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“You should have smelled him back in the day of booze and whores,” John Paul said.
Like I really needed him to bring that shit up.
“Don’t make me fucking beat you in front of her,” I snapped. “I bet I can find some other meathead around here to train with me.”
“Won’t be as pretty as I am,” John Paul said. He emptied the water bottle and tossed it into the bin. “I’m out. See you bright and early tomorrow.”
I trained with John Paul for four days—weights, endurance, and hand-to-hand fighting. I was sore, bruised, and tired on the fifth day when he came to the door and told me we weren’t training that morning.
“Meeting time,” he said simply.
We met Landon a few blocks away in a hotel room. He looked uncharacteristically tired and a little on edge. We sat down at a small, round table and waited for him to start.
“Your competition,” Landon said. He pushed a folder to me across the table, and I opened it. There were five sets of documents inside with names and pictures. “Study them. See what you can learn about them, and make sure you know how to take each and every one of them out.”
I scanned the documents, stopping immediately when I saw a familiar face.
Fuck me.
Even without the sunglasses, I recognized the picture as the dude on the beach with the ridiculous, fucking tongue twister, only now it didn’t seem so ridiculous. Now I saw it as the threat it clearly represented.
“You’re the pheasant.”
Evan Arden. He was listed as Rinaldo Moretti’s key hit man. The picture showed him at a shooting range with a high caliber rifle in his hands.
/> “I believe I may have mentioned that he’s your primary concern.”
“I’ve met him,” I said quietly.
Landon eyed me.
“When?”
“A couple weeks ago,” I said. “He talked to me on the beach when I was out for a run.”
“Recon is a specialty of his,” Landon said. “He’s probably been on a rooftop with his sniper rifle pointed at you already.”
“He’s a sniper?” John Paul said.
“Former Marine,” Landon informed us. “One of the best shooters they’ve ever seen. I knew of him through my military contacts before he got himself involved with Rinaldo Moretti. He’s taken out hundreds of Moretti’s enemies over the years, but he disappeared shortly after the war broke out.”
“Seems like a weird time to take off,” John Paul remarked.
“I couldn’t get a lot of detail,” Landon said, “but I got the idea he might have been at the crux of the issue that started this war in the first place.”
“You think he had sights on me but didn’t shoot me?”
“Arden knows the rules.” Landon stood up and walked over to the window to look out at the ocean. “Taking out a player once the tournament has been announced would inflame the war, not end it. He’s military, and following orders is in his blood. He’s also probably the next in line to run that organization if something happened to Moretti. Moretti’s only other options are his daughter Luisa, who might very well do it, or an illegitimate son he barely recognizes. Ending the feud is in Arden’s best interest.”
“But Arden hasn’t been involved in the war recently?” John Paul asked.
“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.”
