Page 41 of A Life Imagined
“Fine, I’ll take the bait.What’s going on in the city?”
“It’s going to shit, Beauvais.”The amusement was gone from his voice and replaced by a steeliness palpable through the receiver.“Russo kept the ship afloat for fifty years.Bianchi won’t make it to five.”
“What are you saying?”Mathias asked, his stomach tightening.
“He’s started purging, from the bottom up.The numbers have gotten thin and morale even thinner.Rivals are circling the family like vultures with a dead carcass.”
“You among them?”
Belkov paused.“If there’s ground to be gained, it’s in the Bratva’s interest in staking our claim.My alliance with the family disappeared when you did.”
Mathias’s jaw clenched.Giovanni was a fool—muscling Mathias out, for one, and then letting paranoia inform his strategy.Even Russo had weathered pushback when he started trimming the fat.No one took it well when they thought they were next on the chopping block.Cutbacks had to be carefully executed, and by the sound of things, Giovanni had been far from judicious.With Mathias gone and the Quintino content to sit back and watch, no one had told the boss where to draw the line.
“So, what’s the game plan?”Mathias asked.
“I shouldn’t be talking to you about this.”
“Why?You think I still report to them?”
“I don’t know what the fuck you do.All I hear is that you’re a ghost.Here one minute, gone the next.Some say you knew the ship was sinking, so you took your spoils and left.Others say you’re a coward who couldn’t stand up to Bianchi.”
“A coward?”Mathias growled.
“Less are saying that now, what with how poorly the big boss has performed.The former seems more plausible.”
“It was neither,” Mathias snapped, somehow needing to put the record straight.
It stung even now.He’d known there would be talk after he left.Theories and rumors that spread like wildfire.But to be branded a coward?That was a special kind of humiliation.
“Bianchi tipped off the Feds to push me out.It was either leaving or prison.”
“Or dead,” Belkov added.“Don’t pretend that wasn’t waiting around the corner for you, Beauvais.I know how your kind works.Loyalty is everything until it isn’t.”
The Russian wasn’t wrong.Giovanni had said as much that day in the cemetery before Mathias left Montreal.
“And what—you’ve joined the hordes trying to cut off a piece?”Mathias scoffed.
“All I’m saying is, if the opportunity arises, I know which side we’ll be on.”
Mathias stared out the window at the dusky night sky, struck by a sense of detachment.He would have solutions, ideas for how to turn the situation around, if he’d still been willing to put his life down for Giovanni, for the sake of the family.But none of that was true anymore.
“I have no sway with the family,” Mathias said.“I can’t help you there.What else?”
Belkov was quiet as though considering.“Then I’ll leave my options open.Who knows how things will pan out?Can’t hurt to have a favor from you in my back pocket.”
“Suit yourself.”
“I’ll reach out to my man, and if I find anything, we’ll be in touch,” Belkov said.But instead of hanging up, he remained on the line.Static stretched between them.“What happens when the whole thing topples over?Will you come back and rise from the ashes?”
Mathias shook his head to dispel the possibility.“It will never fall.The family is too entrenched.The worst you can do is carve off the edges.”
“It’s not the edges we’ll be carving.”
Mathias ended the call, a heaviness weighing on him.He walked over to the window and yanked it open, letting the cool air brush his face.He could hear the faint crash of waves in the distance, a rhythmic whoosh that punctuated the evening silence.
He should feel nothing, yet it was as though he was staring down the face of looming disaster.He had lived through it once, and even now, cut off from his former life, he could conjure the feeling—the rising panic as the walls closed in.He knew what Giovanni was up against and could see the full extent of the mess he’d made.It shouldn’t have bothered him, but it did.Mathias had invested too much in the family to feign indifference as he watched it teeter on the brink of collapse.
Chapter Fifteen
