Page 32 of A Life Betrayed

“She made it sound like I was relieved.” Rayan swallowed hard. “Like I was a suspect.”

Mathias snorted in disbelief. “The thinnest fucking case alive.”

“Not when I’m on trial for everything else. Then it’s not a far stretch of the imagination.”

“She was baiting you.”

“What else do you know?” Rayan asked. “She said I have a file.”

Mathias chose his next words carefully. “Rayan, you spent half your life on the government’s radar. You have a file as thick as my fist.”

“So, you’ve seen it?”

“I did my research.”

“When?” Rayan asked.

“When you first started. I needed to know who I was working with.”

Rayan’s lips pulled into a sneer. “And were you disappointed?”

Mathias held his tongue. He would allow him this. Rayan was entitled to a reaction.

“Do you still have it?” Rayan pressed.

Mathias sighed. “Go to bed, Rayan.”

“Show me.”

“No,” Mathias snapped, putting an end to the discussion. He’d reached the limits of his patience. He wrenched open the door to the bedroom. “Now, you can get in there yourself, or I will make you.”

Rayan scowled, walking past him into the bedroom and slamming the door in Mathias’s face.

Chapter Thirteen

“Brake. No, the other one’s the brake.”

Rayan pressed his foot down a little too hard on the left pedal, and the car lurched.

“Jesus Christ!” his brother yelled, one palm splayed against the dashboard to steady himself.

“Sorry.” Rayan laughed, buzzing with excitement.

He’d played wingman whenever Tahir boosted cars, and it was finally his turn behind the wheel. There came a series of honks from behind them. Rayan pulled the car over to the side of the road.

“Don’t cause an accident,” his brother said grimly. “Or we’ll really be in the shit.”

The SUV was practically new and fitted out with plush leather seats and a touch-screen monitor. Its well-heeled owner was probably wondering where it was by this point.

“Take it easy. Slow to accelerate, slow to stop.”

Tahir’s eyes were glazed. From what, Rayan couldn’t be sure. It was happening more often, the slack features and unfocused pupils making it hard to separate his brother from the person he was when he was high.

Rayan continued down Sherbrooke West, deriving a cheap satisfaction from the powerful pull of the car as it sped forward. “It’s not so hard.”

“You drive like a granny who escaped the rest home,” Tahir jeered.

Rayan eased to a stop at a red light, and a man in faded overalls and combat boots approached them, gripping a bucket in one hand and a dirty sponge in the other.

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