Ten Years Earlier

 

In New York for the first time and it was a cold September.  Alex Drakos, his father Elasaid Drakos, and his brother Oz walked out of the hotel and quickly made their way across the street.  Although they wore tailored suits and overcoats, as all three came prepared for inclement weather, it still wasn’t enough for Oz.

He blew hot air into his fist.  “Can’t fucking believe it,” he said as they walked.  “It’s ninety degrees back home.”

“Ninety, Odysseus?” Alex asked doubtfully.

“I kid you not, brother.  I checked.  It’s ninety back home.  But it’s freezing out here.  It’s fucking freezing!  It’s so cold I could have worn pizámes underneath!”

“Stop being such a baby,” said Elasaid to his younger son.  “It’s just a little wind.  And you’ve got on a big coat on top of it.  What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m cold.  That’s what’s the matter.  It’s cold out here!”

Alex smiled and shook his head.  “Oz can handle any strongman in the world, Pop,” he said.  “But a little cold weather?  He melts like a marshmallow.”

“Fuck you, Alexio!” Oz fired back.  “I can’t help if I’m a warm-blooded individual, unlike you and Pop.  Coldblooded motherfuckers!”

Alex and his father laughed, and all three kept on walking.

They were in the States, officially, on business.  The Drakos family held many front-companies in their native Greece and could easily get away with stating business, on travel documents, as their official reason for visiting.

They were in the country, unofficially, for a very different reason.  They were in the States to find, torture, and kill a man called Stavros: the motherfucker who tortured and killed Elasaid’s favorite uncle.

But on their way to meet up with the snitch who gave them the tip to begin with, some fool walking past them recklessly bumped into Elasaid and kept on walking.  The guy even looked back at the head of the Drakos Crime Family as if he was daring Elasaid to say something about it.

They couldn’t believe it.  Nobody but nobody disrespected a Drakos.  And the three Drakos men, all in business suits, all in long, black, elegant coats, didn’t say anything about it.  But they followed that asshole like the gangsters they were.  They followed him as if they were following the man they had come all the way to America to find.

Until the guy made another bad move: he turned into an alley.

“Get that motherfucker,” Elasaid ordered between clenched teeth, and Alex and Oz took off running into that alley after him.

It was only when the rude man saw the two younger men running toward him did he suddenly realize the danger he was in.  On the street they looked like regular businessmen: well dressed, good looking: men with some class about them.  But running through that alley, they looked like thugs.  Hardcore thugs.  Mafia even, although he wasn’t sure if they were Italian.

But he wasn’t waiting around to find out if they were.  He took off running too.  He was a big man, with girth, and he ran as fast as he could.  He nearly tripped and fell he was running so fast.  His heart was hammering as he kept looking back and running; as he kept wishing they would both just go away, and he would get away from them.

But Alex had been a star on the soccer field in his native land, and Oz had been a star in track.  They were not going anywhere.  They ran down the hefty man quickly, with Alex, the older brother, leading the charge.  He tackled the stranger to the ground without breaking a sweat.

Elasaid hurried up to the man his sons had detained.  The sons waited: they knew how badly their father liked a good smackdown.

He didn’t disappoint.

With his sons standing as lookouts, Elasaid got down on his knees in his tailored suit and beat the man in his face with a force in his licks that was capable of breaking bones.  “Disrespecting me?” he kept asking the man as he punched.  “You’re disrespecting me?  Who the fuck do you think I am?  Who the fuck do you think I am!?”

He was out of control as he beat the man repeatedly. He beat him until blood poured.  He beat him until he could see the white meat.

And then, nearly out of breath himself, he finally stood up.  But he wasn’t done.  He began kicking the nearly unconscious man repeatedly, for additional doses of street justice.

But as he kicked, another random guy turned into the alley, presumably to take a shortcut just as the victim had planned, until he saw the beat down.  At first, he thought there might be some health issue and wondered if he could help.  But then he saw that the older man wasn’t nudging the downed man with his shoe to see if he was okay, but he was kicking the man violently.  That was when he realized what he had happened upon.  And like any good New Yorker who knew when to mind his own business, he immediately turned tail, and hurried back out of the alley.

But it wasn’t going to be that easy.  Alex nodded to his kid brother, and Oz took off after the guy.  Not for another beat down.  But to warn him that he didn’t see what he saw.  And if he did see it, and told a living soul, it would be the last thing he ever saw.  It was how the Drakos family did business.  At home and abroad.  It was second nature to them.

But when his father gave their victim a final kick, Alex assumed it was his final blow: the coup de .  He assumed it was over.

He assumed wrong.

Instead of walking away, Elasaid pulled out his loaded gun and pointed it at the unfortunate man.  The man covered his face and recoiled from the sight of the weapon.  And he cried.  He begged for mercy.

