The next day, I got a lot of answers, but they definitely made everything worse, not better.

I’d shaken up my routine quite a bit. I’d added both morning and afternoon workouts at the gym and still spent my early mornings running on the beach. The workouts were filling up a decent amount of time when Raine wasn’t around and kept me from spending quite as much time at Bar Crudo in the late afternoons when Raine was still in class.

Sitting in a small coffee shop off the beach, I finished off my espresso and checked my watch. The bar would open soon, and I wanted to be there before there was any kind of crowd around. There were already way too many people on the beach, especially for a weekday.

I tossed a few bills down on the table and started walking through the palm trees to the street. I didn’t get far before someone called out to me.

“It’s been a while.”

A shiver moved through me, and no amount of Miami heat could have kept it from chilling me to the bone. That voice—though it had been a long time since I heard it—was enough to send me into a near panic even without the added stress of an unknown intruder at my condo.

It can’t be a coincidence.

“Landon.” I turned as I spoke the name and found my former mentor leaning against the wall behind me. Though I had a couple inches on him, I always felt like I was looking straight into his eyes. Usually I had to look down on other guys, which was a feeling I enjoyed, but Landon seemed like the exception.

In many ways.

He made for a damn imposing figure: blond, blue-eyed, strong jawed, and probably everything Hitler would have looked for in his youth brigade if Landon hadn’t been approaching his forties. He wasn’t as big as I was in the shoulders and chest, but anyone who looked at him knew he spent more than just a couple hours a week in the gym. He had the stoic military bearing of his SEAL training though he’d retired many years ago.

He’d beaten the shit out of me in the past, especially in the beginning when I was learning from him. He could still take me down, a fact we both knew quite well, and he was bound to do it again sometime. John Paul said it was his fucked-up way of showing he cared, and I had to agree with the assessment. As terrifying as he was, Landon was the only father-figure I’d ever had in my life.

Raine hated him. I could tell that from the way her face would scrunch up like she just stepped in dog shit anytime I mentioned him. She thought he made me a monster, but I knew better.

Landon Stark made me, no doubt about it, but not into a monster. He took me off the streets where I was destined to end up either dead or in prison at some point and turned me into who I was, for better or worse.

He saved my fucking life.

“How are you, Sebastian?”

I swallowed hard.

“Been worse,” I stated. My heart was racing, and I had the feeling he could hear it. Hell, he could probably see my carotid beating in my throat; Landon never missed a detail.

“I can attest to that,” Landon replied simply. “You’re still off the booze.”

The remark alone made me want to bury myself in a bottle or two. At least he hadn’t caught me walking into the bar. If he had waited another minute or two to make himself known, he would have discovered my intended destination.

“Yeah, almost a year now,” I said. I shoved my cigarette into my mouth and inhaled deeply as I tried to center myself and get my shit together. “What are you doing here?”

“Checking up on you,” he said.

Landon was never one for hiding his intentions. When I thought about it, I realized after all this time that it was plausible. He might be here only to check up on me, but I doubted it.

So why was he here?

There were too many answers to that question, and I didn’t like the sound of any of them. Having him show up so soon after someone had been in my apartment raised my hackles. I braced myself as I wondered just what this meeting was going to entail.

“Well, I’m good,” I said. “Consider the check complete.”

“Good, are you?” he said. He nodded back toward the door to Bar Crudo, which was just across the street from where we walked down the sidewalk. “Hanging out in a bar every day? Cage fighting? Really, Sebastian?”

He wouldn’t have had to have been in the area long to know I went to the same bar almost daily. However, my single escapade to the part of town with the cage fighting venue had been a month ago, which meant Landon had either been in Miami that long or had someone in the area keeping tabs on me. John Paul hadn’t mentioned it, so he probably didn’t know. I wasn’t sure if I should consider that a good sign or not.

“It’s good for quick cash,” I said with a shrug. I wasn’t going to be able to dismiss it so easily, though. Not with Landon. Aside from Raine, there was no one who knew me better.

He just raised an eyebrow, and I shrugged again.

