Page 49 of A Life Betrayed

Paulo nodded. “We got our hands on the shipment this morning, and it’s now at the bottom of Lake Ontario. I’ve assembled the full team, some here, some stationed around the building as backup.”

“Good.”

Mathias glanced idly around the room. It brought up an unwanted nostalgia, a callback to a different time. Paulo hadn’t changed much in Mathias’s absence—the place was as pared back as he’d left it. He sat down behind the desk and pulled out his cigarettes. He’d barely lit one before the door opened and Truman strode in. Mathias indicated for Paulo to leave, and the regional head stepped out, closing the door behind him.

“Changing it up, are we?” Truman announced, hooking his thumbs through his belt loops. “I haven’t been here since Moretti. Sure spruced up the place.”

He’d done more than spruced it up. Mathias still remembered how his skin had crawled the day that old hack had led him and Rayan up to this dump. He exhaled a stream of smoke through his teeth. “I thought I made myself clear when we first met.”

The air in the room shifted. Since carving out their unconventional alliance in the lead-up to Russo’s death, they had remained on relatively amicable terms. That was no longer the case.

“Clear about what?”

“How I conduct my business.”

“Nothing’s changed there.”

It had always been a gamble, relying on such an erratic personality. On some level, he’d known that ever since he’d first asked Gurin for an introduction. Mathias had made it this far by being careful who he trusted, and Truman wouldn’t have made the cut if necessity and circumstance hadn’t drawn them together. Truman and the Reapers had been an asset at the time. The family wouldn’t have succeeded in taking down Piero without them, but his usefulness had clearly run its course.

“Hasn’t it?” Mathias brought his smoke to his lips.

Truman cocked one eye. “What’re you going to do—pull out your gun?”

“I’ve done it before.”

“I believed you that time.” Truman shook his head, his expression almost reflective. “Back then, I knew you were gutsy enough to do anything to get ahead. Now you’ve already got what you wanted. There’s nothing in it for you.”

“Why don’t we talk about what’s in it for you? There must be something you’re getting by cutting a deal with the Feds.”

Truman gave a low chuckle. “Look, that’s something else. They’ve got me against the wall for some stuff Border Services caught us shifting for the West Coast chapter.”

“Stuff?” Mathias echoed. He knew exactly what Truman had been shifting.

“Guns, ammo,” Truman admitted grudgingly.

Mathias rested his cigarette on the edge of the ivory ashtray sitting on the desk and got to his feet, attempting to suppressthe flash of fury at the man’s casual tone. Truman had no idea the risks he’d been taking—what he’d put in jeopardy—with his carelessness.

“Are you a fucking moron?” Mathias muttered. “Gunrunning’s far too conspicuous with what we have going on. It’s the basics in this business—compartmentalize, stagger activities, distance yourself.”

Truman shrugged. “What can I say? I’m greedy. I like a finger in a few pies. You know how it is—it’s not always about the money. Sometimes we do it for the hell of it, because we can.”

“No, I don’t know how it is,” Mathias said, astounded by Truman’s idiocy. He stepped away from the desk and moved to face the Reapers’ head.

Truman rocked back on his heels with a smirk. “Come on, Mathias. They’ve always been after us. One by one, eventually, we’ll fall. It’s just a matter of time. I’m not afraid to go down in a bloody mess. Better than slinking off to prison—”

Mathias smashed his fist into Truman’s face. A spurt of blood flew through the air, and Truman staggered back, stunned. Mathias cracked the knuckles of his right hand, surprised at the sting. It had been years since he’d done his own dirty work. Maybe he had grown soft, as Truman had said, now that there wasn’t anything left to want.

The Reapers’ head gave a gurgle of laughter and wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand. “I probably deserved that. Heard you spent some time in the slammer.”

The second blow hurt less, Mathias’s body getting back into the swing of things—a violent sort of muscle memory. Truman doubled over and spat a hock of red onto the office floor.

“Okay, okay, enough,” he declared, squinting in anger as he straightened. “I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt, but I’m not dumb enough to come here alone. I’ve got ten guysoutside with a pretty decent mob complex. They’d be happy to take you on. Even you, Beauvais, aren’t fucking invincible.”

“Let’s see you try,” Mathias snarled. “The men behind this door were trained by the Bratva. They’ll tear your hobby bikers to pieces.”

“Look, I didn’t give them anything,” Truman said. “The pigs put two and two together and caught on to our little arrangement.”

“An arrangement that is, as of this morning, dead in the water—along with your last shipment. You’re welcome to recover what you can from the bottom of the lake.”

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