Page 7 of Marcellus: House of Drakos

EIGHT YEARS LATER

Of all the places they could have chosen, this was where they picked.

They were supposed to be discussing the details of the biggest drop of his life.

Just the three of them sitting, not in a quiet, discreet location where they could iron out the finalities of the details, but in a raucous, overcrowded honkytonk bar that was so loud it made a prison riot sound like a relaxing ballet.

He thought he was being diplomatic by letting them pick the place, figuring international arms dealers would know what they were doing.

But as soon as he drove up and saw where they had chosen, he realized alarmingly that they didn’t know shit.

Who would pick a bar like this to handle the kind of sensitive business they needed to handle?

It was bad enough that it was so far out in the boonies that they were no longer in Chicago, but in Indiana.

It was bad enough that it was so crowded and so loud that you could hardly hear yourself think, let alone hold a super-private conversation without screaming it out.

And it was seedy as hell too. And he meant down and dirty seedy. He felt as if he was sitting in a den of thieves where stone-cold killers outnumbered the thieves and where nobody around him could be trusted as far as he could throw them. Including the two men at his table.

Not that he was in a position to complain.

He was doing everything in his power to keep his fashion house afloat before anybody in the family, especially his uncompromising father, ever discovered what dire straits he was truly in.

He was the only one of his four siblings who didn’t work for their father, who decided to go it alone, and this was his reward?

Abject failure? He wouldn’t hear the last of it at those monthly family dinners he was forced to attend.

He wasn’t about to become poor ol’ Niko that everybody had to pitch in and bail out.

No way. Not after the great success he’d had. He’d rather die first.

But he also never thought he’d become this guy either.

He never dreamed he’d be willing to make deals with devils like foreign rebel groups seeking to provide arsenals of ammunition for their so-called freedom fighters around the world who were supposedly fighting against government corruption and overreach.

Niko didn’t know if they were fighting for freedom or just for power for themselves, and he honestly didn’t care.

He just didn’t want his business to fail.

His father, whom he loved more than life itself even though their relationship was rocky as rocky could get, would disown him on the spot if he failed. He was that kind of hard, cold, unyielding man. Niko, just like his other siblings, could never accept his father’s rejection.

Which meant he had to make deals with some unsavory characters just to stay afloat.

That was why he was there. This was serious business for him.

But it was all going south faster than a redneck in a pickup truck, and there were many pickup trucks in that parking lot.

But something was off. He could feel it before he could see it. Something was wrong.

“Twenty-five on the front end. Seventy-five on the back.”

The man known only as Boris did all the talking for the two men seated across the table from Niko.

Another man, Boris’s bodyguard, was nearby too.

Niko was outnumbered, but that was the story of his life.

Those numbers bothered him, but he knew how to get out of jams. The numbers Boris had just recited to him, however, bothered him more.

“I know I didn’t just hear what I just heard. Did you just say twenty-five up front? Since when, Boris? You think I drove all the way out to this hellhole just to let you start bullshitting me?”

Boris smiled. “You misunderstand. Not the numbers. Yes, I said what I said. You heard the numbers right. But you misunderstand me. You are a business man first and foremost,” he said in a heavy Eastern-European accent.

“Look at you. The fancy suit that bares your own name. The muscular body. The thousand-dollar haircut. The ladies, I am sure, go mad for you. You are a fashion designer of the highest order. Indeed, even I have been known to wear your suits myself on the rare occasion when I chose to dress fancy. Unlike your other siblings, you went your separate way from your father and did your own thing. You are your own man. I commend that.”

Then his gaze turned darker. “But you are also, in looks, in manner, in stubbornness, your father’s son.

But I am not my father’s son. I am not a politician as my father is.

I am not well-built and handsome and ladies do not find me attractive at all, as they do you.

I am a man who wants to overthrow my father’s corrupt government and every government like it.

From Servia to Kosovo. From Bosnia to Herzegovina.