“It was a good stress reliever,” I added. “I only went there once.”

“You’re getting back in shape,” he noted.

“Yeah, I’ve been hitting the gym a lot,” I said.

“Good,” he said quietly. “You’re going to need it.”

I felt my heart sink into my stomach.

“We need to talk,” Landon said. “Let’s go.”

I followed him up Ocean Drive and past the park. We stopped at a little café called The Local House. Landon was silent as the server brought out fresh bread with marinara sauce. He took our orders with a practiced smile and served us iced coffee in little Mason jars, and Landon ordered salmon for both of us.

“What’s going on?” I asked when the server disappeared inside.

“I’ve got some news that concerns you,” Landon said flatly. He reached into his pocket and dropped a photograph on the table in front of me.

I dropped my eyes to the picture, and as soon as I saw what was on it, I grabbed it up and held it closer to me and out of the vision of anyone who might have walked by.

It was a body.

Actually, two bodies—a man and a woman.

“Jillian,” I heard myself whisper. She was curled up in a near fetal position, and there was an obvious bullet hole at her right temple. A few feet from her was the man she ran off with when she left me. He was on the floor in a similar position.

“Mrs. Koe and her husband, Ian Koe, were found in their Italian home last week,” Landon told me. “The police are investigating, of course, but they haven’t found anything.”

I moved my eyes away from the picture and to Landon’s face. Instinct told me everything—their blood was on his hands. He’d killed them, or at least had them killed, but why?

My breathing stopped. My heart might have stopped, too. All I could do was stare at the picture—the picture of a woman I hated. A woman I might have killed myself if given the opportunity, but I hadn’t seen her since she ran off with the other person in the photograph. I’d tried to stop her, but Landon intervened. He would have killed me before he let me go after her.

She’s dead.

“Apparently, there’s a child left behind.”

I flashed my eyes up to his. Of course there was a child. My child.

“Child?” It was the only word I managed to choke out.

“A little boy, six years old.”

I clamped my eyes shut. It was too much at once, and my brain was overwhelmed. Images of Jillian and me when we were together shuffled through my mind like pictures from one of those ancient toy movie projectors run with a hand-crank—all black and white and choppy. A flash from the diamond ring I had bought for her the day she left blinded me from the inside.

I opened my eyes and looked back at Landon. I wanted to speak. I wanted to ask him a thousand questions, but I couldn’t form a single one.

He leaned forward.

“Let’s get to the point, shall we?” he said quietly. “He’s alive. He’s safe. And he’s all yours for just one little favor.”

“Favor?” I could barely hear myself speak.

“One little fight, you and five others. Half of them have never ever done a real tournament before, so it’ll be a piece of cake, assuming you really are back in shape. Three weeks of a little catch-up training, a few days up north for the tournament, and you walk away with the instant family you’ve always wanted.”

I looked in his eyes and considered his words. I was about to deny it—there was no way I wanted a family—but before I could even consider the words, I knew they were wrong. It was exactly what I wanted. It would replace the family I had never known, and I could make my own shit childhood seem less crappy if I could give a kid the life I never had.

I’ll never be able to give Raine a child.

The server dropped off our entrees and refilled our drinks. He asked if there was anything else we needed, but a glare from Landon sent him scurrying away with a towel over his arm.

“Why this fight?” I asked, pulling myself from my thoughts. “Why now?”

Landon sighed and sat back.

“There’s war in Chicago,” he said as he forked a chunk of his fish. “The Greco family and the Moretti family have been fighting over heroin and caviar for a while now. Last year, the Russians moved in and stirred things up even more. There were a couple of confrontations, and people were killed on both sides. Now they’re in the process of reclaiming territory. Franks is losing money over the whole situation, so he’s come up with a solution.”

“A tournament,” I said.

“Exactly.” Landon leaned his elbows on the table and took a drink from the Mason jar. “Franks wants control of the caviar—it’s becoming more and more lucrative—and this was his way of getting both that control and ending the wars. Warring families hurt business around the globe.”