Page 98 of Violent Possession

I stand up, the chair scraping loudly on the floor. The movement breaks the spell. Arthur stares at me, devastated, awaiting the final verdict. The bullet or the ruin.

I turn and walk toward the door, without looking back. I leave him alone.

“You,” I call to one of my men, who was waiting at the door.

He approaches with one hand on his holster, anticipating the order for elimination.

“Take him home,” I command.

“Sir?”

“You heard me,” I say, adjusting my jacket. “No new marks, no witnesses, and no trace. Drop him two blocks from his apartment. He’ll find his way.”

I walk past them and start down the dark corridor toward the exit.

“And have flowers sent to his daughter tomorrow morning. A large bouquet. Signed anonymously.”

I don’t wait for a reply. I keep walking.

Arthur Penhaligon’s life no longer belongs to me. He gave me what I needed.

I expectedto find Seraphim’s name in the obvious place: in the underworld, in the muck of sordid transactions, in the digital trails of offshore accounts and arms shipments, in the dead files of a brothel’s bookkeeper, perhaps even in a blood contract executed in the dim light of a port-side nightclub. What Ididn’texpect was to come face to face with the holy trinity of social assistance: Schmidt’s Tailor Shop, the St. Jude soup kitchen, and Mrs. Elma’s Thrift Store.

I feel a mixture of fascination and contempt at what I discover.

On the screens before me, the financial records of these institutions parade by in a procession of accounting horrors: unsubstantiated entries, cascading operational losses, small but constant transfers, anonymous donations that never exceed the federal scrutiny limit. The local press idolizes these places as safe havens for the destitute, ex-convicts, orphans, and thenewly rehabilitated—but the balance sheets speak louder than any tear-jerking report. The pattern is always the same. They open in the red, flirt with bankruptcy, but never go under. They remain standing, stubborn and immortal, sustained by an underground flow of small amounts of cash. The figures are too modest to interest the IRS, but too consistent to be purely random.

Instead of trying to launder dirty money, someone is draining resources to keep the benevolent facade running—even if it means operating indefinitely at a loss. It’s brilliant, in a way.

Vasily buys loyalty—and usually overpays. Ivandemandsloyalty, and imposes it with physical violence. They both see the world as a competition of brute force and bribery, and doubt that any human relationship exists beyond those two. But Seraphim... he neither buys nor coerces.

I observe, line by line, what he plants: a new coat for an ex-convict, an orthopedic prosthesis for a child, a decent supper for a single mother left to her own devices. Each small gesture is a drop of pure water injected into people’s moral desert. A debt of gratitude that cannot be erased because it cannot be repaid. He builds a crowd of devotees.

I wonder: how many of Vasily’s men have already switched sides? How many ofSeraphim’smen have done the same, by rough comparison?

How many frequent these charity houses in their spare time, bringing their child, their brother, their sick mother? How many owe favors to a specter who never appears in public, but always intervenes at the moment of greatest weakness?

And my biggest problem: how do you find this specter?

I could admire him for this. Seraphim operates in the symbolic field, so I need to adapt.

I’m about to put a plan together when the phone vibrates on the glass tabletop.

The sound is an anomaly in itself. This phone rarely rings. It’s reserved for the kind of emergency that can’t wait for an email.

I answer it, expecting nothing good. The voice is one of my men’s.

“Sir,” he says, with an urgency that doesn’t match his robotic profile.

“What is it?”

“It’s Karpov.”He pauses. “He was found outside his club. Beaten. They broke both his legs.”

I remain silent, processing.

I can picture it. Karpov, the proudest manager, always in a starched suit even on the midnight shifts, left like a dog on the sidewalk, his legs twisted at grotesque angles, and the club’s security guards not knowing whether to help or pretend they didn’t see anything.

I don’t need to ask. The signature is as clear as a confession. And it shares my blood.