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“I won’t.”
He paused for a moment, the words sticking in his throat. “My father was...is, I imagine, I doubt he’s changed his name...Nikola Kouklakis. And no, we don’t share a name. No, it is not by accident. But by my design.”
He could see her thinking, could see her processing, wondering where she’d heard the name.
“He is a criminal. The most notorious criminal in Athens. One of the worst in the world. Doubtless you’ve heard his name on the news. He is a drug lord and human trafficker, and I was born and raised in his compound. My mother was never there. I don’t even know who she is. I was raised by my father, the most violent, reviled man in Greece. And before I left, I nearly became him. It’s what I was being groomed for. To take the place of a man who sold drugs and women. And do you know what, Leah? I would have. I could have.”
She shook her head, her eyes glittering. “No, Ajax, you couldn’t have.”
“Yes, Leah, I could have. Why do you think it’s so important I keep control? Why do you think I have to plan everything, keep my eyes on the prize ahead. Because if I don’t...greed, corruption, murder, all of that is in my blood. It’s who I am. Bred into me, raised into me. Nature or nurture? Doesn’t matter, I have both on the side of darkness, and it is all still in me. If I don’t keep it chained, if I don’t keep it under control....”
“That’s ridiculous, Ajax. You aren’t a criminal any more than I am.”
“If you run through the alleyways in the middle of the city, you make two right turns, then pass two buildings. At a third, you take a left. You knock on the door, and someone answers, usually a kid. Say whatever the word of the night is, and they show you to the back. They open up your backpack, inspect the packages. You take the money, and you go home.” He swallowed. “You have to know it like that. Memorize it. Because you make the trip in the dark. And it’s scary, especially when you’re a little kid. So you need to know it. Know what to do, know what to say. And you have to be damn fast so you don’t wind up with a slit throat. Or worse.”
“What’s worse?” she asked, her voice hoarse.
“Being sold. Trust me. It’s worse. People who want to buy boys...it’s not for anything good.” He looked at her, at the horror etched onto her lovely face. “I am a drug runner. Is that not criminal activity?”
“You were a mule. A child.”
“Call it what you will, there was an age when I knew what I was doing and when I continued to do it. Family business and all.” He thought back, to the opulent mansion on the hill, overlooking the city. To the halls, filled with people, women, who were like wraiths, hollow eyed and desperate. Hungry looking. Willing to sell any and everything for a taste of their drug of choice.
“It is the most hideous business,” he said. “Drugs turn people into ghosts. They steal everything vital from them. Everything alive. The color goes from them. They have one drive, and one drive only—the next fix. And they will sacrifice anything to get it. We—my father, me—we capitalized on that.”
“Not you. You were a child.”
“I lived in the mansion. I wore custom suits bought with that money.”
“Yes, but you aren’t there now.”
“Stop trying to excuse it. I ran drugs when I was a boy, but I took them as a teenager. And I used the women who were addicted to them. I suspect...” He hesitated. “I have long suspected that Alexios Christofides was the child of a prostitute who lived in my father’s compound. I don’t know it for sure...but he hates me, and it’s with enough ferocity that I know it goes beyond business.”
“But you wouldn’t have done anything to him, you were a boy...you.”
“I was part of the problem. Do you want to know how I lost my virginity, Leah? To a prostitute. Not the kind that were kidnapped and sold, one of the ones who hung around waiting for her favored poison.” She wanted to close her eyes. To block out his face, to block out the words, as the pieces of the puzzle that was Ajax Kouros came together. As the boy she’d cared for, the man who stood before her, merged into one. Merged with this new truth. “I traded her. She took my virginity, I gave her an ounce of cocaine. Generous, really. And that’s not all. That’s not everything. It’s not even close. You can’t begin to understand it. I was a boy, wandering around a massive mansion filled with vice, and none of it was locked to me. Some days I didn’t eat, because no one prepared food for me. It was there, but do you think anyone spared me a thought? Not until I learned where the power was in the little class system my father built for himself. Sex and drugs.”
