A Life Chosen (Montreal #1)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

H e’d seen more of Mathias when they lived in different cities. Weeks went by, and Rayan heard nothing. Cowed by his injury, he rarely left the apartment. He grew dizzy with the boredom of it all. When it got to be too much—when he buzzed with rage at how useless he’d become, Rayan lifted weights for hours. If his arm refused to cooperate, he would punish the rest of his body. One handed push-ups and single-arm deadlifts. Once, he passed out and woke several hours later to find the room dark. After struggling to pull himself up, he’d made it to the bed, where he’d collapsed and slept until morning.

It was late afternoon, and Rayan stood in the middle of his living room after a particularly grueling workout. He had long ago piled the furniture into one corner, giving the space a strange starkness that suited his imposed confinement. Breathing heavily, he stared at his right hand as it trembled, his arm spasming. The minute-to-minute pain had lessened, but he experienced sudden flare-ups, the wound asserting itself while he attempted simple everyday tasks—holding a knife, turning the shower handle—his body reminding him that he was a fool if he thought he could escape this penance.

The lock on the door clicked, and he was barely able to wipe the despair from his face before Mathias walked in, eyes sweeping the room, taking in Rayan and the state of the apartment.

“Interrupting something?”

Mathias’s voice broke the trance. Rayan picked up the towel he’d left on the counter. He pressed it to his damp face and bare chest then threw it around his neck. “I’m done.”

“With what, exactly?” Mathias asked. “Martin told you to take it easy.”

Rayan frowned. “I want to be ready for when I’m needed.”

“You’re not,” Mathias said flatly. “Not in your condition. ”

The fury swelled. Since the shooting, Rayan found he struggled to control simple emotions that had glanced off him before. “I’m fine. It won’t be long before I’m back to where I was.”

Mathias stepped over and placed a hand on his shoulder. The longing rose like an ache, immediate and physical. Mathias slipped his thumb down to the mess of scarring below Rayan’s clavicle and dug it into the flesh. Rayan let out a growl and shoved Mathias backward, his hand flying to the wound. He grit his teeth as the throbbing continued, waves of pain rolling down his arm.

Mathias looked at him. “You were never much of a liar.”

“You’re still as much of a bastard,” Rayan spat.

A flash of surprise crossed Mathias’s face. The word choice, though accidental, was heavy with implications. Rayan regretted it immediately. He also regretted the way his pulse had quickened when the man touched him. In Mathias’s increasing absence, Rayan had thought too much about his former capo’s hands on him.

There was a thwack as his head hit the wall behind him, Mathias gripping his neck, his face dangerously close. When the man spoke, it was hard. “Wake up, Rayan. You were shot. You don’t bounce back from that.”

Rayan expected to feel anger but instead felt it drain from him. A piercing dread took its place. He didn’t know what he was if not useful. He’d scrabbled together this pitiful life, and it was slipping through his fingers.

“Why are you avoiding me?”

Mathias dropped his hand, stepping back. Something was different. Something had changed. Rayan reached for him, but Mathias recoiled like a stranger.

The fear from before was back—the years of watching, afraid of what he might reveal. All those times he’d wanted to touch Mathias and hadn’t. Rayan had become so emboldened that he’d forgotten this feeling, deluding himself by thinking he had a claim over the man—that all of it wouldn’t simply disappear in an instant.

“I’ve been appointed to the council.”

Rayan’s eyes widened. “The Quintino?”

Mathias nodded.

It was an unprecedented honor, a befitting acknowledgement of Mathias’s dedication, all that he’d worked for. Despite everything, Rayan felt a swell of pride. “That’s… No one deserves it more.”

Mathias stared at him, a coldness settling over his features. “This has to stop.”

Rayan blinked. This?

“The family, my role—it’s changing. This was a lapse in judgment. Now it stops. ”

Rayan heard a rush in his ears. Mathias continued to speak, but only some words made it through the noise. “I’m transferring you to Denis Larrivée, the booking head in Quebec City. He’ll take you on as a favor. Starting next month.”

“A favor?” Rayan echoed in disbelief.

“With your arm, you’re no use in the field, and I can’t justify the dead weight. The options are limited. At least you’ll be working.”

It came as a flurry of hits, each one harder than the next. He’d been tossed aside like he was nothing.

“Mathias…” he said, if only to stop the volley. He couldn’t think. His mind was frozen.

Mathias’s eyes narrowed with growing frustration.

Does he expect me to simply agree and walk away from the only thing in my life that matters?

“We’re done,” Mathias pronounced curtly.

A numbness crept into Rayan’s chest, stealing his breath. And then one thing became clear, rising above the mess. Words he’d swallowed again and again, too afraid to give them voice.

“I’ve loved you for years,” Rayan said, his throat constricting. “That doesn’t stop because you say it does.”

The admission, the first said aloud, shocked them both into silence. Mathias opened his mouth to speak but said nothing. The stillness was deafening. Something unnameable flickered in his gray eyes.