But instead of showing mercy, Elasaid laughed. “Not so tough now, are you?  Not so big and bad and disrespectful now, are you!?”

Then Elasaid handed the gun to the best number two in the business: his oldest son and underboss, Alexio.

Normally, Alex would have no problem rendering street justice.  He was as street as street came.  But the way he saw it, it had already been rendered.

Not to Elasaid, it hadn’t.  And he was baffled, when there suddenly was hesitation, why Alex didn’t see so too.  “Do it, boy!” he ordered.  “What are you waiting for?  We can’t be in this alley all day!”

But Alex stood over the man who had already been beaten to a pulp.  A man who wasn’t some stone-cold killing gangster like they were used to dealing with.  A man who probably had a wife, a mother and father: a son even.

Elasaid wasn’t privy to his son’s thoughts.  He just wanted it done and done now!  “What are you waiting on, Alexio?  Do it!  That motherfucker disrespected me.  He disrespected your own father.  Are you going to let him get way with that?  Kill that motherfucker!”

Alex didn’t know why it happened that day.  He couldn’t tell anybody alive why that beat down of that fat slob in that alleyway, unlike any of those other coup de grâce moments in his life, caused him to stop and think.  He never thought before.  His father ordered a hit.  He hit.  That was how he was raised.  That was how it was done.

And his hesitancy wasn’t only because this man was no gangster.  He’d taken out otherwise law-abiding citizens who’d stolen from them or tried to scam them in the past.  But there was always an underlying crime: a theft.  A scam.  A fight.  But to kill somebody over this?

Alex continued to stare at the man on the ground.  He was already down.  He had already been beaten to a point where both his eyes were swollen shut and his mouth was coughing up blood.  Now he had to die too?  For what, Alex was asking himself?  For being rude?  For refusing to say he was sorry to a stranger he didn’t know shit about?

But Elasaid was getting angry.  When the hesitation continued, he quickly turned Alex around, to see him face to face.

What was wrong with his son?  Alex was no softy.  He had a vicious meter that topped Elasaid’s!  Why was he all of a sudden hesitating?  “What’s your problem, boy?” he asked him, his face unable to shield his puzzlement.  “Just do it.  Why aren’t you taking care of this guy?”

Alex continued to stare at the man on the ground.

“Alexio, talk to me!  Why?”

Alex finally looked at his father.  “He bumped into you, Pop,” he said.

If Alex thought those simple words would bring clarity to his father’s thinking the way it was bringing clarity to his, he was badly mistaken.  Elasaid nodded as if he agreed, but his conclusion was the exact opposite.  “That’s right,” he said.  “He bumped into me.  His stupid ass had the nerve to bump into me of all people!  Now he’s got to pay!”

But in Alex’s mind, he’d already paid.  He looked, once again, at the man on the ground.

Elasaid, tired of this shit, attempted to grab his gun out of Alex’s hand.  If he was going to be a sissy about it, Elasaid had to handle it himself!

But Alex, for the first time in his life, resisted his father’s pull, and refused to release the weapon from his hand.

Elasaid was shocked.  “What are you doing?” he asked him, still pulling on the gun Alex would not relinquish.

“It’s not worth dying over,” Alex said.  “Killing a man because he bumped into you? Think about that, Pop.  You’re going to kill a man for bumping into you?”  Alex looked at his father again, as his father stopped reaching for the gun.  “Are we those kind of people now?”

Elasaid was too stunned to respond.  Who was this person?  It couldn’t possibly be Alex.  It couldn’t possibly be the most vicious man Elasaid himself had ever known!

But it was Alex.  And Alex had had enough.  His father might not have found clarity that day.  But he had.  “Get up,” he said to the man on the ground.

The man suddenly realized he just might survive, and he didn’t hesitate.  He quickly scrambled to his feet.

“Say a word to anybody,” Alex warned him, “and you’re dead.”

“Yes, sir,” the man said so nervously his voice quivered.  “Not a word to anybody!  Not to anybody!”

Alex knew the guy was no saint.  Like everybody else, he probably deserved to die for something.  But not for bumping into somebody.  Not if Alex had anything to say about it.  “Get outta here,” he said to the guy.

Although he was wobbly and disoriented, and terrified unlike he had ever been in all his years on earth, the man limped and lumbered his way out of that alley as if he had been given a lifeline out of quicksand.  Within seconds he was gone.

But Elasaid was stumped.  “What the fuck,” he said out loud, staring at Alex, unable to reconcile the man who let a bum like that go, versus the man he knew as his son.

Alex handed his father back his gun, and he began walking out of that alley that day.  They were becoming people Alex didn’t want to be.  And he decided, right then and there, that he wasn’t going to become that.  It would be the last time he ever did a kill run with his father.  It would be the last time he ever worked as the underboss for the Drakos Crime Family.

It was the end of the line for Alex.

He stopped that world.  And got off.