Page 77 of A Life Chosen

The rest he couldn’t read, the foreign script sloping intricately across the page. Mathias stared at the woman in the photo. How tightly she held her two boys.

From the kitchen counter, his phone started up again, unrelenting, the caller incapable of taking a hint. Mathias stood, unsteady with booze, and stalked over to the offending object. He brought it to his ear.

“I have to hear from someone else you’re back in the city?” His mother’s voice lilted in that self-pitying tone he remembered so well. “Spend my days sitting here alone, hoping you’ll grace me with your presence?”

Mathias’s mouth curled into a scathing retort, but he stopped, an icy stab in his chest. Of course she was lonely. She’d always been lonely. That was another of the traits she’d passed down to him, mother to son, starting him early, too young to protest, a sharp, cavernous seed, pushed deep within, that made her cling to people and made him push them away.

“What do you want?” he snapped.

“That’s no way to speak to your mother.”

“Maybe if you were more of a mother…”

“All you’ve ever been is critical,” she accused him tearfully. “You think people are born knowing how to do this? You have no idea. Just wait until you have children.”

Mathias laughed, a hard barking sound. To think he would subject someone else to an unwanted existence. Living it was more than enough. “Not in this lifetime.”

He heard the sharp intake of breath through the receiver. When she spoke next, her voice was wistful. “You’ll see. When you’re in love, everything changes.”

Mathias felt his lungs empty, a coldness enveloping him. He hung up abruptly, the phone dropping from his hand, and strode across the kitchen, making it to the sink in time to violently empty the contents of his stomach.

That doesn’t stop because you say it does.

Mathias retched again, gripping the edge of the counter as his vision blurred.

Chapter

Twenty-Nine

Rayan pulled his truck into the parking lot behind the depot, careful not to clip the side mirror on the narrow entrance gate. He was three weeks into a month-long probation and didn’t want to lose his security deposit.

After taking the keys from the ignition, he headed toward the open warehouse door, shielding his eyes from the glare of the afternoon sun. The sunshine here was eternal. As a small port city, Larnaca stretched along the southern coast of the island, surrounded by a crystalline ocean that lured tourists from all across Europe. It was no wonder the Cypriots were so pleasant. Life was one never-ending holiday.

Rayan greeted Nikos at the dispatch desk and handed over his completed delivery sheet before moving through to the front office to clock out for the day. He’d found a strange calm in the physicality of the job, navigating his way around an unfamiliar city, hauling goods up and down stairs, in and out of buildings. Aside from a handful of stilted pleasantries, he spoke to no one. After work, he walked home to his small apartment, ate, and went to bed. If the day had been demanding enough—his muscles sore, back aching—sometimes he fell asleep before the thoughts descended.

Rayan had always feared being alone, and now that he was, it came with a biting clarity—the realization that he was, in fact, nothing. In a world full of people, he had no one. All this time, he’d thought otherwise but had simply been deluding himself, believing he meant something to a man who meant everything to him.

Rayan had come so close to having what he most wanted only to discover he’d never had a chance. And still, the feelings lingered, more painful than before, when his greatest hope had been a nod of acknowledgment, a word of praise. Now he’d tasted him, fallen asleep in his arms, and listened to the low murmur of his voice in the dark. It was no longer a quiet yearning but a raging, blistering clamor of loss.

In the office, his boss, Andreas, was leaning against the front desk, speaking loudly to the receptionist as she finalized the following day’s run sheets. He lookedup when Rayan entered and fixed him with one of his high-beam grins. “Busy day, Ayari?”

He spoke in elaborately slow Greek. Rayan had been attempting to learn the language, and his boss, relieved, had taken it as a sign to stop speaking to him in English altogether.

Rayan nodded, pulling out his time card and sliding it through the black punch clock mounted to the wall. With a smile, the young receptionist handed him the next day’s run from across the desk. He thanked her, folding it in half.

“You have a friend here to see you,” Andreas said, thumbing toward the front door, which led out to the street. “We asked him to come in, but he wanted to wait outside.”

Rayan gripped the paper in his hand, the room tilting beneath his feet. He’d been on the island barely a month. He didn’t have any friends.

Throwing on an easy smile, he told his boss he would see him tomorrow. At least, that was what he thought he said. His Greek was spotty at best, and his head was churning, making it hard to concentrate. Fighting a growing panic, Rayan stepped out of the office, blinking into the sun.

There he stood, a burning cigarette in hand, leaning against the guardrail on the other side of the street—with a clear view of all who moved in and out of the building. The man was dressed in gray chinos and a light-blue shirt. He wore a pair of sleek black sunglasses, his hair combed back. To a stranger passing on the street, he would have resembled any one of the wealthy Italian tourists who made their way across the channel on vacation.

There could be only one reason Mathias had tracked him down. Leaving had been a gamble as far as family protocol was concerned. If Rayan had been a made man, there would be repercussions. But he was an outsider, and the lines were not so clear. He’d never taken an oath and was never deemed worthy enough to hold a title. He’d assumed with his track record that he would simply be allowed to disappear. Mathias was done with him. Surely it was better that he was gone.

But none of that mattered now. He had gravely miscalculated. No one crossed Mathias—not even Rayan.

Fear hit him first then a rush of relief. For years, Rayan had held a morbid fascination with how it would happen. Working as he did, seeing so many men in their last moments, he’d always imagined when he would meet his. Why not today? The sun was out, the air pleasantly warm. No one to miss him when he was gone.

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