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.
“This is going to be a little different, boys,” Franks said.
Maria Hill, the leader of the LA outfit, sat on the far side of the table and raised an eyebrow at him.
“And ladies,” he said with a smile.
“Oh, no,” she said sarcastically, “I’ll just sit over here and look pretty for you, how’s that? No, not too likely, huh?”
Franks ignored her and her tone.
“You’ll each be dropped with weapons in hand,” he said, “weapons chosen by your bosses and ones you’ve proven to be most effective when using.”
It was unusual to start a tournament armed, but not unheard of. There were many times when there were weapons to be found around the tournament grounds, but being dropped with them wasn’t usually part of the plan.
“Arden will have the firearms of his choosing,” Franks said as he looked over a list in front of him. “Dytalov, three Kunai throwing knives and a Busse Combat Team Gemini.”
He stopped and looked up at the dark-haired man near the Russian group.
“Whatever the fuck that is,” he added.
“You want me to go get it and show you?” Erik Dytalov volunteered.
“Shut your mouth,” Severinov said, “or I shut it for you.”
“Mister Hunter will be armed with a compound bow in addition to a handgun,” Franks said, “and Reaper will have her brass knuckles.”
He looked over to the woman sitting next to Chambers.
“Is that all?”
“I don’t need anything else,” she responded.
Hunter laughed.
“I got somethin’ else you need.”
“Bring it over here,” she challenged with a flash of her dark eyes, “I’ll show you just what I can do with it.”
“Enough,” Chambers said quietly. The guy was always as cool as a cucumber, even in the past when I’d just walked out of a game with his guy’s blood all over me. He’d hand over his cash with a slight smile and not another word.
“Tyrone Chimes will have a variety of blunt objects, and Mister Sebastian Stark…”
He looked over to me and smiled.
“Mister Stark will maintain a single weapon—the garrote.”
No guns, no knives, nothing but a fucking piece of piano wire.
Maybe he does want me to lose.
There were a few murmurs from the group before Franks continued.
“Your location,” Franks said, “is Buckingham Island in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. It’s about as unfriendly a place as you can imagine, but we don’t have to worry about you running into any tourists. It’s about six miles across in the center, and you’ll be dropped around the floes near the southern tip.”
“This will have to be a fast one,” Greco commented. “Everyone will freeze to death if it takes too long.”
“True,” Franks said. “Consider it added incentive to stop warring with your neighbors.”
Greco glared but didn’t comment further.
“Some weapons don’t function well in the cold,” Evan Arden remarked.
I watched him closely. There was no concern in his eyes; he was just stating a fact.
“Then you better have a backup plan, Mister Arden.”
I couldn’t see any reaction in the eyes of Moretti’s hit man. He was completely calm and expressionless. Both Hunter and Reaper smiled nasty little smiles in his direction, but Arden didn’t seem affected by that either.
Fuck me. He wasn’t going to be easy.
I considered the location of the fight and understood the choice of weapons for me. For one, I had been damn effective strangling people in past games. Moreover, it wouldn’t require any additional or complex equipment—nothing to misfire, no bolts to lose, and no possibility of it getting jammed in the cold. In fact, it was nearly the perfect weapon under such extreme conditions. I could use it without the loss of dexterity the others would experience through gloves and heavy clothing.
Maybe Franks wanted me to win after all.
I looked around the table to see the reaction from the others to the location. The Russians seemed pleased, Moretti and Greco annoyed, Chambers unaffected, and Hi
ll downright pissed.
“The Arctic Circle?” she inquired. “Really? This is your best idea for the games? I mean, it’s not like the closed circuit is going to work too far a distance, so we’ll all be freezing our asses off. Oh, and let’s not forget surfer boy, here.”
She indicated Tyrone.
“He’ll lose his tan during the trip.”
A few snickers rang out as the dark-skinned man looked over at his boss and raised an eyebrow.
“She has a point about the closed circuit,” Moretti pointed out. “As Mister Arden said, equipment has a tendency to malfunction in extreme conditions.”
