Page 42 of Violent Possession

I don’t know if you moan, Alexei. I don’t know if you let out any sound when you lose control. But, fuck, I want to be the first thing to draw a sound from you that isn’t an order.

A moan escapes my throat, and it has nothing to do with the woman beneath me. Damn, it was just to annoy him, but the idea makes me hard as fuck. The all-powerful Alexei Malakov, touching himself while watching his attack dog. Or, worse—nottouching himself. Just watching. Letting me kill myself alone in the cage he built.

I want him to see. It’s a mantra. The idea of him seeing me is what’s fucking with my head.

I grip tighter, marking her skin with my fingers, just because I know the camera will record it. I want you to see my mark, Alexei. I want you to think about it tomorrow. I want you to think about it while you work, while you talk to ministers,while you shake hands dirty with clean blood. Every thrust is a drumbeat saying:see me, see me, see me.I want to choke you with my existence.

And when I finally feel the pressure build, reality dissolves. Her body disappears, the room disappears.

His image remains.

CHAPTER 4

PANEM ET CIRCENSES

ALEXEI

Ididn’t touch the body. All I did was retrieve, from a pile of guts, the disposable cell phone I’d given him while he was alive, and remove a microcamera from the sink. The rest I’ll leave for someone else to deal with.

Griffin wasn’t discreet. There was blood everywhere, and even the chandelier crystals had red splatters. At least the body is recognizable. It would be a problem if it weren’t.

Good. I needed him to show that rebelliousness, I just didn’t expect to see such a violent outcome.

I wonder what the poor wretch said to Griffin that made him mad enough to tear and rip someone’s delicate stomach.

The work is dirty enough to be confused with Ivan’s doing. Vasily will look at the mess and attribute it to his out-of-control cousin. And, honestly, I don’t even need to take him there. It’s a short matter of time until he tracks Kirill back to the hideout where I sent him—his grave.

With chaos sown, I return to my personal office, a few minutes away from where Griffin now lives. I open the laptop on an impulse—curiosity, perhaps. I need to confirm that he reallyaccepted the keys, even though I know he did. The window with his apartment feeds opens.

He’s there, yes. But he’s not alone.

He’s with a blonde woman in a tight dress. It bothers me to see someone else’s hands on him, claiming an intimacy that belongs to no one. It shouldn’t matter. Itdoesn’tmatter. She’s just a prostitute, perhaps, or someone he met in a bar.

This act of childish defiance is petulant, but I understand. Griffin is not made for moderation—such physical force always overflows into something, and sex is just another territory where it drains.

And I find myself unable to look away.

And, besides all the insubordination and discomfort… heisa spectacle.

He is disproportionate in everything. Shoulders too wide for the narrow room, muscles tense even in delivery, every vein in his arm seeming about to burst. The muscles in his back contract when he pushes the woman against the door, and he has them all defined by years of survival. There is nothing delicate in his way of touching—it iscrude, mechanical. But that is precisely what captures the gaze: the absolute coherence between structure and act. Even the way hebreatheshas weight, as if the air entered and exited in a rhythm meant to intimidate. He is grotesque, and for that very reasonfascinating; an entire anatomy subordinated to the idea of excess, the opposite of everything I sought to build in myself.

It is impossible not to observe—it would be naive to pretend otherwise. Griffin is a handsome man. Even when he was dirty, bleeding, staggering, it was still impossible not to notice. Certain faces, certain bodies, impose their presence by force, and his is one of them.

But then he raises his face. To the camera. Tome.

Ofcoursehe knows I’m watching. He’s always assumed it, and that’s why he exaggerates, theatricalizes. He transforms even the most primitive act into a tool of communication. And, by extension, ofpower.

It was naive of me to think this would come down to insubordination, a physiological rebellious impulse. It’sGriffin. Things are never that simple. It’s a deliberate provocation, a rudimentary form of display.

Ridiculous, I think. Ridiculous…

And yet my eyes linger on him. There is something indecent in observing such brute force that allows itself to be used like this, without shame.

It is this perception that he’s showing off for me that bothers me. It’s different from the feeling I get from the woman’s hands touching him. This time, it’s a raw electricity. My blood heats up, and a familiar and irritating pressure grows in my groin.

It’s ridiculous. My body reacts with humiliating predictability. His provocationworks—appealing to a primitive impulse.

The image of Griffin, sweaty, defiant, and completely aware of my presence, is the most potent damn spectacle I’ve ever seen.