From Russia to Ukraine, I am the leader of a mercenary group who needs that arsenal you can provide for us.

But I will not allow you or anyone else to take food out of my children’s mouths upfront, with nothing to show for it yet. ”

“Nice speech,” said Niko. “Really nice speech. But what the hell does it mean? You don’t show up here and change the rules. We already decided the split. Half and half. Fifty million up front and fifty million when I deliver the goods. That’s already been decided.”

But Boris was already shaking his head. “Yes, in normal circumstances that is how it is done. But that will not do for us. This is our first collaboration with you. We know you can move the product for us. And indeed your ways are quite ingenious. But it is as yet untested. We cannot go half up front on a first collaboration. That would not be . . . What do you say? Prudent of us?”

Niko began to sweat. He only hoped Boris didn’t see it.

He needed every bit of that fifty million upfront and he needed it like yesterday.

His massive but stressed fashion house had agreed to merge with an even bigger corporate entity that would put his business back on sound footing after Covid walloped it.

But the downpayment, the fifty million, was already due with a no-change deadline in forty-eight hours.

He was relying on this deal to see it through.

“I have to have,” he started saying, and then caught himself.

He had to contain his desperation. He needed that money so badly he could taste it, and now this clown was talking about giving up only a quarter upfront?

“I was born thirty-one years ago. Not last night. So stop bullshitting me. We agreed to half on the front end and half on the back end. That’s the only reason I’m here because we agreed to those terms and those terms alone. That’s the deal.”

But Boris could see the desperation, and he was not above exploiting it. “What I do not understand is your sense of urgency, my friend. As you should know, I am not a man who enters into deals lightly.”

“Then why are you changing the terms?”

“I do my homework,” Boris continued as if Niko hadn’t interrupted him. “Your father is Marcellus Drakos, no? Is he not the aeronautics wiz? The jet maker? The billionaire? Is he not the brother of the powerful Alex Drakos?”

“They’re half-brothers,” Niko was quick to point out. “And even then in name only. They don’t even speak to each other and never will. Had you truly done your homework, you would have known that little fact.”

“I would have known that half-brothers do not speak to one another?” Sarcasm dripped from Boris’s voice. “Oh I am so sorry to hear of such an unusual thing.” Boris and his partner at the table laughed.

Niko couldn’t believe his life had spiraled so out of control that he would be forced to do business with these buffoons.

“But even with a father of such esteem and with such Drakos pedigree,” Boris continued, “you scrounge around as if you are a pauper’s son.

As if you have nothing but yourself and your dying company to rely upon.

Or at least I assume it is dying given your need to deal with people like us.

But why is that so, Nikolas? Or do they call you Niko?

Does your father hate you, Niko? Are you not his favorite son, Niko? ”

Nobody was his favorite son. He was a father who expected total loyalty from his children.

In return they would get money, power, and position from him, but little else.

Which, for most people, would be more than enough.

But not for Niko and his siblings. They wanted the one thing their individual mothers had always wanted from their father, but their father had never been willing to give to their mother’s nor to them: They wanted their father’s attention.

They wanted their father’s unconditional love.

Marcellus gave Niko and each of his siblings a one-time gift when they graduated college, and he made clear it was up to them to take that money and sink or swim.

All of his siblings banked their money and decided to swim with their father: They all worked for him.

And they all were doing well for him. But even they didn’t have fifty million dollars laying around to toss his way, and he’d never ask them to toss it anyway.

But that was what he needed, and every dime of it, just to keep that merger on track.

And his father? He’d remove his name from his mouth if he ever found out that a son of his had allowed himself to fall into such dire straits. He was hard like that, and the older he became the harder he got. “My father is not an option,” Niko said. “He’s off the table.”

Boris smiled. “Not an option. Off the table. What an odd way of speaking of one’s own father. How can your own father be off the table? I have never heard of such a thing.” Then he shook his head. “You Americans,” he added, and he and his partner grinned again.