It was a condition.
A constant.
A language everyone spoke fluently.
Sleep was a privilege. Food was leverage. Silence was impossible. They broke bones not to punish, but to remind you how easily it could be done again. They made examples of menuntil fear soaked into the walls, into the floor, into your lungs when you breathed.
Eventually, I learned the most important rule of survival:
You don’t resist forever.
You pretend to break.
So I did.
I lowered my eyes. I obeyed. I let them believe the fire had gone out of me. I let Al-Chapo think he had succeeded—that I was finally malleable, finally loyal. He trusted me just enough to make a mistake.
Escape was never the plan.
No one escapes Al-Chapo.
His reach extended beyond borders, beyond cities, beyond continents. Men who ran were found. Men who hid were dragged back. The prison wasn’t just walls and gates—it was a network, a god with eyes everywhere.
So we planned something else.
A takeover.
Quietly. Carefully. Over months. With prisoners who had nothing left to lose and everything to gain. When the moment came, it was fast and brutal. No speeches. No hesitation.
I killed Al-Chapo with my bare hands.
I made sure he was looking at me.
I wanted him to know exactly who had won.
His men fought. Briefly. Then they surrendered. Power recognizes power, and fear changes allegiance quickly. I offered them something better than terror disguised as loyalty. Over time, they chose me.
I replaced him.
And I grew faster than he ever had.
But victory didn’t free me.
The prison followed me out.
The pain didn’t stay behind those gates. It came with me, embedded in my nerves, my reflexes, my sleep. Trauma doesn’t fade just because the sun is bright again. It festers. It waits.
Prisons make two kinds of men.
The ones who break.
And the ones who come out sharpened—dangerous, disciplined, and forever haunted by what they had to become in order to survive.
I clawed my way to the top of Greece’s underworld with that sharpness. Family by family, port by port, alliance by alliance. Some bent. Some burned. By the time my name stopped being spoken aloud and started being whispered, there was only one power left standing between me and absolute control.
The Kouris syndicate.
Masters of the eastern ports. Old blood. Old money. Smarter than the rest. War with them would’ve been apocalyptic—hundreds dead, trade routes crippled, cities bleeding for years.