“All taken into consideration,” Franks said dismissively. “You’ll find our accommodations most pleasant as long as you stay indoors, and you can rest easy about the mechanical concerns—we’re bringing in only the best. It’s designed to handle the environment.”
There were a few more grumbles from the bosses, but Franks answered all of their concerns quickly and efficiently. I could hear Landon in his words and figured they had rehearsed all of this. Landon was a planner, and he wouldn’t let any matter get lost in the details.
The meeting came to a close as each of the bosses was handed an encrypted thumb-drive with all the pertinent information on it. Franks and Landon moved off to the far side of the barn to discuss something. Hunter watched with narrowed eyes as John Paul moved quietly up behind Reaper and leaned close to her to speak. I couldn’t hear their words, though, and didn’t really care.
My thoughts were on my main opponent.
Following Landon’s instructions, I ignored the other fighters and made my way over to Arden. He was near Rinaldo Moretti, looking at the man intently and nodding his head every so often. I stood a little way away from them as they finished their conversation but was just close enough to hear the tail end of it.
“…will have an effect on the weapons. Mountainous terrain increases the possibility of an avalanche when I fire, too.”
“I can ask,” Moretti said, “but I think everything is set now.”
“He’s done this intentionally to give himself better odds,” Arden replied.
“Possibly,” Moretti agreed, “but there isn’t anything to be done about it now. It has to be this way, son.”
I took note of how Moretti addressed Arden and looked at both of them a little more closely. Moretti was short and stocky, whereas Arden was tall and sculpted with lean muscle. His eyes were blue, Moretti’s brown. Arden had light brown hair, cut short against the sides of his head in proper military fashion, and a slight, scruffy beard, but Moretti didn’t have enough hair to determine what color it might have been in his youth. I couldn’t see any resemblance, but that didn’t always matter.
“I understand, sir,” Arden replied.
Moretti stood and headed over to the group that included Franks and Landon, and I took the opportunity to talk to Arden. He looked up as I approached, his face as passive as it had been during the meeting.
“Mister Stark,” he replied politely. He stood and reached out to shake my hand then sat back down at the table.
“I don’t really see Moretti as a bird-man,” I said as I sat down across from him.
Arden looked at me, and I saw him stifle a slight smirk.
“Rinaldo’s more than he appears,” he said. “Like many people in this room, underestimating him is usually a mistake.”
“You aren’t really his kid, are you?” I asked.
“Not by blood,” Arden said simply. “Not that it matters.”
I nodded slowly. His loyalties were set, no doubt about that. He clearly wasn’t someone who was going to turn on his boss. He wasn’t in this because of blood or for the money but a deeper sense of commitment and allegiance.
“You still think I’m a pheasant for plucking?”
Arden stared at me, his face blank. I saw his chest rise and fall slowly, as if he were centering himself.
“I think at the end of this, it’s going to come down to you and me,” he said. “After that, it’s no more than a matter of will.”
He looked me over briefly.
“And aim,” he added.
“You think that will be enough for you?” I asked.
“More than,” he replied. There wasn’t any bravado in the statement; he simply thought it a matter of fact. He had no doubt in his abilities, and I needed to throw him off his game.
“It didn’t keep you out of enemy hands in the past,” I said with a shrug. “It sounds to me as if you have a habit of letting people get the jump on you.”
His eyes tightened but only slightly and briefly. I was hoping for a stronger reaction, but frankly, I wasn’t accustomed to playing mind games. Any reaction at all out of this guy seemed to be a win.
Arden stood, took two steps to get around the table, and leaned over slightly to look me in the face.
“I hear you’re fighting for a kid,” he said softly. “Maybe when I’m done with you, I’ll put a bullet in his skull, just like his mother’s.”
Instantly, my hands were balled into fists. Once that happened, there was no more control left in me. I swung at him, made contact with his jaw, and sent him flying backward. I was on my feet and going for him a second later, but that was all it took for two of Moretti’s goons to grab my arms to try to hold me back.
It didn’t work.
