Page 76 of A Life Chosen

Serge Rastelli was the regional head in Quebec City. That deep in the province, the family’s presence was minimal at best, limited mostly to gambling revenue and predatory lending. It served as an outpost, primarily to keep other factions out of Atlantic Canada—the farthest one could get from the family without leaving it.

“Were you sending someone to help Larrivée?”

Mathias frowned. “I did. Weeks ago.”

“He’s telling me no one showed.”

Mathias braked hard, pulling over. The van behind him honked, swerving across the center line to pass. He hung up, tossed his phone onto the passenger seat, and yanked the car across two lanes of traffic to speed back in the other direction. He parked outside the apartment building and scaled the stairs to the third floor, already reaching for the small silver key.

It was empty, everything gone. Only when confronted by its blankness did Mathias realize how familiar the place had become. The way the sunlight streaked across the scuffed parquet floors. The towering stacks of books, more prominent than furniture. The herbs, grown in small pots along the kitchen windowsill—parsley, mint, coriander—thrown into everything Rayan made, a lingering reverence for a homeland as strange to him as this one. Now it could have been any apartment in the city, not a hint of Rayan remaining. Nothing left to prove he’d ever been here.

That afternoon, Mathias had been sure that the man—despite the embittered fall of his face, the stricken look in his eyes—would do as he always had and follow orders. But it seemed even for Rayan—constant, loyal to a fault—there was a point of no return. After years of blind obedience, he’d taken his fate into his own hands.

Mathias closed the door and walked back down the stairs. He felt a cracking, like a layer pulling away from his skin. Back in the car, his phone began to ring. He ignored it, spinning the wheel around in the direction he had come. He was going to be late.

Giovanni raised an eyebrow when Stefano led him into the parlor of his stately Cartierville home ten minutes past their appointed meeting time. Mathias took a seat across from him and was handed a cup of black coffee from a maid who appeared and disappeared in a blur of movement.

“Don’t tell me you’re slipping,” the boss said wryly.

“Apologies,” Mathias replied, offering no explanation. He placed the coffee down on the table between them, the smell turning his stomach. He wanted a drink. Needed a drink. Something to slow the spiral.

“We need to discuss Collections,” Giovanni began. “You know as well as I do Franco’s out of his league.”

Mathias knew the boss wanted him to take the reins, if only temporarily. The assumption rankled him. To spend his days managing the team that took care of the family’s dirty work was beneath him now. Tony might have garnered a great deal of satisfaction from that, but Mathias sure as hell didn’t.

All things being equal, Mathias knew who should have taken the division. Tony had said so himself—there wasn’t a better man to replace him.But things weren’t equal, and they certainly weren’t fair. That was why he’d sent Rayan away. The man’s injury was simply an excuse. There was plenty someone with his aptitude could do without setting foot outside the office. Tony had been proof of that.

The truth was he didn’t want Rayan in Montreal, where he would be caught up in family politics. The farther he was from Mathias, the safer they both would be. Cutting ties had been the only way. Rayan would never have agreed to it otherwise.

Yet at the same time, Mathias had been incapable of granting his freedom. He needed to know where he was, unable to accept the prospect of Rayan vanishing entirely from his life. So he’d made arrangements. He would be gone but not gone, safe but out of reach—of both Mathias and everyone else.

An image surfaced in his mind: his mother flitting by the window of their apartment when he was growing up, like a caged bird, staring down at the street in hopes of catching a glimpse of his father. Mathias’s stomach lurched again. He clenched his teeth in an effort to quell the nausea. Giovanni was still talking, but he heard nothing.

“Mathias.”

He snapped back to attention.

“You don’t look well,” the boss remarked, cocking his head curiously. “It’s been a trying few months. Perhaps you should take a couple days.”

“I’m fine,” he said shortly.

Giovanni studied him then smirked. “You’re human after all.” He rose from his chair, beckoning Stefano. “I’ll be in touch.”

Mathias watched as the boss left the room, smarting with humiliation yet unable to find the words to refute the man’s observation. His mind reeled, stuck in a loop he couldn’t break, smothering all reason. He had enough sense to gather the remainder of his composure and head home.

As Mathias drove, his phone began to ring again from the passenger seat. He glanced over at the screen then back to the road. It continued to ring, brazen, undeterred, the sound drilling into his skull. Seconds from him throwing it out of the moving car, the phone finally stopped ringing.

In the living room of his apartment, Mathias brought the bottle of scotch to his lips, barely registering how empty it had become. He was almost there. With a couple more slugs, he wouldn’t even remember who Rayan was. The thought conjured the man anew, and Mathias froze midswig. He pitched the bottle against the wall, and it shattered with a crash, achieving nothing. The anger had deserted him once again.

He closed his eyes to still the throbbing in his head. Leaning back into the couch, he willed himself to think of anything but his former second. But that was the problem. That was why he was drunk on the couch in the middle of the day—because he couldn’t. In his effort to exorcise Rayan from his life, Mathias had unknowingly broken something.

He picked up the book—the only evidence left of Rayan’s existence—from the coffee table and absently thumbed through. Something slid from the pages and dropped to the floor. He bent to retrieve it, flipping over the small white square to reveal a photo of Rayan and his brother with their mother.

He was young but unmistakable, the same brown eyes set in a round, innocent face. His smile was wide and buoyant, revealing a missing front tooth. Mathias had never seen the man smile like that, as though at a particular point in time, the expression had been taken from him. Life got hard enough, and a person started jettisoning the things that no longer served them. He would know.

Mathias flipped open the cover to the inscription.

My precious son, today is your birthday. Forty-one weeks, I waited, but Allah’s gifts cannot be rushed. Watching you grow makes my heart sore. It is hard to be small, but it will not always be so. I can already see the man you will become, noble and kind. Someone to be proud of.

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