Then his face darkened, lips curling into a sneer. “You think that’s what this is?” he scoffed. “What would you know about love?”

Rayan’s stomach seized. Then came the surge of anger. Mathias was blind to the ways he excised his own feelings.

“More than you.”

Mathias stiffened, the mask slipping to reveal a glimpse of the man beneath. But it disappeared in an instant, and Rayan found himself face-to-face with the stony glare he’d seen employed on countless jobs—menacing and dangerous, a look that whittled those who encountered it down to nothing.

“I’m done with you, Rayan,” Mathias said quietly. “I don’t need you anymore.”

Rayan could say nothing, words abandoning him.

“Understand? This ends.”

Rayan felt as though he inhabited a space outside his body. He could not make Mathias keep him.

“Do you understand?” Mathias asked again, anger lifting his voice .

Rayan spoke without hearing the words. “I understand.”

Mathias drove through the streets of downtown Montreal on his way to see the boss. After months of clandestine meetings, it was strange to be invited to Giovanni’s home, treated like an honored guest. Jacques had settled in well, undeterred at having to leave Hamilton behind. He seemed determined to get his stripes, hungry for the potential of life amid family ranks. While Mathias couldn’t fault the man, he found himself newly cautious. Ambition, greed, power—all were accepted currencies in his world, yet they brought the potential for corruption and betrayal. It only served to highlight how completely he’d trusted his former second, someone unconcerned with such things.

Catching himself, Mathias shuffled the thoughts quickly and forced them to the back of his mind. It was a temporary exercise, leaving him exposed for when they inevitably rose again, like a dense fog, clouding his vision.

While Jacques remained unranked, Mathias preferred to keep him out of the more intimate discussions of family affairs. That day, Mathias had left him at the Collections office, figuring Franco could use the help. There was a gaping hole where Tony had once been, and almost three months after his death, they were no closer to determining his replacement.

It was still dangerous for Mathias to be out alone. A small minority continued to resist the boss’s newfound clout in the city. That was to be expected. Five decades was long enough for the groove to run deep. But Mathias took his chances, less concerned these days with his own safety and more with getting the job done. It was simpler that way. Mathias operated far more efficiently when he scrubbed away the weaker parts of himself—desire, hope. No more blind spots.

In his pocket, Mathias felt the buzz of his phone. He pulled it out, not recognizing the number.

“It’s Serge.” The man’s voice crackled in his ear.

Serge Rastelli was the regional head in Quebec City. That deep in the province, the family’s presence was minimal at best, limited mostly to gambling revenue and predatory lending. It served as an outpost, primarily to keep other factions out of Atlantic Canada—the farthest one could get from the family without leaving it.

“Were you sending someone to help Larrivée?”

Mathias frowned. “I did. Weeks ago.”

“He’s telling me no one showed. ”

Mathias braked hard, pulling over. The van behind him honked, swerving across the center line to pass. He hung up, tossed his phone onto the passenger seat, and yanked the car across two lanes of traffic to speed back in the other direction. He parked outside the apartment building and scaled the stairs to the third floor, already reaching for the small silver key.

It was empty, everything gone. Only when confronted by its blankness did Mathias realize how familiar the place had become. The way the sunlight streaked across the scuffed parquet floors. The towering stacks of books, more prominent than furniture. The herbs, grown in small pots along the kitchen windowsill—parsley, mint, coriander—thrown into everything Rayan made, a lingering reverence for a homeland as strange to him as this one. Now it could have been any apartment in the city, not a hint of Rayan remaining. Nothing left to prove he’d ever been here.

That afternoon, Mathias had been sure that the man—despite the embittered fall of his face, the stricken look in his eyes—would do as he always had and follow orders. But it seemed even for Rayan—constant, loyal to a fault—there was a point of no return. After years of blind obedience, he’d taken his fate into his own hands.

Mathias closed the door and walked back down the stairs. He felt a cracking, like a layer pulling away from his skin. Back in the car, his phone began to ring. He ignored it, spinning the wheel around in the direction he had come. He was going to be late.

Giovanni raised an eyebrow when Stefano led him into the parlor of his stately Cartierville home ten minutes past their appointed meeting time. Mathias took a seat across from him and was handed a cup of black coffee from a maid who appeared and disappeared in a blur of movement.

“Don’t tell me you’re slipping,” the boss said wryly.

“Apologies,” Mathias replied, offering no explanation. He placed the coffee down on the table between them, the smell turning his stomach. He wanted a drink. Needed a drink. Something to slow the spiral.

“We need to discuss Collections,” Giovanni began. “You know as well as I do Franco’s out of his league.”

Mathias knew the boss wanted him to take the reins, if only temporarily. The assumption rankled him. To spend his days managing the team that took care of the family’s dirty work was beneath him now. Tony might have garnered a great deal of satisfaction from that, but Mathias sure as hell didn’t.

