Page 8 of A Life Chosen

There was a rumble of agreement from the collection of men, who began to stand and clasp hands with Mathias, offering their congratulations. Piero remained seated, an insult he knew would be taken seriously, as did everyone else at the table.

Giovanni came over when the group had thinned and slapped him on the arm. “You’re asantistanow. Try not to disappoint.”

“I won’t,” Mathias replied, masking his fury.

The old man’s face turned serious. He leaned in. “Come to the club next Thursday. I have something to discuss.”

“Finally!” exclaimed Narcotics head Filippo De Luca, opening the door to the room and beckoning over the hostess. “Let’s get the girls in already.”

Mathias watched the woman’s mouth move down his cock as he sat in one of the club’s private booths, spurring a mixture of pleasure and revulsion. He hated these jack-off sessions the elites were so insistent on having, a meeting to discuss business devolving into an excuse to take some girl behind a curtain. Just another display of the posturing required to maintain support in the family’s upper echelons.

Mathias tried not to look too closely at her kneeling form clad only in a lace thong and black heels. He tried not to think about the numerous other pricks that had filled her mouth. It didn’t help that he was still seething from the events of the meeting. Piero’s words were fixed in his mind: “Not one of our own.”

A muffled moan came through the wall beside him, and his stomach turned. What he regarded as a selfish pursuit, performed without show or ceremony, took on a garish quality when transplanted to the seedy titty bar. The old man coming next door was almost enough to make his dick soft. He cast about, as he had so many times before, searching for something—anything—to trick his body into submission.

Behind the curtain, he heard Rayan shift his weight. He was stationed outside to ensure Mathias’s privacy and protection. It was almost midnight, and his second had been on his feet all day. The sound was a reminder of his presence, a sudden intrusion. The thought of him standing so close, knowing what went on mere steps away, filled Mathias with a strange surge of desire. He swallowed his surprise, swiftly pushing the thought aside, but his mind kept returning to it as if caught on something.

Rayan appeared clearly in his head—the contours of muscle visible through the man’s shirt, the faded scar that ran down his neck, partially hidden by his collar. The way his mouth was set in a hard line on his angular face, bottom lip fuller than the top. The flick of the girl’s tongue along his shaft made his breath quicken, and Mathias bit back a groan. When had these images implanted themselves so vividly in his brain? It was as though all this time, he’d been unconsciously taking stock, filing them away. The jut of Rayan’s knuckles as he gripped the steering wheel, the smoothness of his skin… Mathias pressed his nails into the soft flesh of his palm as the sensation built, unable to shake the thoughts loose. He saw Rayan as he’d appeared before him in Belkov’s office, face unyielding, body tense. He’d looked at Mathias, his eyes for an instant betraying the softness Mathias remembered from the day they’d first met.What would that face look like when he lost control?

Mathias’s teeth clenched, and he came abruptly, with an intensity to the release he hadn’t felt in months. His hand shot out to steady himself, and he pushed the woman away. Standing, he turned and fastened his pants. The girl looked up meekly,kneeling before him on the carpet, and disgust once again cut through the haze of pleasure that had overcome him.

Mathias reached into his pocket, pulled out a roll of bills, sliding off a handful, and laid them on the table. He took several slow breaths, smoothing his hair expertly, before feeling composed enough to venture out from behind the curtain.

There Rayan waited, staring straight ahead as Mathias emerged. Not for the first time, he was grateful for the man’s propensity for staying silent. Without looking at him, Mathias moved toward the exit, Rayan following dutifully. He did not want to catch a glimpse of his second’s face—did not want to see what his mind had so quickly conjured in that dim room.

“He was out of line.” Rayan steered the car through the parking lot outside Le Rouge, still angry at having to stand by as Piero Russo insulted his boss.

“The man’s a hack,” Mathias muttered, staring at the road. He appeared distracted and subdued, despite the evening’s festivities.

Usually, on nights like these, once they peeled off into the dark, his capo—eyes slightly less sharp, features softened by the booze—actually talked. He didn’t instruct, didn’t reproach, but talked. Rayan looked forward to those fleeting moments, the only time he ever felt brave enough to address the swirl of questions in his mind.

“What Piero said…” Rayan had seen the way Mathias had stiffened at the man’s barb. “It’s because your mother’s French?”

He knew Mathias was only half-Italian and had always assumed that was the reason behind the frosty reception he received from some of the family stalwarts. Rayan’s boss remained silent.

“Thought Italians only married Italians,” Rayan remarked offhandedly.

“Who said she was married?” There was a sharpness to the way he said it.

Rayan felt a prickle of danger. He’d traversed past the clear boundaries marked for him. In that moment, he remembered a conversation he’d overheard one evening at the club while waiting for Mathias to emerge from a private meeting with Giovanni.

A stout man in a foul mood had appeared in the corridor, his second trailing behind him. “How that son of a whore made it into a room with Bianchi, I’ll never know.”

At the time, Rayan hadn’t registered the insult, dismissing it as general envy, something Mathias—smart and upwardly mobile—was often subject to. Now he understood.

Having already overstepped, he felt the need to double down. “You’re a better captain than any of those men.”

Mathias sucked his teeth. “Maybe. But to the family, blood is everything.”

Rayan coasted the car to a stop at a red light and stifled a yawn, his body heavy with exhaustion. He ached to kick off his shoes and collapse, but the thought of the long night ahead filled him with dread. The dreams were back. So were the thoughts that circled mercilessly as he lay awake in bed.

“You look like shit,” Mathias said.

Rayan glanced up to see his capo observing him. He froze. This wasn’t part of the deal. In the years he’d spent working with Mathias, he’d become an expert at making sure his life did not come up for discussion.

“Having trouble sleeping,” he conceded.

Mathias paused as though mulling it over. “I’ll arrange something the next time we’re at the club. Take your mind off things.”

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