“Not at all,” Landon said. “He doesn’t even appear to be residing in the Chicago area. Probably has a place outside the country—no one seems to know for sure where he’s been, not even Moretti himself. Obviously he has a way to contact him though, or he wouldn’t be here.”

John Paul looked over to me with concern in his eyes.

“Tomorrow we meet with everyone,” Landon told us. “All six family heads and your competition will be there, Bastian. The others aren’t much of a worry, but I want you up close and personal with Arden before you have to take him on. Figure him out. Fuck with his head, if you can—I understand he’s a pretty hard nut to crack.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

“He was a POW in the Middle East. It fucked with his head, which is why he was discharged shortly after he was recovered from a camp in Afghanistan. There’s video out there—go watch it. Use it against him.”

“Will do.” I picked up the folder full of information and stood. John Paul followed suit, and he drove me back to the condo where Raine was still trying to study.

“Good workout?” Raine asked. She looked me over, and it was obvious I hadn’t been at the gym.

“I learned a lot,” I responded vaguely. She didn’t press for more, and I wondered if she just didn’t want to know.

“We have to move,” she said suddenly.

“What? Why?”

“We can’t fit us and a kid in this condo,” she said, “and I don’t like the public schools here. We need to move somewhere where Alex can get a good education, and we can get a place that will have enough room for him.”

As I looked around the apartment, I didn’t have much of an argument. She was right; there wasn’t enough room for another person in here even though we did have an extra bedroom.

“A house, maybe?” I said.

“I think that would be nice,” Raine agreed. “Someplace with a yard where he can be outside and play. I don’t want to worry about traffic.”

“Here in Miami?”

“Not in the city,” she said.

I knew what she really meant—not too close to the beach. I didn’t like it, but considering everything else, I wasn’t going to press the issue. She had my back on this, and I’d sacrifice whatever it took to make it work for all of us. Maybe I’d manage to convince her that Alex would benefit from living near the beach.

I went over to the couch and knelt beside her. I looked up into her face and captured her eyes with mine.

“Anything you want,” I told her. “Anywhere you want. I just want us all together when this is over.”

For once, I really meant it.

She bent over and placed her lips on mine.

“I love you,” she said.

“Right back at ya, babe.” I smiled and kissed her back.

* * *

I followed John Paul to his car after I made sure Raine was good for the day. I had no idea how long this meeting was going to last or where we were even going. John Paul drove south for some time, and as we reached Homestead and the unending fields of squash filled with migrant workers in wide-brimmed hats, we turned down a gravel road and headed toward a large barn out in the middle of fucking nowhere.

I’d spent the night studying all the documentation Landon had given me. I’d even found a video of a news release about Lieutenant Evan Arden and his capture in the Middle East. It included footage of a man being executed right beside him. I hadn’t studied the others as closely, but I was prepared to meet them all and get a better idea of their weaknesses. For the most part, the rest didn’t concern me.

As we got out of John Paul’s truck, I looked up to see ultralight planes and a few gliders up in the sky. Far across a field of yellow crook-necked squash, I could see a small airfield. Other than that, there was nothing and no one to be seen except for two menacing guys standing by the large double doors of the barn. John Paul’s boots kicked up dusty gravel as we approached, and the guards checked us both for weapons before they opened the doors to allow us inside.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting, but there were a lot of people in there. They formed six small groups around the mostly open area. I checked each group, silently naming the associated crime lords and their tournament participants.

Gavino Greco from Chicago was the closest to the door. Towering over him was a massive guy sporting hundreds of tattoos. There was enough ink showing on him that I wondered if even his dick was decorated. Aside from his face, he was covered in them. I remembered from the documents Landon had given me that he was called Hunter, and he wasn’t going to be easy to take down in a melee fight though he was mostly a bow-hunting fanatic. Of all the other fighters, he had the most tournament experience, with or without weapons.

The next group was also from Chicago. Since the start of the war and the fall of the last boss in Chicago, the organization had nearly failed completely. It was now run by two guys from Azerbaijan—Sergi Dytalov and Igor Severinov. They were unimpressive figures physically, but they had the most at stake in this little game, and they watched me carefully with calculating eyes as I walked in.

Their representative in the game was nearby, slouched in a chair and glaring at his own hands. His dark hair hung in his face a little, and the look on his face was anything but calm and collected. Erik Dytalov was into knives, according to the information I had on him, especially Busse and Kunai knives. A distant cousin of one of the new bosses, but not Russian born, he’d survived in the games for a couple years before he backed off and eventually quit playing. He hadn’t played for a while now, and I wondered just what he had been doing for the last few years instead of fighting.

To my right was Grant Chamber from the New York mob. There was a woman beside him I was pretty sure I recognized though I hadn’t figured it out from her picture. She was tall, dark-skinned, and had enough muscle on her to make you look twice, no doubt about it. As I looked at her in person, I realized I’d met her before.

“JP?”

“Yeah?” he responded quietly.

“Isn’t that the chick you dated in Seattle? Stacey?”

“Yeah,” he said, “I know. She goes by Reaper now. She’s been playing in the games for about a year.”

Obviously, he wasn’t surprised to see her here. He didn’t look at me, and I wasn’t sure if he cared or not that I was going to be killing her in a couple of weeks. If it mattered to him, he didn’t show it.