All things being equal, Mathias knew who should have taken the division. Tony had said so himself—there wasn’t a better man to replace him. But things weren’t equal, and they certainly weren’t fair. That was why he’d sent Rayan away. The man’s injury was simply an excuse. There was plenty someone with his aptitude could do without setting foot outside the office. Tony had been proof of that.

The truth was he didn’t want Rayan in Montreal, where he would be caught up in family politics. The farther he was from Mathias, the safer they both would be. Cutting ties had been the only way. Rayan would never have agreed to it otherwise.

Yet at the same time, Mathias had been incapable of granting his freedom. He needed to know where he was, unable to accept the prospect of Rayan vanishing entirely from his life. So he’d made arrangements. He would be gone but not gone, safe but out of reach—of both Mathias and everyone else.

An image surfaced in his mind: his mother flitting by the window of their apartment when he was growing up, like a caged bird, staring down at the street in hopes of catching a glimpse of his father. Mathias’s stomach lurched again. He clenched his teeth in an effort to quell the nausea. Giovanni was still talking, but he heard nothing.

“Mathias.”

He snapped back to attention.

“You don’t look well,” the boss remarked, cocking his head curiously. “It’s been a trying few months. Perhaps you should take a couple days.”

“I’m fine,” he said shortly.

Giovanni studied him then smirked. “You’re human after all.” He rose from his chair, beckoning Stefano. “I’ll be in touch.”

Mathias watched as the boss left the room, smarting with humiliation yet unable to find the words to refute the man’s observation. His mind reeled, stuck in a loop he couldn’t break, smothering all reason. He had enough sense to gather the remainder of his composure and head home.

As Mathias drove, his phone began to ring again from the passenger seat. He glanced over at the screen then back to the road. It continued to ring, brazen, undeterred, the sound drilling into his skull. Seconds from him throwing it out of the moving car, the phone finally stopped ringing.

In the living room of his apartment, Mathias brought the bottle of scotch to his lips, barely registering how empty it had become. He was almost there. With a couple more slugs, he wouldn’t even remember who Rayan was. The thought conjured the man anew, and Mathias froze midswig. He pitched the bottle against the wall, and it shattered with a crash, achieving nothing. The anger had deserted him once again .

He closed his eyes to still the throbbing in his head. Leaning back into the couch, he willed himself to think of anything but his former second. But that was the problem. That was why he was drunk on the couch in the middle of the day—because he couldn’t. In his effort to exorcise Rayan from his life, Mathias had unknowingly broken something.

He picked up the book—the only evidence left of Rayan’s existence—from the coffee table and absently thumbed through. Something slid from the pages and dropped to the floor. He bent to retrieve it, flipping over the small white square to reveal a photo of Rayan and his brother with their mother.

He was young but unmistakable, the same brown eyes set in a round, innocent face. His smile was wide and buoyant, revealing a missing front tooth. Mathias had never seen the man smile like that, as though at a particular point in time, the expression had been taken from him. Life got hard enough, and a person started jettisoning the things that no longer served them. He would know.

Mathias flipped open the cover to the inscription.

My precious son, today is your birthday. Forty-one weeks, I waited, but Allah’s gifts cannot be rushed. Watching you grow makes my heart sore. It is hard to be small, but it will not always be so. I can already see the man you will become, noble and kind. Someone to be proud of.

The rest he couldn’t read, the foreign script sloping intricately across the page. Mathias stared at the woman in the photo. How tightly she held her two boys.

From the kitchen counter, his phone started up again, unrelenting, the caller incapable of taking a hint. Mathias stood, unsteady with booze, and stalked over to the offending object. He brought it to his ear.

“I have to hear from someone else you’re back in the city?” His mother’s voice lilted in that self-pitying tone he remembered so well. “Spend my days sitting here alone, hoping you’ll grace me with your presence?”

Mathias’s mouth curled into a scathing retort, but he stopped, an icy stab in his chest. Of course she was lonely. She’d always been lonely. That was another of the traits she’d passed down to him, mother to son, starting him early, too young to protest, a sharp, cavernous seed, pushed deep within, that made her cling to people and made him push them away.

“What do you want?” he snapped.

“That’s no way to speak to your mother.”

“Maybe if you were more of a mother…”

“All you’ve ever been is critical,” she accused him tearfully. “You think people are born knowing how to do this? You have no idea. Just wait until you have children. ”

Mathias laughed, a hard barking sound. To think he would subject someone else to an unwanted existence. Living it was more than enough. “Not in this lifetime.”

He heard the sharp intake of breath through the receiver. When she spoke next, her voice was wistful. “You’ll see. When you’re in love, everything changes.”

Mathias felt his lungs empty, a coldness enveloping him. He hung up abruptly, the phone dropping from his hand, and strode across the kitchen, making it to the sink in time to violently empty the contents of his stomach.

That doesn’t stop because you say it does.

Mathias retched again, gripping the edge of the counter as his vision blurred.