

“Why did you do it?” he asks softly. “All that mess. You could have left me there. You could have sent your men.”

I repeat the standard answer, the one my whole family expects to hear. “Ivan challenged my authority in public. He damaged my property. The response was appropriate.”

I also know that appropriate is far from what it was.

Griffin laughs again, breathless. “Property,” he repeats and pulls his hand back. “You bled forproperty, Alexei?”

The metallic taste of anger still coats my tongue, mixed with something I don’t recognize: perhaps shame, perhaps pride.

I think about responding as I always do: with sarcasm, indifference, a veiled threat.

But Griffin is there, still breathing, still holding my gaze, and I find myself without defenses.

“No. You’re right,” I admit.

I am the first to break eye contact. Vulnerability is an unknown and hostile territory for me.

I stand up, stiff, and start to put away what’s left of the first-aid kit. I need a task, an action that gives me back control.

“That’s enough for today,” I say, more formally than necessary. “You need rest. And I need a drink.”

I turn to go to the bar, to the familiar safety of alcohol and distance.

“Alex,” his voice stops me, firmer than I expected. “Wait.”

I stop. I listen.

“I found him.”

I think I’m delirious. Hours of bleeding and neuromuscular pain can cause auditory hallucinations.

I turn slowly, expecting to see him falter, the sentence dissolving into stumbles. But Griffin is sitting there, his head held high, aware that he has survived the slaughterhouse.

“What?”

“I spoke with Seraphim.”

I take three steps toward him.

“When?”

“Today. Before the ambush,” Griffin replies, and pride overcomes exhaustion in his features. I stare at his hands: trembling, yet firm. “He’s going to cooperate. He has no loyalty to Vasily. He’ll give you what you need to prove his betrayal.”

I process the information, trying to find the flaw in it. But there is none. Griffin was never one for embellishments.

Ivan’s attack, which should have been the night’s main event, becomes amateur theater in the face of what Griffin announces. I try to react with the same coldness I do everything, but the news dismantles me.