Page 78 of Violent Possession

I think about how his mother worked herself to death cleaning blood from his school uniform; I think about how my father said, in the only compliment any of us ever received, that Ivan was “a wild bull”—but he never said he was smart, nor did he need to. He would say that his area is his area. There’s no way to fit a different mold. No way to go it alone. But the truth is: we have no choice. Family always returns to the same ring, always bleeds the same blood.

I don’t like to shout. I don’t like that everything got to me so strongly.

I am the first to retreat. I take a deep breath, forcing control back. Anger doesn’t solve anything.

I walk to the window, trying to regain distance and logic. I look at my reflection: the dark circles under my eyes, the face of someone who never sleeps well. I am the eldest, raised tomanage chaos and grow the empire at any cost, but I never learned to deal with the cracks.

“From now on,” I say, trying to put everything back into an icebox, “you don’t talk to Vasily anymore. About anything. He no longer exists for you.”

Ivan frowns. “What do you mean, I don’t talk?”

“You don’t talk,” I say. The disgust is still too obvious in my voice. “Unless I say otherwise.”

Ivan shakes his head, but I understand he won’t stop. He’ll just do it better, more secretly.

I still allow myself a small outburst.

“Getout, Ivan,” I say, louder than I’d like. “I’ll take care of this.”

He glares at me. A dangerous, stupid indignation. The inclination to do any idiocy whatsoever.

And I let him leave anyway.

The reverberation of the door slamming shut as he leaves makes the window glass tremble. I need to think.

I sit, but my body doesn’t relax: it’s prepared for another explosion, another brutal discharge of anger. Now, after a night like this, with Ivan’s voice still echoing in the walls, I look at my hands and the fine tremor of nerves that haven’t received enough discharge to calm down. I hate this. I hate losing control.

What Ivan just threw on my desk is not an invitation to error. I don’t want to fall. Ican’t. Not after everything I’ve already lost to Vasily, not after all the messes I myself had to sweep under the family rug. The folder is still here, in front of me, like a hairy tumor. I open it, expecting to see a severed finger inside, so grotesque has everything become between us. But it’s just cellulose, just ink. Just a bunch of records printed on cheap paper.

I pick up the papers. They are probably hastily photographed from a dusty file. I read the header: Kern County Juvenile Court, California. The date is over a decade ago.

Defendant: Myrddin Griffin, age: 17.

Juvenile proceedings.

That’s why my initial searches showed none of this. Juvenile records are sealed. It wasn’t my mistake. Vasily, or whoever he used, paid dearly to gain access to this.

I keep reading. The transcript of the plea bargain. A seventeen-year-old Griffin describing routes, names, operations. Turning in his own gang in exchange for a reduced sentence. A rat, as Ivan said.

Then I get to the main accused, the man Griffin turned in. The gang leader.Lucian Caine.

And, next to the name, a clerk’s note: Known on the streets by the codename “Seraphim”.

I know that name.

That’s why I found nothing. Therealname wasn’t Seraphim, but it’s the name Kirill gave me. Vasily’s ghost.

No.

I open the convenience store video file on another monitor. I pause on the image of the reflection in the refrigerator glass. The tall, thin silhouette, with light hair. I go back to the papers and look at the grainy photo attached to Lucian Caine’s file. It’s a photo from over ten years ago, but he has the same hair—light, wavy, long.

I take the encrypted phone from the drawer. My lawyer, Mikhail—he must be sleeping, but he answers on the third call.

“Mikhail,” I say, trying to keep my voice deadpan to avoid suspicion from anyone who might be listening. “I have a sealedjuvenile case number from Bakersfield. I need the original, unadulterated file on my desk in an hour. Pay whatever it takes, to whoever it takes.”

I realize my hands are still trembling. More, perhaps.

If Seraphim is a contact of Vasily, what does that say aboutGriffin?