Page 83 of Violent Possession

Before registering the room, I register the body. I don’t recognize myself. I feel bandages pressing against my thigh, shoulder, and part of my ribs. The phantom limb throbs, as always, but my prosthesis isn’t with me. A split second of panic; I search around and there it is, resting next to a dresser with a portable chessboard, and an armchair that... is occupied. Alexei. He’s there, sitting, staring at me.

Not a muscle on him moves. He looks more like a statue than a person, and I presume he needs to conserve energy to deal with me.

The last thing I remember of Alexei is him trying to save my blood, staining his designer clothes just to keep me in one piece.

My first attempt to sit up is an absolute failure. It hurts in parts of my body I didn’t know hurt; parts I honestly thought had already been destroyed years ago. I swear. The second attempt puts me half-sideways, facing Alexei, who doesn’t speak, doesn’t ask, doesn’t move.

“Alexei,” I say. It comes out low. My throat is dry.

Alexei looks at me.

But it’s strange.

I don’t know if it’s the lost blood or the damn head trauma, but he seems like a mirage: present, but not accessible. I forcemyself to remember how he was before, the clearest memory I have of him before all this shit.

There was warmth there, I swear. I’m not making this up. It was something in his eyes, in the line of his jaw when he laughed, even in his hands. Now they’re just shark eyes, dark, bottomless.

He rests his fingers on the side of the table next to the bed, and then leans in until I feel him too close and yet too distant. I even smell him, and I remember the car, his lap, his hand on my face. I wish that were more real than what’s happening now.

I can’t handle silence. Silence swallows everything, including my survival instinct.

“Your brother,” I whisper. “He’s a horrible killer. Send my regards.”

The comment should elicit some reaction, the slightest twitch at the corner of his mouth, a raised eyebrow. Alexei just blinks slowly—the comment is a fly passing in front of his eyes, annoying and disposable.

He just says, tonelessly, “How do you know it was my brother?”

It’s funny how, even after everything, I can still make elementary mistakes.

The fucking adrenaline completely clouded my head. I don’t evenknowAlexei’s brother. I shouldn’t know this. I’m just an idiot who still believes anything Seraphim tells me, but I can’t tell him that. I can’t risk putting Seraphim in danger.

Alexei is the type who detects lies by sweat, by the way the jaw muscle trembles, by the speed of the heart’s beat in the jugular. I know this, and yet I can’t help it.

“I... put the pieces together,” I lie.

Not even an idiot would fall for that.

He stands up. I follow him with my eyes, trying to predict where the next question will come from. He stops at the edge of the bed and looks down at me.

“Let’s try that again, Griffin,” he says. “Who did you meet in the alley behind the convenience store?”

Damn it. Does he have cameras at a fucking convenience store? I should have known. There’s no privacy with him, there’s nothing but eyes and ears and recorders, all connected to him, to his empire. Even so, I feel invaded, naked.

I pretend not to understand. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” But it’s a child’s lie, and he knows it.

Alexei’s gaze hardens.

“What did Seraphim tell you in that alley?”

I stop. Thename, the name that has been buried in my head for years, the name I try to forbid myself from thinking, let alonepronouncing. And he says it, so casually. The name that should never exist here, now. But it does, because Alexei put it between us.

Bile rises in my throat, and I’m not sure if I want to vomit, scream, or touch his face just to see if it’s really real skin. I’m not ready for this. I’m not ready for him to know. Because if he knows, then the game is lost for me, and maybe for Seraphim too.

“...How do you know that name?” I ask, and my voice falters because I never imagined I would hear that name from his mouth. Seraphim was a shadow, a secret, one of those things that only exists in the crooked lines of the past.

He doesn’t answer. He’s disappointed. That deep disappointment, which has nothing to do with anger, nor contempt, nor disgust. It’s almost…sad.

Alexei pulls the leather armchair closer to the bed and sits down. He’s not going to torture me physically. He doesn’t need to. He has better weapons. I recognize in his posture the method: keep the other person in suspense until their own anxiety does the dirty work.