Page 161 of Violent Possession

It’s heavy PVC, pale green, institutional. The edge is slightly beveled. On the front, tiny micro-printed letters identify M.I. Trust in the Jersey Islands with an old, opaque magnetic stripe on the back.

I take it. The name embossed at the top, in the discreet typography of a corporate card, is that of one of Ivan’s front companies. Below, a demarcated area sealed with a thin, transparent plastic film—the Signature Sample field.

There it is, in black ballpoint pen ink, Ivan’s signature. Legible, quick, with a hesitation on the M—the same hesitation he always had when signing what he knew he shouldn’t, with guilt and haste.

“One person, in the Odessa operation, was chosen to survive,” he continues. I know who he’s talking about.

“Kirill Denisov,” I say quietly, analyzing the card.

Seraphim smiles. “Yes. A person with banking and logistical access, who could speak with credibility. Vasily made a real initial payment to keep him quiet about the operation. He put on a show as if keeping him alive wasn’t part of the plan. It was his guarantee. He wanted to tell the family he did what was necessary and present real, legitimate proof that he had bought his silence.”

“And this?” I lift the card slightly.

Seraphim maintains his smile, a little less forced, a little more like someone genuinely enjoying himself. “This account was really opened,” he says. “And, for all legal purposes, it was opened by Ivan Malakov. It’s solid.”

He emphasizes that last word,solid.

I look at the card again. Everything that is said to be solid in this world usually doesn’t last two winters.

But the signature sample is perfect. Not like the public signature Ivan used for official contracts, but like theprivatesignature, the one that only appears when he’s nervous, scared, or signing something that could condemn him. The hesitant M, the drawn-out A.

“Isit solid, Seraphim?” I say.

He gives me a smile that can only mean no.

He raises his cigarette, taking a drag with an elegance that only serves to annoy me more.

“Since Odessa, smaller transfers from this account were made sporadically to Kirill,” he says. “Vasily wanted to use it to say that Ivan, behind his back, was making additional payments to cover up his own parallel operation that went wrong.”

I feel pressure in my right temple.

“He was going to blameIvan?”

He leans back in his chair, the white leather of his gloves a stark contrast against the darkness of the rooftop. “With Kirill alive, knowing nothing but numbers and transfers, he would just plant the right narrative for him to ‘confess’ that Ivan paid him in parallel to Vasily.”

That’s why Vasily wanted him alive. That doesn’t surprise me.

Still, the audacity of the plan is admirable in its cruel simplicity.

“Weakening Ivan is a lateral move,” I say. It’s the only piece that doesn’t fit. “Why would he target someone who strengthened him more than he did me?”

Seraphim looks at me, and for the first time, his gaze loses its grace and gains an analytical, clinical depth. Then, he gives ahalf-smile again, goes back to smoking, and blows smoke toward the sky.

“This was never about Ivan. It was aboutyou. Vasily acts like a child breaking his own favorite toy just to get attention. He created a problem that only you could solve, leaving only himself for you to lean on to clean up the messsupposedlyleft by Ivan. He wanted you toseehim, with his privileged information that he would pretend he got on his own merit. For you to finally recognize him as an equal.” He takes a drag. Pauses. “…But that’s just my personal reading of the facts,” he whispers.

Seraphim’s analysis is so precise, so invasive in its diagnosis, that I allow myself the silence to just listen to the strings of the wind and the distant noise of the city’s brakes. The portrait he paints of my brother—a pathetic infant, destroying everything around him in the hope of provoking a reaction—is so, sounbearablethat I physically struggle not to clench my fists. Until now, it was easier to hate him as a traitor, an adversary who deserved to be put down; now, Seraphim plants the corrosive doubt: what if Vasily is nothing more than a beggar for affection, condemned to repeat the cycle because he was never loved even by his own blood? And, more than that, what if I am just the other side of that coin?

“Sentiment is for children and poets, Seraphim,” I say, trying to regain control. “I deal with facts. Vasily shows a pattern of incompetence and betrayal that began long before this… ‘reading’ of yours.”

I see a fleeting shadow of genuine compassion in his eyes. “You still think about Istanbul, don’t you?” he says. “You still believe he betrayed you.”

I hear the name and everything inside me recoils. It’s a forbidden word, a mistake so absolute that it redefined our family. No one says Istanbul out loud. No one, except someone who wants to hit the core of the problem.

“Was it Vasily who told you? Or did you steal it from one of our files?” I say.

He answers in a low voice, without arrogance. “He told me,” he says. Just that.

His statement is absurd. The image he painted before, of Vasily pointing a gun at his head, clashes with the intimacy required for such a confession. How does a man share his most shameful secret with someone he despises and threatens?