On the other side of the New York group was an imposing-looking woman with short hair and flashing eyes. I assumed through the process of elimination that it must be Maria Hill—the woman who ran the operations in Los Angeles. The tall African-American guy with her was Tyrone Chimes, an expert in knife combat and a good shot as well. He’d also been in the games for the last year or so.

In the very back, there was a tall, bald man with sausage-like arms and a bit of a gut. He made an imposing figure with two gigantic body guards on either side of him.

Joseph Franks.

I hadn’t seen him since the trial where I testified against him and Gunter Darke. Gunter had been convicted and killed in prison shortly afterwards. Franks, however, had gotten off scot-free even though I’d told the jury he ordered the deaths of everyone in the room. He just had that kind of pull, in and out of the system.

John Paul led the way as we walked toward Franks and his group.

“Sebastian,” Franks said in a cool voice as we approached, “it’s been a while.”

I nodded, took his outstretched hand, and took in a deep breath.

“Mister Franks,” I said. We shook, dropped hands, and looked at each other for a moment.

With guys like Franks, it was all about ego. Everything centered around who was the farthest up his ass at any given time. I’d done the unthinkable and dared to cross him.

For the first time, I considered that I may have been duped. He might have just lured me here to kill me, but as soon as the thought occurred to me, I knew it wasn’t true. If he wanted me dead, he’d just put a price on my head, and it would eventually be collected by someone. He wouldn’t have any need to go through an elaborate plot or involve all these people if my death was his goal.

He narrowed his eyes and leaned close to me.

“You were a bad boy, Mister Stark.”

I swallowed.

“Yeah, I know I was,” I said quietly. “It was a mistake, obviously.”

“A mistake because of what you tried to do,” he asked, “or because it didn’t work?”

I took in a long, slow breath. There was definitely a right answer to his question and a wrong one, but the words he wanted to hear weren’t readily apparent.

Clearly, I cannot choose the glass in front of you…

I went for honest.

“It didn’t work,” I said.

He laughed, clasped his hand on my back, and turned to one of the goons next to him.

“You hear that, Nathaniel?” he said. “Here’s a man who will let you know right where you stand.”

“Yes, sir!”

“Don’t you yes, sir me, you little shit,” he yelled so loudly and without warning that I had to take a step back. “You can’t give me a load of pleasantries when you’re skimming my profits!”

A moment later, a shot rang out, and Nathaniel lay on the floor near Landon’s feet. While my ears rang, Franks placed his gun back in its holster at his side and turned back to me.

“He tried to fuck me over last year,” Franks said with a shrug. “He had his one chance, but he tried to pull that shit again. You understand what I’m saying here, Stark?”

I looked into his steely eyes and nodded.

“Yeah, I get it,” I said. “I’m not a problem for you.”

“Good!” he said, all smiles again. “Now let me get this party started.”

Slightly shaken, but unwilling to show it, I moved off a little and watched as the body was hauled out of the back door of the barn. Landon looked over at me, and for a moment, I thought I saw relief in his eyes, but it was probably just the long halogen lights, hanging bare from the ceiling, playing tricks on my perception.

As I stood off to the side of Franks’ group, I checked out the final set of Chicago-based mafia cohorts—Rinaldo Moretti and his crew. There were several of them, including three bodyguards and a woman who must have been his daughter, Luisa. The guy with Rinaldo Moretti was an interesting one. Slim, wiry, and tall, he looked more like a schoolteacher than someone mixed up with organized crime. I was too far away to hear what they were talking about, but whatever it was, Moretti kept glaring at him. I didn’t pay much attention, though—my focus was on the other person standing with him.

Evan Arden.

I knew him both from the picture and from our brief encounter at the beach. He stood near Moretti at attention with his hands clasped behind his back. There was a shoulder holster over his arm, but it was empty. From the look of him, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t need a weapon if push came to shove. He wasn’t anywhere near my size, but he was a well-built guy—lean and muscular. I had the feeling that wherever he’d been hiding out, he’d kept up on his training.

Unlike I had.

I remembered Landon’s instructions about doing what I could to mess with Arden’s head. I thought about how he had looked on his knees with his hands bound behind his back as the guy next to him was shot in the head. He’d been a POW, and I wondered if bringing up the video might throw him off or if that was something he’d heard often enough already. I thought about what else I could say to him.

Not a fucking tongue-twister, that was for sure.

Franks called out to the room, and all six families gathered around the large table in the center of the barn. The three Chicago-based families, the reason we were all here, sat as far away from each other as possible. Gavino Greco and Rinaldo Moretti I knew from a multitude of tournaments, but the two Russian guys weren’t people I had seen before today. Igor Severinov and the other, Sergi Dytalov, had taken over when the Russian mob’s predecessors had retaliated against a stolen shipment of caviar by invading Moretti’s home. When the invasion turned into a bloodbath, people on all three sides had been killed, and the tension in the city had escalated to war.

I could feel the hatred between them anytime one of them made eye contact with another.

The six contestants, myself included, sat next to their bosses. I was between Franks and Landon. John Paul stood off to the side, watching intently, as Franks got the meeting started.