Page 69 of A Life Betrayed

“I hardly rolled over on you. I gave them crumbs, a few details to get you noticed. If you move fast, you might even escape a conviction. And don’t pretend you haven’t used the Feds to your advantage. You’ve had someone on the inside for years.”

“I used them, not the other way around,” Mathias spat.

Giovanni squinted out across the maze of headstones. He raised the cigarette to his mouth and took a slow drag. Above them, the wind sent the clouds racing across the sky. “Your father buried here?”

Mathias remained silent.

Unfazed by his impudence, the boss continued. “Of course he is. Every Italian in the city ends up in this place. You know, he and I had something to do with each other back in the early days. Not much—he liked to find a comfortable spot where he could sit back, whereas I was forever chasing forward. Never made a real impression, but Christ, was he stupid. Knocking up hisgoomah,for one.” Giovanni gave a short laugh, shaking his head in awe. “I mean, how fucking stupid can a man be?” His words were like salt in an open wound. “And two, overlooking the son with the most potential. The only one who’d go on to accomplish anything.” Giovanni stared at him evenly. “Do you know what your brothers do?”

“No.” Mathias had never been curious. The less he knew about the men who shared his blood, the better.

“One’s the manager at a car rental company, and the other coaches high school hockey.” The boss splayed his hands out before him as if that information was some code to be unspooled. “But there’s the rub—if you’d been handed everything, Mathias, you’d be as dumb and useless as the other two.” The man took another drag, a thin stream of white curling from the corner of his mouth. “You know how this game plays out. You saw it when Piero tried to have you whacked and you took the fall. This isn’t the fucking schoolyard. There are no rules. Nothing is fair.” Giovanni gave a rueful smile. “And yet here I am, laying it all on the line, attempting to do right by you. I must be getting old.”

“Do right by me?” Mathias snarled. “That’s rich.”

The smile disappeared, and Giovanni’s face hardened. Mathias felt the cold unfurling of things unsaid passing between them. He could be indignant, but if the boss wanted him dead, he stood now in the old man’s good graces. That could change in an instant, depending on how he proceeded.

“Don’t be like your father, Mathias. Don’t be stupid. Do us both a favor and leave.”

It rose like a beast inside him—the instinctive urge to eviscerate those who stood against him. Yet Mathias had followed that path and seen where it led, and that kind of wrath didn’t belong to the life that lay beyond, a life that terrified him, in which he no longer recognized himself, but in which there existed someone who recognized him.

“Why would you let me leave?”

Giovanni gave a shrug. “Maybe I owe you. Without you, I wouldn’t be sitting where I am today. I’d like to settle that particular debt.”

Mathias took the ring from the finger on his right hand and dropped it onto the paving stones at his feet. “Consider my oath renounced,” he said in a low voice. Then he strode past Giovanni and down the path toward the cemetery gate.

“Mathias,” the boss called over his shoulder. “If you know what’s good for you, you won’t come back.”

After leaving the cemetery, Mathias got in his car and drove to the Collections office, his mind tunneling into a singular focus. He’d once been convinced that in life, everyone was out to get him and if he didn’t remain constantly vigilant, he would be eradicated. He wondered when he’d stopped believing that. It felt as though he was looking down to discover parts of himself missing, unsure exactly when they’d disappeared and who the fuck he was without them.

Mathias found his second seated behind the desk in Tony’s office. The sight of him there lodged a dark splinter of fury in his temple. He felt the creep of realization—unwittingly, in his increasing absence, he’d phased Jacques out of a job, refusing to have him sit in on meetings, leaving him to clean up messes at the office while Mathias went off on his own. No wonder Jacques had gone in search of something more—the position and the recognition he thought he deserved.

Jacques stood up quickly when Mathias appeared, rearranging his face a half second too late to hide his surprise. “Didn’t know you were coming in,” he said, either completely unaware of the situation or entirely confident in his ability to read it.

Mathias was pretty sure it was the former. “I need to be in Sherbrooke for a meeting. Get moving,” Mathias said, turning and walking out of the office as his second scrambled to keep up.

In the parking lot, Jacques got into the passenger side of the car, and Mathias pulled out onto the street. They drove in silence as Jacques gazed absently out the window. Mathias couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was about the man that had always seemed so unremarkable. He’d never been curious about what Jacques was thinking or whether he had anything to contribute to an unfolding situation. Mathias had simply registered him as a presence—he was either there, or he wasn’t.

When they were far enough out of the city, Mathias turned off the highway and navigated the car along a series of back roads. It began to snow, tiny wisps of white that smeared against the windshield. Mathias waited until the road was empty of other cars before pulling the Bentley into a concealed driveway that led to a small produce farm. He cut the ignition.

“I heard a noise from the engine,” he said, flicking the button beside the steering wheel to pop the hood. “Go check the oil.”

When Jacques was outside, Mathias reached into the glove compartment, where he’d stashed the gun he’d taken from Rayan. He checked the chamber, got out of the car, and walked around to where his second stood peering under the hood.

“Boss, doesn’t look like—” Jacques stopped when he saw Mathias with his pistol raised.

“Back up,” Mathias instructed quietly. “Gun on the ground.”

Jacques took a few steps backward, slowly extracted his weapon from the holster beneath his jacket, and tossed it onto the ground between them.

“Phone.”

The man’s phone soon followed.

With the gun still trained on his second, Mathias bent to retrieve them. He slipped the phone into his pocket and tucked Jacques’s gun into the waistband of his slacks. Then he lunged forward and smashed the side of his pistol against Jacques’s face. Jacques let out a pained grunt but otherwise remainedsilent, watching Mathias carefully as the blood streamed from his nose.

“Did you go to him, or did he come to you?”

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