I wrenched one arm out of the grasp of the guy on my right and used it to pop the one on the left hard enough to make him let go. I started to head back to Arden, who was on the floor and rubbing his chin but starting to stand back up again. Another hand grabbed my arm, but I couldn’t shake it off.
“Stop.” Landon’s voice rang clear in my head even before I realized he was the one holding me back. John Paul was on the other side, telling me to take it easy, that there would be a time and place for this, but not here, not now.
“Motherfucker,” I growled. I shook them both off of me though John Paul kept his hand on my shoulder as I stomped toward the door of the barn. I didn’t get far. A moment later, Landon was standing in front of me, blocking my passage.
“Just let me get the fuck out of here!” I snarled.
Landon glared, and I felt someone else walk up beside me. I turned quickly, and found myself looking at a very irate Joseph Franks.
Fuck.
“You press too far,” Franks growled in my ear. “I might need you for now, but don’t you pull something like that again, or I’ll blow your brains out and find myself another fighter.”
I wasn’t sure if the threat was serious or not, and I wasn’t going to take the chance that he was bluffing. Anything I said could be used against me, Raine, and my son at any time. Deciding to go for contrite, I glanced at the ground, then back up to him.
“I know,” I said, “I got it. Don’t you worry about a fucking thing—I’m taking all these motherfuckers out.”
“That’s more like it,” he said with a smile. It didn’t touch his eyes, but it was an effort, at least.
Deciding it was best to get out as soon as possible, John Paul escorted me out the door and back to his car.
“You are out of your fucking mind,” he said as he started the engine and began to back around the other vehicles. “That was seriously stupid.”
“Fuck you,” I muttered. I knew he was right, but I wasn’t about to admit it. I just wanted to get home to Raine. I leaned back in the seat, closed my eyes, and pretended to sleep the rest of the way back to Miami.
There was no question about it—Evan Arden was my primary concern. The others were going to fall quickly and easily, either to me or to Arden. A couple of them would probably take each other out, which was just fine by me. I wasn’t counting frags here; only winning mattered.
Last man standing.
As he had said, it would come down to the two of us. When that happened, it was going to be a matter of who found who first—a matter of my hands or his scope.
Unfortunately, he’d already gotten the drop on me onc
e down at the beach. I couldn’t let that happen again. It wouldn't have happened if I had been on alert. I wasn’t going to fail in that respect when it came to the tournament. There was far too much on the line.
If he was serious about going after Alex…
I wondered if he had something to lose as well though, or rather, someone. Somehow, I doubted it. He didn’t seem the relationship type, and I couldn’t imagine any chick falling for a guy who was so cold, so blank. Yeah, I’d killed more than a few people in the past during tournaments, and I was going to do it again with good reason, but he’d killed a lot more people in service to Moretti and his family. What kind of girl would put up with that?
Well, Raine put up with my ass, so maybe it was possible.
Ultimately, it didn’t matter. Even if he did have someone he cared about out there, it wasn’t as if I could use that to my advantage—not now. The games were set, the territory chosen, and all there would be now was preparation for the fight. Once it was announced, no one was allowed to screw with the odds of which player would win.
My direction was clear. At least for now, Evan Arden wasn’t my concern.
Ice and snow surround me. I’m climbing the sheer face of a rocky cliff as the wind tries to blow me from the edge. I reach up and find purchase on the rocks above. As I pull myself up, I hear a shot ring out.
Across the plateau, I see a body. I rush to it, but I know it’s too late.
“Raine!”
What is she doing here? She shouldn’t be anywhere near the fighting…
I kneel down and reach for her cold hand. She doesn’t move. The sound of snow crunching underfoot catches my attention, and I look up to see the barrel of a rifle pointed in my face…
I woke in a cold sweat with a constricted chest. I had rolled away from Raine and all the way to the other side of the bed at some point during the night. I quickly fixed that by curling up against her side and pulling her fast against my chest. I threw my leg over the top of hers and just held on. For a few minutes, I panted and told myself over and over again that she was safe and warm.