Shakily, the woman took a step back, making sure that she kept her hands up. Jackson grabbed her by her neck, keeping his gun on her, forcing her to lead them inside. Nikos hung in the back, warily glancing behind himself. After doing this for a month now, he should have been used to it, but he didn’t think he would ever be. It was hard getting used to having death hanging over your shoulder.
They walked through the hall that led them to the living room. Despite the apartment building looking rat infested, her apartment was very clean and had a richness to it that the outside didn’t have. Incense burned, and smells of earthy yetaromatic scents filled the air. She led them through the living room to the back and hesitated before she pointed to a room where the door hung ajar. Even without knowing what was behind the door, Jackson didn’t hesitate in his stride and walked right through it.
When Nikos stepped inside last, he had to admit that he hadn’t quite expected this.
“What did that bastard want again, baby?” Hugo asked. He lay on the bed, both of his ankles and wrists tied by silk scarves to the bed railing. He was blindfolded, unable to see them. “Was he complaining about the noise again?”
“Well, looky, looky. We got ourselves a live one here,” Jackson said in a fake country accent. The moment he spoke, Hugo tensed before he wildly started to thrash, probably trying to get himself out of the binding, but it was too tight. Jackson cockily walked over and removed the blindfold, and Hugo looked at them all bewildered.
“Who would have known that one of Ricardo’s top enforcers would be into freaky shit like this?” Jackson said as he slapped Hugo’s cheek, not at all bothered by the fact that Hugo was as naked as the day he was born, exposed in front of his enemies. That humiliation turned into anger as his skin flushed red.
“Was this a setup?” he asked as he looked at the Black woman with fury and hurt. “How did y’all know about this place?”
“You wouldn’t be going through this if you would have stayed on the other side of town and remained loyal to your wife,” Christos said, shaking his head, not explaining that they had been tailing him for the past few weeks, and it had led them here to a less gated area where they could easily kill him unlike the Ritz building in Manhattan that he stayed in with his family.“But because you didn’t keep your dick in your pants and stay out of the ghetto, now we’re all here.”
“Hugo, baby. I didn’t betray—”
“Shut up, bitch,” Jackson told the woman, and she swallowed the rest of her words with the gun pointed at her head again. Hugo’s face hardened as he looked at the tears in his woman’s eyes before he turned to the rest of them.
“What do you want?” he asked, but Christos ignored him and nodded. Jackson and William slipped their guns into their waistband before they went over to Hugo and started raining heavy blows onto the Latino man. Grunts of pain filled the room, and Nikos grimaced, knowing that every blow was heavy. The woman broke down and cried, quietly telling them to stop, but her pleas fell on deaf ears, and Christos walked past her crumbled form straight to him. Nikos lifted a brow as he watched Christos pass his gun to him.
“This is Antonis’s task for you,” Christos said.
Nikos’s eyes widened as he looked at the gun in his hand. He knew his uncle had a task for him, but he hadn’t expected it to be this. Nikos stood frozen even as Jackson and William finished their beating, leaving Hugo bruised and battered as he spat out blood on the purple sheets beneath him.
When Hugo saw the gun in his hand, his eyes grew large.
“Don’t do this. Don’t do this,” Hugo pleaded. “I have two children. I have a son and a daughter that need me.”
“Please, don’t kill him,” his woman pleaded too tearfully as she looked at him. “Please don’t do it.”
Jackson sighed in disgust before he grabbed the woman and snatched her out of the room, muffling her screams. Nikos continued to stand frozen, taking in their pleas as he tried to figure out what he would do.
“This is the way to prove your loyalty,” Christos told him. Nikos began to pace, ignoring everything in the room. He wanted to go back home. He wished he had never come to New York. Most of all, he wished he hadn’t been born as Giannis Drakos’s son because if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t be forced into this position, taking lives for greed and drugs. And yet, he was his father’s son.
Nikos stopped and took a shaky breath before he stepped over to Hugo, a man who had never done anything to him but had wronged his uncle by being a part of Ricardo’s crew. Ricardo was his uncle’s enemy, and for the past few months, Ricardo, Hugo, and the rest of their crew had been moving in on his uncle’s territory. For these past few months, Nikos had watched Christos and Jackson take the lives of Ricardo’s crew, and now he would have to do the same.
“Please, don’t kill me. You don’t want to do this. Ask me anything. I’ll tell you,” Hugo pleaded desperately. “I have children—”
Nikos shot him one time in the head perfectly. It hadn’t been his first time shooting a gun after training in the military, but it had been his first time directly killing someone. Hugo’s pleas stopped as his head dropped on the pillow beneath him.
Christos patted his shoulder. “The first kill is always the hardest, but it gets easier.”
That was the thing. Nikos didn’t want it to get easier. He didn’t want to kill again, and yet, he knew this would not be his last kill being Giannis Drakos’s son.
They removed Hugo’s body from the room and cleaned up any blood or traces of themselves. When they stepped into the living room, Nikos saw the woman’s head lolling out of the bodybag before Jackson stuffed it inside. He looked at Christos, who shrugged.
“It’s not worth having men to watch her to make sure she keeps quiet. It’s easier to kill her,” Christos explained. “Besides, she wouldn’t have fared well with Ricardo’s people either.”
Nikos kept quiet, but he couldn’t help but feel that it was another life lost for no reason. As he looked at the room one more time before leaving, he couldn’t help but think about the loved ones who would miss her.
After putting the bodies in William’s trunk and letting him drive off with them so he could dispose of them, the rest of them headed over to Christos’s car. But Nikos paused on the sidewalk.
“I’ll find my own way back,” Nikos said.
“You’re crazy, man,” Jackson said as he eagerly got into the front seat while Christos nodded.
“I’ll update Antonis,” Christos said as he walked over to the driver’s side and opened the door. Before he got in, he paused. “You did good, man.”
