Page 99 of Violent Possession

“It was Ivan,” I state.

“...Yes, sir,” he confirms. “Multiple witnesses.”

I hang up without saying goodbye.

I stand there, staring at the screen. The handful of dollars that disappear from the St. Jude soup kitchen’s accounts mean nothing in the face of the spectacle ofgratuitous brutalityIvan has just committed.

A part of me still wants to return to the cat-and-mouse game with Seraphim, but before that, I need to put out the internal fire.

My idiot cousin just declared war on his own allies, and worse:in public.

I take a deep breath, trying to regain my phlegm. But I already know: there will be no peace until I solve the Ivanproblem. Only then can I return to my project of deconstructing the myth of Seraphim.

Before anything else, I need to take this imbecile off the board.

Ivan’s territoryreeks of three things: sweat, dry leather, and veiled, stored, rotting anger. He has set himself up in a decrepit boxing gym at the end of the industrial district.

At first glance, it looks like one of those places where old ex-boxers train lost boys, but you only need to cross the threshold to realize no one there is learning to dance on their tiptoes. They train to stay on their feet even when their teeth have already shredded their entire mouth.

The ring is a pool of dried blood and plasma from the last twenty years, and the back wall boasts Soviet flags with ignorant pride, pretending they are a repellent for democracy. Ivan likes that. He wants to be a legend in his own time, no matter which.

I enter alone. My footsteps echo on the cracked concrete, and the sound of the place—muffled shouts, the crack of gloves, the damp thud of punches on heavy bags—dies down in concentric waves as I cross the threshold. A dozen pairs of eyes lock onto me.

Ivan is in the center of the ring, shirtless, his broad torso gleaming with sweat. The wraps on his fists are grimy, some freshly stained with blood. He smiles when he sees me, a dirty smile. He steps down from the canvas with the surprising lightness of a large animal, and without wiping his face, he spits a trickle of blood onto the floor.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Ivan proclaims, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Lost your way to the bank? No one wears a suit here, Leshy.”

The laughter from his men is brief and nervous. They know Ivan likes an audience, but they also know the show could end in tragedy at any moment. I keep walking until we are two meters apart.

No one else breathes loudly. The gym belongs to Ivan—except for the minutes I’m in it.

“Did you have fun today, Ivan?” I say. “Put on your show? Did you feel like a man breaking the legs of a manager who owns most of our drone expansion route?”

His jaw clenches, tense. “He deserved it, Leshy. He let a Volkov into our perimeter. You think I forgot? Our last name isMalakov. Someone needed to teach him what that means. And since you were too busy playing with your new social experiment—who, by the way, reeks of a traitor—I did the dirty work that had to be done. No need to thank me.”

“You call thatdirty work?” I feel a short, empty laugh escape my throat. “You destroy because you don’t know how to build anything. That ‘arrogant manager’ closed a multi-million dollar contract for us less than twenty-four hours ago.”

“Fuck the contract!” Ivan exclaims, puffing out his chest. “Paper means nothing if people don’t fear us. You hide behind numbers, but you stick a fucking rat among us! I just cleaned up some of the mess.”

“It’s useless when your business partners can’t walk to sign the checks, you imbecile,” my voice finally rises, but it doesn’t waver. “You inspirepity. You only use brute force because you don’t have the brains to use anything else!”

“At least I have the balls to get my hands dirty!” he yells, pointing a thick finger in my direction. “Unlike you, who sends others to do it and hides! And your cripple, huh?! What are yougoing to do about him?! The guy is unstable—people have a lot to say about him, that he destroyed a fucking jukebox out of nowhere?—“

Ivan casually asking around about Griffin irritates me, but not as much as what he implies. “Youtalking about instability, for fuck’s sake?” I interrupt, at the same volume as him, and he retorts:

“You’re a coward, Alexei!”

“Am I?” I turn to Boris, the largest of the thugs, an ogre in a loose suit with the expression of someone who took a lot of beatings in childhood. “You. From now on, you work for me.”

Boris pales, and Ivan looks like he’s about to explode, but he can’t. Not there, not at that moment. “He’smyman,” Ivan growls.

“Hewas,” I correct him, without taking my eyes off the terrified brute. “Your only job now is to follow this imbecile. He breathes out of rhythm, you call me.” I approach Boris, my voice a poisonous whisper that everyone can hear. “If he gives me one more problem, I will blameyou. I will go to your house, Boris. I will sit at your dinner table with your wife and your two children, and I will explain to them, indetail, how their father failed me. And then I will burn it all to the ground with all of you inside. Are we clear?”

Boris nods his head, trembling. “Yes, sir.”

Ivan is red with frustration. The loyalty of his men—just like mine—belongs to the Malakov name, and not to anyone in particular. That has always been the problem.

“From today on,” I continue, “you don’t touch anything without going throughme. Or you’ll have more than broken legs to worry about.”