Page 38 of A Life Betrayed

“Always knew having dirt on Truman would come in handy. Take it. Use it as a bargaining chip with the Feds. They hate us, but they hate an inside job even more. Stings when it’s one of their own.”

Mathias felt an immediate kickback at Belkov’s mention of collaborating with the RCMP. The photos were damning—and he didn’t doubt they had the potential to bring Allen to the negotiating table—but the idea pushed up hard against the reputation he’d built for himself. If he was to demand respect in this world, his word had to mean something. Mathias wasn’t a rat. The thought of going to that smug woman to plead his case and giving her the satisfaction of knowing she’d gotten to him was just as impossible as handing himself in.

“And I’m to believe you’re doing this from the goodness of your heart?” Mathias sneered.

Belkov shrugged. “Let’s say I have a shared interest in Truman going down. Our Hamilton operations have been stifled as of late. I could use the breathing room.”

Mathias thumbed through the photos absently. He’d been strangely undecided on how to proceed with Truman. It wasn’t as simple as confronting the Reapers’ head. He had to try to figure out exactly what Truman had given Allen first.

“So, you’ll stand to gain no matter which way this falls,” Mathias remarked.

The Bratva boss couldn’t hide his glee. “And that, Beauvais, is where you’d be right. That man has been a thorn in my side for years. Your can of worms happens to be my lucky break.”

Chapter Fifteen

Truman appeared considerably more agitated when Frances met with him a second time. Following pressure from the RCMP, Border Services had come down hard with their gunrunning charges and issued a freezing order, which prevented the Reapers’ head from accessing assets for several of his establishments. A summons had been issued, and he was due in court the following month. It was enough to propel Truman to seek her out and grasp at the possibility of a plea. Not that it made him any more gracious in his dealings with her. He’d been pushed hard into a corner, and it was clear he wasn’t happy to find himself there.

They’d arranged to meet at a deserted Hamilton movie theater that was screening a matinee of a recent action film nearing the end of its run. Frances had arrived first and seated herself in the back row to wait. After the opening credits had started, she saw Truman slink into the darkened cinema.

“Nice choice,” she said sarcastically as he squeezed his considerable bulk down the aisle toward her.

The movie was about a cop called out of retirement to hunt down a serial killer—at least that was what she’d gathered from the first few painful minutes. As someone who worked in the profession, she’d always found cop movies hard to stomach. The blaze of guns and glory obscured what was, in reality, a tedious push and pull of dead leads and paperwork.

Truman came to a stop and lowered himself into a nearby seat with an audible grunt. “Creaming your panties already?” he shot back.

“I see you’ve changed your tune. Something to do with the impending trial date?”

Truman glared at her in the darkness, and Frances held his gaze. He’d need more than a sour look to ruffle her. In truth, she’d been relieved to get word from her go-between that Truman wanted to meet again. Since her fruitless visit with André Nadeau, she hadn’t made much in the way of progress.

Rayan still hadn’t resurfaced, which didn’t bode well. If he’d been concerned about saving his own skin, he would have made contact by now. She’d thought his initial reluctance to divulge anything about his boss had been typical family bravado, but if he would rather spend his life on the run than roll over on Mathias, that threw her strategy out the window. Fortunately, Truman had sweetened the bitter taste of disappointment. Of the two possible informants with the potential to bring Mathias down, he was the more promising choice.

Truman shoved a hand holding a crumpled manila folder into the empty space between them. She leaned over and took it then pulled her phone from her pocket to illuminate the contents. At first, Frances wasn’t sure what she was looking at. The initial few pages were Hamilton-Oshawa Port Authority documents that detailed fees paid for scheduled shipments from the Hamilton port to the ports of Montreal. Someone had circled the name of the company addressed in the invoices: Laurent Importations. The following pages were customs seizure notices listing the shipment identification numbers and sailing times. She flipped back and forth between the pages, noting that the ID numbers on the port authority invoices matched those of the shipments that had been seized.

“What is all this?” she asked, growing annoyed. Truman had said he had something connecting Mathias to the cross-provincial drug trade that would substantiate the original tip-off.

“Christ, lady, I gotta do all your work for you?” Truman snapped, shifting in his seat. “You’ve got a whole office of pencil-pushers at your disposal. Look up the holding company. I think you’ll find that it links directly to our friend.”

Frances flipped back through the pages in her hand. Laurent Importations didn’t appear anywhere in the sender or recipient details for the seized shipments. There had been a handful of different names and addresses listed on the customs forms that the Quebec office had looked into, only for the trail to go cold. But that was because they hadn’t thought to link the shipments to port authority fees, a connection that could only have come from someone on the inside, someone who knew they were being paid off.

“It’s a start,” she said, keeping her voice even so as not to let on how pleased she was. “But I’m going to need more than this to put him away. And you’re going to have to up your game if you want any chance at a plea.”

Truman slammed his fist against the back of the empty seat, causing the row of plastic chairs to shudder. “What the fuck are you playing at? You said you needed info. Here it is. Don’t go changing the rules to suit yourself.”

Frances let out a short laugh and got to her feet. “Not fair enough for you, Truman? I make the fucking rules. And if you want a snowball’s chance in hell of walking away from prison time, you will follow them.” She tucked the folder under her arm and strode out of the theater.

When she emerged into the lobby, Frances took out her phone and called the office’s head of research. “I need everything you can find on a Quebec-registered holding company, LaurentImportations.” If what Truman had said was true, and they could link the company back to Mathias, she would have enough for a warrant.

“Come here—let’s have a look at you, then,” Freddie Mancini announced from the living room.

Mathias came to a stop in the hallway, only steps away from the front door and mere moments from freedom. It wasn’t often that he saw his father. As Mathias had gotten older, the visits began to occur less frequently. When his father did come by the apartment, it was never to see him, and Mathias knew to make himself scarce.

Mathias was barely thirteen and still growing into himself, his body different from one day to the next. He turned around for his old man’s assessment, hating the hope that leapt to his throat, as though his father would suddenly bestow upon him years of abandoned praise.

“You’re a tall one, aren’t you?” Freddie chuckled. “And those eyes. You sure he’s mine?”

He glanced over at Mathias’s mother, who was standing by the sofa, and she gave him a small smile. A joke, but it set the fury burning in Mathias, making what he was even more sullied. After all, it was a special kind of bastard who didn’t know his father. Mathias, on the other hand, saw too much of the man in himself. When he looked in the mirror, it was his father who looked back—the dark hair, the wide shoulders, the rise of his forehead.

“I’ve got something for you,” Freddie said.

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