Chapter 17
C H A P T E R
WHEN NIKOS ENTERED THE HOSPITAL, ALL HE SMELLED WAS DEATH.
The entrance was rife with it, and he nearly turned around and left, getting a bad ominous feeling in his gut.
The small private hospital that Christos had given him directions to was filled with patients who were stained with blood and had gaping wounds, most of whom he could recognize as his uncle’s crew.
Shaking away his stupor, Nikos mindlessly went to the front desk to speak to the receptionist until he saw Christos down the hall from the corner of his eye.
He sped down the hall without a word and came to a halt in front of Christos, breathing heavily.
After getting the call, he hadn’t wasted a second coming over here from Honey’s place.
According to his navigation system, the drive was supposed to take over an hour, but Nikos had managed to get there in a little over thirty minutes, though he knew he would receive some speeding tickets in the mail soon.
The call had shocked him, but what shocked Nikos, even more, was the grave expression on Christos’s face that promised nothing good.
Nikos glanced around, seeing the rest of his uncle’s crew littering the hallway, posted up against the wall, and sitting on the available chairs.
An air of defeat peppered the room, leaving the entire hall thick with tension that Nikos felt.
It yanked at his neck, making him feel guilty for missing out on what took place tonight, even if it was a blessing that he hadn’t been there.
“What happened?” Nikos asked.
Tonight had been a night of surprises for him.
He hadn’t expected to get into a fight. He hadn’t expected to get sliced by a knife.
He hadn’t expected to eat dinner at Honey’s home, and he definitely hadn’t expected to be at a hospital at one o’clock in the morning either.
And yet, here he was, waiting for Christos to tell him the grim story of why half of his uncle’s crew was in the hospital and the other half missing.
“We were set up and ambushed,” Christos said plainly as he ran his fingers through his hair, the blond strands turning red from the blood caked on his hands. “We went there tonight to the place where we were told that Ricardo would be, but instead, we were met with double the men we had.”
“Damn,” Nikos cursed, imagining the shock they must have felt. “She lied.”
A few weeks ago, they had gotten in contact with a female acquaintance of Ricardo’s.
They had threatened her and forced her to give them information on Ricardo, and the plan tonight had been to use that information to set up a raid on Ricardo.
Antonis was finally going to be able to take out his enemy, and he had gone there tonight with plans to do so.
But now everyone was here in the hospital.
“We were unprepared, and it was a bloodbath. Barely made it out of there alive.”
Nikos didn’t know what to say. There were no words to express how he felt, no words of comfort he could give to Christos, seeing how bad the situation had turned out.
He was shocked by what happened, even though he knew things like this could and would happen.
It was why he had always been wary and cautious whenever his uncle gave him a task.
His life could easily be taken away from him being in this kind of lifestyle.
“Who made it out?” Nikos asked.
“Theo’s fine. He was the driver for tonight, so he hadn’t been in there with us. But while he was trying to help us get Antonis in the car, he got shot. It was a flesh wound, so he’ll be okay. Jackson…” Christos sighed. “He’s gone.”
Nikos cursed under his breath as he clenched his fist. Jackson hadn’t been one of his favorite people, but he didn’t want something like that to happen to him. He had worked with him for the past month now, and it was going to be strange with him gone.
“Manos and Alex are gone, and Spiros is in surgery right now.”
Nikos wouldn’t say it because it wasn’t something that needed to be said at this moment, but secretly, he was grateful that he hadn’t gone with them tonight.
Because if he had, he had a feeling that he would be on that list, in a hospital bed or in a body bag right now.
The next time he saw Honey, he would thank her.
She had inadvertently saved him without even realizing it.
He had thought the hero tonight had been him, but all along, it had been her.
“What about Antonis?” Nikos asked. When Christos called him, telling him that his uncle was in the hospital, his heart nearly dropped from the shock of it all.
Christos hadn’t given him any details, but the grave expression on Christos’s face was enough to let Nikos know that whatever he would tell him next wouldn’t be good.
