Page 77 of Violent Possession

I lean back in my chair, looking at the numbers in front of me. Karpov was my last appointment of the night. I think about pursuing the resolution of Griffin’s little alley mystery, but I need to find Vasily and Ivan first.

It’s then that my office door explodes open with a bang that makes the crystal glass on my desk vibrate.

And, speaking of the devil, Ivan enters.

After hours with no sign from Sacramento, he appears, his face red with fury. He holds a cardboard file folder and throws it forcefully onto my desk. It makes a mess. Papers scatter and the documents that were already there fall.

“WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS, ALEXEI?” he shouts. “YOU PUT A RAT IN THE MIDDLE OF OUR BUSINESS?!”

I pick up the folder. Inside, poor-quality copies of police records and what looks like a plea bargain.

The name “Myrddin Griffin” is on all of them.

“The guy has a history of turning coat, and we’re supposed to believe he ‘turned to our side’? Have you gone crazy?!”

I read the highlighted words on the papers.

Informant. Deal with the feds in Bakersfield.

How... how did I not see this? And, more importantly, how didhesee it? The idea that Ivan, with his hammer-like intelligence, discovered somethingImissed, wounds my pride in a way few things can.

“Where did you get this, Vania?” I say, keeping my voice as calm as I can.

“I have my sources,” he puffs out his chest. “A contact in legal. I went to check our new friend’s background.”

What a lie. Ivan wouldn’t have that initiative. “Your legal contact is good,” I say, testing him. “How did he know to look specifically in Bakersfield?”

The eye contact Ivan holds with me lasts less than three seconds. He tries to resist, but the child within him always crumbles first. He stutters. “I... I heard things. A rumor.”

Contempt reaches me before anger. I rub my hands over my face, trying not to laugh at the irony. Ivan, who always relied on brute force solutions, now gets lost ina rumor. What a joke.

“FromVasily?” I ask, already knowing the answer.

At the same time, Ivan turns red. “I didn’t tell him anything! He came to me, talking about rumors, saying he was worried aboutyou! I just followed the lead!”

I try to suppress the urge to punch the table. Of course it was Vasily who started everything, Vasily who planted the doubt, Vasily who always operates in the shadows. Always centered, always calculating how to move the pieces without ever getting his hands dirty. Now I wonder: what else was said between them? What did they conspire while I was busy trying to build this rotten empire? It’s clear: Vasily is using Ivan, as he always has. But he wasn’t supposed to act so fast.

I remember the smell of gasoline and wet earth in our backyard, the fights that started with words and ended with blood, all fueled by a competition that was never healthy, never fair.

“Don’t you see, Ivan?”

Funny how, even as adults, the dynamic never changes. Three vertebrae of a broken spine.

“There are no rumors.” I speak each word clearly, slowly. The explosion is at the brink, but I try to push it back. I try. “There’s no concern. Vasilyusedyou! He gave you a lead and sent you, like an obedient,stupiddog, straight to my door, and you... you fell for it. Like achild!”

His face contorts. He hates the insult more than the accusation. “I did what had to be done!” he yells. “The guy’s a rat! At least I do something! I don’t hide behind a fucking screenall day, moving numbers! In the real world, out there, things are solved like this!”

His accusation, the eternal insinuation that I’m less of a man than him, boils inside me.

I stand up so fast that the chair scrapes the floor and almost falls over.

“SOLVED LIKE THIS?” I repeat, shouting back. “It wassolving things like thisthat we lost Odessa! It was blind trust in ‘force’ that cost us control of the port!”

“He’s our blood! He’s yourbrother!” Ivan retorts.

“He WAS my brother!” The shout escapes without my permission. “He stopped being my brother the moment he sabotaged a nine-figure deal out of greed! He stopped being my brother when he left a living witness just to use later as a pawn! And he stopped being my brother when he usedyouto try anddestabilizeme!”

Ivan doesn’t reply. He can’t take another round of this. Neither can I, to be honest.