Page 73 of A Life Imagined
“I can see how she wouldn’t be worth it.”
“Fuck you!”Marsela snarled.
“You’ve wasted my time and disrespected me and my business.That doesn’t come cheap.”
“Who are you?”
“Someone it pays not to mess with,” Mathias said in a low voice.“You don’t want the product back?No skin off my nose.I’ll sell it to the highest bidder.The girl will be a little harder to dispose of.”
The man seemed to be mulling over that particular prospect.After a moment, he spoke.“All right.But she comes back untouched, you hear me?”
As if I’d be tempted to lay a finger on the harpy.“Eight o’clock at the abandoned maritime station in Boulogne.No funny shit.”
“Let me talk to her—”
Mathias thumbed the disconnect button and leaned over to refasten Marsela’s wrist to the headboard.
She glowered at him.“Just you wait.He’s going to—”
Mathias raised the scarf to gag her before she could finish.Nothing I haven’t heard before.He walked back into the adjacent room, and Rayan followed, closing the door behind them.
Mathias’s head throbbed insistently, and he reached for the painkillers on the nightstand.When he saw the look on Rayan’s face, he knew his sparing explanations would no longer cut it.
“That’s what this is about?”Rayan strode over and shoved him hard in the chest.“Money?”
“Hey,” Mathias protested half-heartedly.“Let’s keep this civil.My head feels like a fallout zone.”
“You almost get yourself killed to screw over a bunch of gangsters,” Rayan snapped, his brown eyes flashing.“And now I’m part of a kidnapping plot?”
Mathias knocked another two pills back and swallowed them dry.“I thought we could diversify.It seemed a natural progression from smuggling people.”
“Don’t you fucking joke about this.”
Mathias had to fight the urge to reach out and ruffle the man’s hair.
“You told me you were considering other opportunities.”Rayan was pacing, his hands clenched at his sides.“Is that what this is?A bid at your own group, a chance to get in on the game?”
“With these clowns?Give me some credit.”
“I should have known it wouldn’t be enough.That you would need something else.But this?”
Despite Rayan’s tortured expression, Mathias couldn’t help but laugh.“You’re way off base here.”
“Am I?Then why don’t you tell me what you need with eight million euro—” Rayan’s face went slack with understanding.“No…”
Mathias shrugged.“You were seven short, so I figured, why not round it up to an even eight?”That, and he’d have to cover the mess Marsela’s goons had made at the warehouse.Charles would also expect a cut for his assistance.
Rayan’s eyes were wide, and he was shaking his head.“No, Mathias…”
“Haven’t you learned anything?”Mathias admonished him.“Life doesn’t operate on some well-balanced scale of justice.It’s a fucking wheel of fortune.You think the people in the camp don’t know that?”
The crease in Rayan’s forehead deepened.
“You spin the wheel, and sometimes you get nothing, and sometimes what you need falls right into your lap,” Mathias went on.“You have no business questioning where it came from or whether you should take it.”
“I swear, there’s nothing you can’t talk your way out of.”
“You know as well as I do, Rayan,” Mathias said, his tone hardening, “how unfair this world can be.You do what you have to do to look out for your own.”
