Page 35 of A Life Betrayed

André nodded his head vigorously, scrabbling for the card on the floor.

“Fortunate, in the end,” Mathias murmured, almost to himself. “In spite of you, he turned out a decent man.”

He headed back toward the front door, and his gaze was caught on the framed military commendations hanging from the living room wall. Not a single photo of his wife and children but a veritable shrine to his glory days. Mathias walked over to peer at the yellowing service certificates trapped behind glass. From the corner of his eye, he could see André standing meekly by the entrance to the living room.

“You’ve seen it, then—how much blood a dying man can spill.” Mathias turned to fix him with a steely glare. “I’ve seen it too. Buckets of the stuff. You think they’re done, but it keeps on flowing.”

The old man shrank against the wall. Mathias took down the frame declaring him the recipient of a Medal of Bravery and shook his head at the irony.

“The only thing you need to know about me is this,” he said, letting the frame drop from his hand and smash to the floor. “If I have to come back here, I will slit you ear to ear and watch until there’s not a drop left.”

Chapter Fourteen

Rayan woke well past noon with a pounding headache. His mouth felt dry, and flashes of the conversation he’d had with Mathias the night before filtered into his brain. Rayan had been unfairly upset, his own feelings of futility running up against his fear of Mathias’s intolerance for weakness. But Mathias’s reaction had been surprisingly measured. In fact, he’d said far less than he deserved to say under the circumstances. Rayan felt a sting of humiliation at his behavior, recalling Mathias’s expression when he’d closed the door in his face. He knew the liquor was a mistake, but he’d spent the day stuck in his head and had been desperate to erase the image of his brother from his mind.

Attempting to sit up, Rayan found his limbs uncooperative, pinned to the bed by a looming dread. The feeling transported him back to those isolated days in his apartment, waiting for the wound in his shoulder to heal. Then, he’d been trapped by his own physical limitations. Now he couldn’t leave for fear of being seen—not just by the Feds but by the family as well.

Rayan had to remind himself that he wasn’t alone and this time was different. He ordered himself up out of bed and walked to the bathroom to wash his face. The room had an enormous clawfoot tub—ornate and indulgent—that seemed out of place among the rest of the modern fittings. Rayan assumed it had been an original feature and was too cumbersome to remove from the apartment. It stood against the wall, empty with promise.

He stepped into the living room and peered out the window at the deluge falling outside. The sky above was an ominous swathe of dark-gray clouds. Rayan went about gathering the notes he’d brought with him and laid everything out on the dining table. Mathias was right—while his work was pretentious and ultimately meaningless, it was still something. Sitting, he began to go through what he had. There were gaps—books and readings he’d left behind—but possibly enough with him to push through. He tried to focus and get his mind to clear, only to discover that his words had turned to hieroglyphs in his notebook. The chill was still there, having settled against his bones, his body stubbornly refusing to warm.

Rayan tossed the notebook down onto the table and strode back to the bathroom, where he filled the clawfoot tub with scalding water. Then he undressed and lowered himself in to his chin. The heat permeated his body, seeming to cross the threshold of his skin and silence the jangle of noise in his head.

Rayan lay still and found his thoughts straying once again to the file. Ever since Allen had brought up his state record, he’d wrestled with an intense need to know what it contained. Perhaps because it wasn’t just the inspector who was well acquainted with the minutiae of his past but Mathias as well. They had been there all this time—the missing parts of his life that he’d tried to piece together. Rayan had lost faith in his ability to tell which of his memories were real, and it was possible that what he knew about himself and his experience growing up was riddled with self-deception. Now that he’d seen what had become of his brother, he could no longer rely on the fantasy of denial.

Rayan hadn’t been in the tub long when Mathias appeared in the doorway to the bathroom. He stepped into the steam-filled room, his dark hair damp from the rain, and stared down atRayan with a quizzical look on his face. “Don’t tell me you’re drunk again.”

Rayan shook his head, chastened. “About that. I—”

“Save it,” Mathias cut in. “I’m not in the mood for woeful excuses.”

Rayan swallowed the empty words. Not sure what else to say, he raised an arm instead, woozy with warmth, and beckoned. “Join me.”

Mathias raised an eyebrow, and Rayan waited for the snide remark. But there was a reluctance about him—Rayan had felt it the previous evening as well—as though Mathias was handling him carefully. Rayan felt a prickle of shame.The last thing I want is his pity.

Then Mathias was reaching for his Rolex, snapped it off his wrist, and placed it on the large marble vanity. He began to undress slowly, methodically, as though aware of Rayan’s eyes unabashedly appraising his body. It was magnificent, as though chiseled from marble, and Mathias inhabited it with the confidence of someone who knew exactly that.

Mathias lowered himself into the water, and it rose to the very brim, threatening to spill over. Rayan drew up his knees, and they sat across from each other, Mathias’s feet brushing the outsides of his thighs. “Reminds me of being a kid,” Rayan said.

“How so?” Mathias asked, cupping his hands and bringing the water to his face.

Rayan smiled, curious. “You didn’t take baths as a kid?”

Mathias slid down so his chest was submerged. There was a splash as the water tipped over the edge of the tub and down to the floor. “Used to clean my clothes in the bath until I figured out how to work the washer.”

Rayan stared at him and he looked back, impassive. “You were alone a lot, growing up?”

“I learned English from watching hours of television,” Mathias said, turning his hand beneath the water. “You read books. I got stuck with a little black box for company.”

“And your mother?”

Mathias snickered. “Suffocating or absent entirely. Once she disappeared for a week when I was eight. Turned out she was in Paris, visiting a friend.”

Rayan frowned. “Weren’t you afraid?”

“No,” Mathias said, gray eyes snapping to his. “And if I was, you think I’d have told her?”

Rayan recalled the photo of Mathias he’d seen in his mother’s entranceway. He knew now why he’d felt the need to take it. He’d wanted to get him out of that apartment and away from her. “I’m sorry,” Rayan said into the quiet of the room.

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