Page 85 of The Chameleon

Judging by the pissed-off look on Matteo’s face, Edwin didn’t fall for his bluff.

“You do realize what he’ll do to you once this is all over, right?” Matteo asked, eyes locked on the screen in front of him.

“Yeah, they’ll cut me a big fat check, and I’ll be on my merry way.”

Ares stopped moving.He? Was someone else giving this little punk orders?

Before he had a chance to process that information, he felt the cold hardness of metal press against his head.

“Stand up slowly and raise your hands,” a deep voice instructed in Italian behind him.

So much for having the upper hand. Damn it.

Ares did as he was told.

The man behind him took Ares’s gun while a second man patted him down.

Damn it!Ares huffed as the man pulled the knife Ares had hidden out from his holster. The man nodded to his boss and took a step back.

“Move,” the man with his gun ordered, directing him toward the group arguing in the center of the room.

Matteo’s eyes locked on his. Ares gave him a guilty half smile. Okay, he had fucked up and now needed to figure out how to save both of their asses.

“Ha!” the man shouted, still holding the gun at Matteo’s head. “You came! You actually fell for it.”

Matteo shook his head in disappointment.

“Yeah, I came. I wouldn’t exactly say that I fell forit. You pretty much sent out a beacon telling me where to find you. Any common criminal would have realized that it was a trap,” Aresexplained, annoyed that the bumbling idiot thought that he had pulled a fast one over on him.

He was Ares! The fuckinggod of war. He had evaded capture in over twenty countries—remaining off most countries' radars. He had escaped three detention centers and even avoided capture on an outbound flight from Paris to Geneva. That was actually an interesting story.

And here this little dipshit was thinking thathehad fooled Ares? Talk about a moron.

“Well, we did get you to reveal yourself,” a coarse voice murmured behind Ares.

Ares’s stomach sank.

Fuck.

While he’d been so busy and focused on Matteo, he’d lost sight of the one man who had been hunting him for years. The one man who’d tried to kill him once but failed.

Massimo Alessio Zitti.

The guy was a legend back in the day. He controlled the gun and coke trades all across Italy, Spain, Belgium, and Portugal. He used local gangs and mafia heads to run his operations in those regions in his name. Anyone who tried to betray him, he had brutally murdered. His punishments were severe, striking fear in all those around him.

Except for Ares, of course.

When Ares was young, he had been ambitious. He had the intelligence, the balls, and the drive to go after what he wanted and expand his control over many different smuggling routes. But all that would only take him so far.

Knowing that he was at a disadvantage because of his age, Ares needed help getting introduced to those who could make a difference. He needed access to the big players in the game.

So, against his better judgment, he decided to enlist the help of Matteo’s father, who he knew had many powerful friends across Europe.

Ares knew that if he could score some of those major regions, especially Italy and Spain, he could double his profits and increase his dominion over the gun smuggling trade.

Sadly, at the time, Ares had underestimated the loyalty of the one person he trusted—his brother.

Massimo Zitti used Ares’s blind spot against him, nearly having Ares killed in the process.

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