Page 25 of A Life Betrayed

Several people at the other tables had turned to stare. Frances carefully returned the photos to her folder, which she slipped into her bag. Then she stood.

She stopped by the counter on her way out and pushed a twenty into the tip jar. “Sorry about the mess.”

Rayan stared down at the scribbles his brother had made on a grease-spotted napkin.

“Well?” Tahir pressed, beaming like it was a work of art. “Pretty fucking sick, right?”

They were in a booth at the back of Pizza Pizza, with a plate of old slices the owner sometimes set aside for them. If Tahir behaved and business was slow, he let them sit inside like customers and looked the other way as they shook a thick layer of parmesan over the greasy sheen of cold cheese and pepperoni.

“Where are you putting it?” Rayan asked, skeptical. The napkin depicted a crudely drawn snake, its mouth open wide to swallow its own tail.

“Right here,” Tahir said, raising a hand behind his ear and bringing it down along the right side of his neck. “It’s like creation and destruction in one.”

Rayan chewed on the remainder of his crust and gave a shrug. “I guess.”

“I already know who’s going to do it,” Tahir continued, taking back the napkin and folding it into his pocket. “Len has a friend who owns a parlor in the Plateau.”

Rayan felt a surge of irritation. “You have the money for that? They’re not cheap.”

“Let me worry about the money. I’ve got it covered,” his brother said blithely.

Rayan swallowed a bite of stale crust.If you’re not worried about money, why the fuck are we eating day-old pizza?“She wouldn’t have liked it,” he said. It was the first thought he’d had after Tahir had shown him the design.

His brother scowled. “It’s got nothing to do with her,” he snapped. “Christ, Rayan, you’re always going on about that shit.”

It was a common tension these days, with Tahir thinking they could slough off their history like an ill-fitting coat. Maybe he didn’t believe it so much as he wanted to.

When his brother went to the parlor the following day, Rayan tagged along anyway. He stood by the door while Tahir engaged in a heated argument with Len’s friend behind the counter. The tattooist agreed in the end, despite it being unclear what had been promised as payment. With how light-fingered Tahir had become with Bastien’s profits, Rayan figured the money was something his brother had no business giving away. The tattoo turned out misaligned, the snake’s head awkwardly grazing Tahir’s jaw—no doubt a token of the artist’s reluctance.

Later, as he watched his brother furiously inspecting the botched tattoo in a McDonald’s bathroom, Rayan had wondered if it wasn’t all some cosmic joke—the idea that creation itself could be destroyed by the corruption of a steady hand. Or perhaps Tahir had just been unlucky. Bad fortune had followed them around like a black cloud, ready at any moment to open up above their heads.

In the photo the cop had pushed across the table toward Rayan, Tahir’s face was unnaturally bloated, the skin split and discolored. Not much about his features was recognizable, but the ink remained, the snake curving around his throat, taunting, as though it had been an omen all along—destruction, ceaseless and circular, coming for his life from the very beginning. The image was etched into Rayan’s brain. As if it was not enough to have witnessed his brother’s last moments, now he’d seen the aftermath—his body abandoned to the elements, a shameful, undignified end.

Back at his apartment, Rayan pulled things out of the wardrobe and stuffed them into a duffel bag. He scoured the room, stacking textbooks and notebooks into piles and quickly realizing that they wouldn’t fit.

He looked down at months of work, poring over lofty concepts and theories, and gave a bitter laugh at his audacity. Stupid, to think he could finally be happy. The past two years had been the most content he could remember—possibly the most content he’d ever been. He felt a burning rage blistering in his throat. He had no choice but to extract himself once again, uproot the threads of belonging he’d tentatively cultivated and cast himself back into a world seemingly intent on his punishment.

Once, Rayan had assumed his natural state was a transitory one, but now the thought of leaving brought on a surge of outright refusal. Even as he shoved his life into a bag, his mindrose up to fight, pulling at his hands and challenging his resolve:No. Not again.

Rayan recalled the woman’s smug face and the shock of terror he’d felt when she’d spoken that name, the one he’d thought he’d shed like an unwanted skin. She was with the federal police, and if they’d found him, who knew what they already had on Mathias?

He froze, the panic solidifying into a cold lump of dread. Perhaps, by finding him, they had also found Mathias, connecting the two of them. Rayan had done it again—he’d become the weak link, the point of pressure they would exploit, leading to Mathias’s downfall.

He pulled a hat down over his ears, threw on as many layers as would fit beneath his jacket, and shoved whatever else he could into the duffel bag. Then he pocketed his keys, his phone, and what little cash he had on hand and slipped out into the darkening streets. If they knew where he lived, it was likely they were still following him. Fortunately, Rayan was no stranger to making himself invisible. He would spend the night weaving through the city until they lost his trail. Then he’d get on the first bus out of Toronto.

Rayan had thought that if he avoided Montreal, he would succeed in avoiding his old life. But it was coming for him either way. If he was going to be held accountable for the actions of his past, he wanted to be in the place where it had all begun. He would find somewhere to hole up and get word to Mathias.

As he trudged through the muddy snow, the freezing wind burning his cheeks, Rayan felt the churn of memories he’d long suppressed. Here he was once again, fated to keep reliving the same old nightmare.

Chapter Eleven

While having Mathias followed in Hamilton had yielded an unexpected win, when he was back in Montreal, he’d proven difficult to track. On her recent visit to Ottawa, Frances had twisted the arm of a connection at HQ to secure warrantless approval for the installation of cameras across the street from several known family locations, and this had allowed her to piece together an idea of Mathias’s movements. She learned that he didn’t frequent the same places at the same times and was often absent from conventional family establishments. He was also extremely skilled at moving through the city unnoticed, which meant surveillance had lost him more times than Frances cared to admit.

However, as luck would have it, late that morning, Frances had received word from intel that one of the cameras had picked up Mathias and Jacques Laberge entering Gino’s—a deli in Petite Italia often frequented by members of the family. She’d driven straight over and caught a glimpse of him through the window, seated at a table with his subordinate.

She pulled open the door to the deli and stepped inside, watching as Mathias caught her eye. His face darkened, and he said something quietly to Laberge, who turned in her direction and got to his feet. As she walked to where Mathias sat, a cup of coffee steaming in his hand, she and Laberge passed each other, and the man gave her a dirty look before moving outside and stationing himself by the door.

“Friendly,” she remarked, pulling out a chair and sitting down across from Mathias.

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