Page 8 of A Life Betrayed

Giovanni’s eyes crinkled in amusement. “Always so quick, Mathias. You never fail to impress.”

“There’s a lot about this business that doesn’t exactly fit onto a spreadsheet,” Mathias scoffed.

“Of course, but there’s a hell of a lot that will.”

Mathias kept the skepticism from showing on his face.

“I’ve been in discussions with BCF Holdings, the company who owns this building, about a generous lease agreement,” Giovanni said. “In the words of our dear departed friend, money talks. And there are some very large organizations looking for a confidential cash injection. Why waste our time hassling mechanics for small change when we could be lending millions to the big players and making a killing?”

It was ambitious and not entirely out of the scope of reality. Mathias himself had considered the possibility of legitimizing certain family business ventures. “You’ve looked into the legal implications?”

Giovanni shrugged. “There are firms out there whose business it is to make dirty look clean. The current government isn’t going anywhere, and soon Quebec will be expected to fall back in line. We’ve grown beyond a small annoyance. We need to remain one step ahead and pivot before they try to shut us down.”

Mathias slipped his hands into the pockets of his slacks. The afternoon sun streamed through the window, projecting his shadow onto the blank wall beside him.

“Think of it as an upgrade, a step into the future. We’d create a shell corporation with a shadow director and a respectable board lineup, use consultants to muddy the trail,” Giovanni continued. “Tony was one of the old guard. He stuck to what he knew. We’re taking Collections in a new direction.”

Mathias had found an old ledger at the bottom of one of Tony’s desk drawers. It dated back to the early eighties and was filled with a meticulous record of the division’s profits for that year. Tony had just been starting out and was tasked with molding a fledgling branch into a well-oiled machine, a task he’d made it his life’s mission to accomplish. He would have hated the idea of selling out to some faceless schmuck in finance.

“Don’t tell me you’re old-school as well,” Giovanni goaded him, misinterpreting his silence. “You would know well enough, Mathias, this is the way forward.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Mathias said. “But the trouble with working with a bunch of slippery suits in the Caymans is that it’s hard to find a neck to squeeze when things go wrong.”

Giovanni chuckled. “Trust you to get right to the point. And you’re not wrong—it does leave the issue of compliance. But there are paper-based ways to extract the desired response.”

Mathias had been doing this long enough to know that a piece of paper wasn’t nearly as effective as a clenched fist.

“The real money is to be made where the fat cats sit, and we’ve accumulated a sizable investment portfolio to run with the big boys,” Giovanni continued. “More profit for less risk, and we keep our noses clean in the process.”

If the boss wanted Collections to run like a high-end investment firm, it would mean dismantling the street teamsand placing control into the soft hands of consultants who didn’t know a thing about the realities of their business.

Giovanni waved his hand as if swatting an errant fly. “I’m talking long-term here—future planning. There’s a lot to be worked out before then. But I figured…” He gestured around the pristine office. “Why not get started now?”

Mathias nodded noncommittally. A thought niggled in the back of his mind, remaining unasked:where does that leave me?But there would be time for questions. He’d learned, in his role as the boss’s counsel, that it was best not to contradict the man when he got an idea into his head. It was far easier to let the dust settle and then present a compelling counterproposal.

Chapter Five

Rayan remembered the flour on his mother’s hands as she kneaded dough on the kitchen counter. He could hear the chatter of the TV from the living room, where his brother was stretched out on the floor in front of the screen. Even cartoons couldn’t lure Rayan from the joy of standing on a chair by her side and watching as she dipped her slender fingers into the flour jar. She would sprinkle a delicate layer of white across the lump of unshaped dough and work it in with the heel of her hand. Sometimes she broke off a piece and gave it to him to roll into little balls, which he would lay on the tray alongside the perfect circles of flatbread. While the bread baked, she mixed oregano, cumin, and sumac to make za’atar, which she would spread across the top and douse with olive oil.

On Saturday mornings, she ruled the house. Their father wouldn’t be up until noon, sleeping off a hard night at the local tavern after his pay packet came in on Friday afternoon. They listened to Najwa Karam, and his mother spoke to them in her native tongue, her voice sounding different from how it did in French—more melodious, as if this was the real her and the other woman simply a character she played.

He wondered how much of his mother’s life had been spent playing a character—the dutiful wife, the assimilated immigrant, the happy mother. Perhaps it was a trick he’d learned from her. But hiding had only left him starving with need.

In darker moments, Rayan feared she’d believed she was doing them a favor, relinquishing him and his brother to thesystem. After leaving his father, she had struggled to find work and keep their small family afloat but was unequipped to navigate the expectations placed on her by an unfamiliar society. If there were services, she didn’t know about them, and if there was help, she didn’t ask for it. The thought that his mother had decided he and Tahir were better off without her was too painful to imagine.

In the kitchen of his apartment, Rayan pushed his knuckles into a ball of dough on the counter. He kept his movements slow and even, in no hurry to get the dough onto the tray and into the oven. It wasn’t Saturday but Sunday, and he’d woken with an overwhelming urge to make his mother’s flatbread. Recreating the dishes from his childhood had become a strange sort of medicine.

Recently, he’d found himself able to remember things again, the memories floating into being as though released from the murky confines of his mind. He wondered if it was because, in the last few years, the tenor of his life had so drastically changed. When he’d first come to Toronto, Rayan had felt like he was still in hiding. He’d barely left the apartment except to go to classes and had kept to the same nearby stores. Then, as time went on and nothing happened, Rayan began to shake free of his self-imposed exile. Still most comfortable on foot, he started to explore the city, walking from one neighborhood to the next, taking it all in.

He’d never felt such freedom before. Even when he and his brother had been loose on the streets of Montreal, with no responsibility to anyone or anything, it hadn’t been true freedom. Details about what they’d eat and where they’d sleep had been contingent on the events of the day—he’d planed down his ability to imagine the future and see past the task of keeping one foot in front of the other.

Rayan realized now how ruinous such uncertainty had been. With each new neighborhood he discovered, each course he completed, each purchase he made for the apartment, he fought to counter the voice of warning in his mind. It told him not to be foolish, for everything could once again be taken away.

After setting the dough aside to rise, he opened the pantry to discover he was out of oregano. Rayan grabbed his keys and walked to the door to pull on his coat. He left, locking the apartment behind him. During the week, the streets around his building bustled with commuters and school children, but on weekend mornings, they were virtually empty. Rayan preferred it like this. In crowds, he tended to let his paranoia get the better of him.

A store run by an Iranian couple, several blocks from his apartment, sold a selection of specialty foods—spices, grape leaves, and ajwa dates, along with cans and jars that he recognized but didn’t know the names of. The couple were friendly and spoke often of their family back home, cousins and nieces and uncles who were always promising to come visit. Sometimes they put things aside for Rayan that they thought he might like.

That morning, someone had set up a small table covered with stacks of glossy pamphlets outside the store. It was manned by a young boy wearing a yellow hat and gloves, perched on a metal foldout chair.

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