Two cars pulled up at the designated location: a poolhall in the fishing village of Argostoli.  It was surrounded with security, an army of security, as the cars came to a stop.

The first car was driven by Cronos, Alex’s security chief while he was in Greece, and Alex and Oz sat in the backseat.  The second car, with one of Alex’s men driving and one riding shotgun, contained Jabari and Maximus in their backseat.  But as soon as the two vehicles drove up, the muscle for the Galen clan, who had been waiting out front, walked over.

“No security allowed inside,” said one of the men.

Alex already knew the drill.  He looked at Cronos, who knew the drill too.  Cronos nodded, and Alex and Oz got out.

With their uncles out of the second car, the four Drakos men were escorted to a back room inside the empty pool hall and told to wait.  It was a risk, and all four men knew it, but Alex also knew there was no other way around it.  The respect he had with the families was the only weapon he could use if his own family, thanks to his father’s savagery, was to be preserved.

But when the door opened, and the five underbosses of the five crime families walked in, Alex, Oz, and their uncles rose in respect, although Alex could see the hatred in their eyes.

Alex also saw that Batebbi, the underboss of the Galen clan, was now the appointed leader of all five families, when he sat down first.   Alex and his team sat down second.  And then the rest of the men.

“You brought Cronos and his crew with you,” Batebbi said in Greek.

“They’re outside,” said Alex. “They won’t interrupt unless they have to.”

“Was that the deal we agreed upon?” Batebbi asked.  “You know it is not.  But it is always like a Drakos man to change the terms.”

“To cheat,” said another underboss.

Alex did not even look his way.  Batebbi was in charge.  “No change in terms,” he said.  “You have security outside.  Considerable security.  We have only a few men outside, too.”

“But we have the upper hand now.  We have your sister.”

Alex’s jaw tightened.  “You release her first, and then we discuss the truce.  That was the agreement.”

Anger appeared in Batebbi’s eyes.  “Your father killed my father,” he said.  “Your father killed all of our fathers.  All five!  And you want to sit up here and tell me about an agreement?  We discuss the truce,” he declared, “and then, if the terms are what we can accept, she will be released.”

Alex stared at him.  Thanks to his father they were in no position to bargain, and he knew it.  “What will be required for a truce,” Alex asked.

“Complete and total surrender.  You give us your father.  Then there will be peace.”

“What will be required for a truce?” Alex asked again.

“You do not even consider my terms,” said Batebbi.  “What did you think I was going to say?  Your father broke the peace.  He broke it in a way that could have destroyed us all.  But we, the number twos, pulled together.  We refused to let that bastard win.”  Then he added: “We shocked the shit out of him, in American jargon.  Now we are more powerful than he thought he would become when he first tried to cheat us.”

“Cheat you?” Oz asked.  “What are you talking about, Batebbi?  Our father did not cheat you.  It was you who tried to cheat us.”

Batebbi smiled. “Is that what he told you?”

“Tell us what you mean,” Alex said.

“The war began,” Batebbi said, “because your father, Elasaid Drakos, decided to muscle all of us out of the profits from the International Games that are coming to Greece.”

Alex just sat there.  His father had said they muscled him out of the profits!

But Batebbi continued.  “We cannot allow one man to dominate all of us.  We will cease to exist as individual corporations if your father has his way.  We are a democracy in the Greek underworld.  We will not allow a dictator like your father to overthrow us.”

Alex’s mind was in overdrive.  What was his father up to?  Why did he lie about them muscling him out of the profits, when it was the other way around?

“Are you alright, Alexio?” Batebbi asked.  “You look unwell!”  The underbosses laughed.

Then Batebbi turned serious.  “When the heads of our families agreed to join forces to stop your father, he agreed to meet with them to negotiate.  There was plenty of money to go around.  There was no need for this power grab by your father.  So they met.  All six heads of the families.  And it was then did your father, and men he had somehow smuggled in, took the other five leaders out.”

Everything sounded sideways.  Alex had to think the way his father would think.  Why would he tell such lies?  Why would he claim what wasn’t true?  Then Alex understood why.  His father told the lies he told to get Alex to set up a meeting.  He told such lies so that Alex could arrive at the meeting, find out the truth, and then what?  Take them out?  But why would he think Alex would do such a thing? These men knew and trusted Alex.  They knew his word was his everything.  Why would he sacrifice that trust by getting into a gun battle with all five underbosses and, while he was at it, their men outside?  Elasaid had to know that Alex didn’t operate that way.

Unless, Alex thought, and then he realized how his father’s twisted mind would set this up.  He jumped from the table, turning toward his uncles, just as both Jabari and Maximus, his uncles, pulled out their weapons and shot one and then another underboss, and was about to kill a third one.  But the three other bosses pulled their weapons, too, forcing Alex and Oz to pull theirs.

But Alex, shocking every one, pointed his gun, not at the bosses, but at his uncles.  “Drop it!” he ordered them.  “They have Zylena!  What are you doing?”  The plot was crystal clear to Alex now.  His uncles were in it with his father. They wanted countrywide domination, and they needed Alex to get them through the door to make it happen fast: with a take out of the five underbosses the same way his father had taken out the bosses.

But as a testament, Alex felt, to just how poorly thought out his father’s plan actually was, the door of the room flung open and the Galen men ran in.  The sound of the gunfire was why they came.  The sound of the gunfire was why they came ready to shoot first.

Now it was a fight for survival.  Those uncles didn’t give a damn that Zylena was being held hostage.  They just wanted that power.  They just wanted their brother, Alex’s father, to dominate the entirety of the underworld.  Alex and Oz had to dive to avoid certain death.

No longer could any truce be reached.  No longer could there be any negotiated settlement.  It was each man for himself.  And Alex, on his back, shot back.  He shot and killed every man pointing in his direction.  It was agonizing, but he shot and killed Batebbi, and another underboss, and the final one.  Alex would have killed every man in that room to stay alive!

Oz, along with the uncles, were shooting too, killing as many of that first wave of men who had entered that room. 

When the last man fell, Jabari yelled, “this way!” and Alex, Oz, and Maximus hurriedly followed him out of a side door that led down a long corridor.  Alex was on his wrist microphone.  “We’re heading toward the south side of the building.  The south side.  Don’t come in.  Ambush.  Don’t come in!”  He was warning Cronos and his men.  Meet them on the south end of the building, he was telling them.  They wouldn’t stand a chance inside.

And he was right.  He was right because as soon as they hit the corridor, the second wave of shooters had arrived, and they were running down the corridor, too, firing as they ran.  If Jabari had not found a side room for them to duck into, they all would have been dead.

They ducked into that room, with Alex having to dive in.  But they knew they had to come back out shooting.  They couldn’t wait for those gunmen to block them in.

Alex didn’t hesitate.  Like the old days, Alex reappeared in that corridor firing before he showed his face, and his brother and uncles followed his lead.  They took out as many as they could, and avoided being hit themselves, but the second wave of men was larger than the first wave.  It was too many men.  The only thing they had going for them was the fact that they were in front.

Taking advantage of their head start, they took off further down the corridor, around another corridor, until they were running toward, and then opening, a backdoor.

To their relief, Cronos had heeded Alex’s warning and drove, along with the second car behind him, to the southside of the building and was waiting there.

Jabari and Maximus jumped into the first car.  Alex and Oz jumped into the second car.  And as the second wave of gunmen ran out of that building firing shot after shot with a vengeance, the two cars sped away.  Outracing bullets.