“He’s in a coma.”
Nikos stood speechless.
With all the power that his uncle had, a chunk of his crew had managed to be massacred in a single night, and now even his uncle was out of commission.
Nikos couldn’t say he had a particularly close relationship with his uncle.
Living in separate countries made it hard for them to have a close relationship like other uncles and nephews had.
He hadn’t spent much time with Antonis, only seeing him occasionally for special family occasions.
Even now, with him being in New York for over a month, he still hadn’t spent much time with him outside of work-related situations.
His uncle was a busy man, and most of his time was for work.
They weren’t close by a long shot, but Antonis still was his uncle, and Nikos knew the impact that would have on his father and Aris, who were both extremely fond of him.
But the most important thing was how Antonis being in a coma would impact the streets.
His uncle had a lot of power in many territories throughout the tri-state area.
With him down, many people would try to take advantage of their vulnerable state, including Ricardo, who had taken Antonis down, even if only temporarily.
It would be a war zone.
“With Antonis gone, we’re going to need someone to take over the mantle for now,” Christos stated, and Nikos nodded in agreement. They would need to appoint someone now, so they could get control of things before anything went wrong.
“Who is it going to be? Evangelos?” Nikos questioned.
Evangelos was the first person who came to mind and the person most likely to take Antonis’s place.
He was his uncle’s right-hand man and most trusted person.
He would know exactly how Antonis would want things to be run in his absence.
And then the second most likely person came to mind.
“Simos? Are they both trying to figure it out amongst themselves?”
“They’re both dead,” Christos said.
“What?” Nikos exclaimed, completely baffled. “How? Why was Simos even there? I understand Evangelos. He went wherever Antonis went, but why Simos?”
“It was a plan. Simos wasn’t even there tonight, but they caught him while he had been coming back home from night study.”
“If not them, then who?” Nikos asked, confused. “Is it going to be you or another head from another crew? Is my dad splitting the territories?”
Christos shook his head. “No, it’s going to be you.”
Nikos stumbled back, not believing his own ears.
He wanted to ask Christos if he was joking, but he already knew that Christos wasn’t the type to make jokes.
He was serious. Nikos tried to process Christos’s words, but he was having a hard time doing so because they didn’t make sense to him. Why him? And he asked just as much.
“Me?” Nikos questioned. “Why me?”
Though he had managed to rise up within the ranks of his uncle’s crew quickly, and he was now on the same level as Christos, he was still nowhere near the top. And he had only been here for over a month.
“It was your father’s orders. He made the call,” Christos explained, and Nikos found himself muttering out a stream of curses.
“No,” Nikos said as he ran his fingers through his hair, ready to yank the strands out from the root, already feeling the weight of his father’s decisions on his shoulders. “He couldn’t have given that order. He couldn’t have.”
“Though Antonis runs this area, this is still your father’s organization, and he answers to him,” Christos said. “That’s how the ladder works here. What your father says goes.”
“I can’t do this,” Nikos said as he shook his head vehemently.
There was no way he could take over this position.
He would have to be in charge of a crew of over four hundred people, and control clubs all over the tri-state area along with the territories and people within them.
He would have to gain their respect and trust, and he would have to do things that he had never wanted to do before.
It wasn’t a matter of whether he could do it or not, but ultimately, a matter of his desire, and quite frankly, he had no desire to do it whatsoever.
He hadn’t come to New York for this, to be forced into this impossible scenario that he had never wanted.
He was even more angry, knowing that his father had taken advantage of the first opportunity of chaos to put him in a bigger position within his organization.
Even across the seas, his father was still forcing things on him, not caring about his opinion at all.
“You have to,” Christos said. “We need a leader right now.”
“But me—”
“You’re family. You’re blood. You’re Giannis Drakos’s son. They have no choice but to follow you, and I believe you can handle the role until Antonis comes back.”
Nikos stared at Christos in disbelief. Christos clasped his shoulder with an iron grip.