A Life Chosen (Montreal #1)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

R ayan pulled his truck into the parking lot behind the depot, careful not to clip the side mirror on the narrow entrance gate. He was three weeks into a month-long probation and didn’t want to lose his security deposit.

After taking the keys from the ignition, he headed toward the open warehouse door, shielding his eyes from the glare of the afternoon sun. The sunshine here was eternal. As a small port city, Larnaca stretched along the southern coast of the island, surrounded by a crystalline ocean that lured tourists from all across Europe. It was no wonder the Cypriots were so pleasant. Life was one never-ending holiday.

Rayan greeted Nikos at the dispatch desk and handed over his completed delivery sheet before moving through to the front office to clock out for the day. He’d found a strange calm in the physicality of the job, navigating his way around an unfamiliar city, hauling goods up and down stairs, in and out of buildings. Aside from a handful of stilted pleasantries, he spoke to no one. After work, he walked home to his small apartment, ate, and went to bed. If the day had been demanding enough—his muscles sore, back aching—sometimes he fell asleep before the thoughts descended.

Rayan had always feared being alone, and now that he was, it came with a biting clarity—the realization that he was, in fact, nothing. In a world full of people, he had no one. All this time, he’d thought otherwise but had simply been deluding himself, believing he meant something to a man who meant everything to him.

Rayan had come so close to having what he most wanted only to discover he’d never had a chance. And still, the feelings lingered, more painful than before, when his greatest hope had been a nod of acknowledgment, a word of praise. Now he’d tasted him, fallen asleep in his arms, and listened to the low murmur of his voice in the dark. It was no longer a quiet yearning but a raging, blistering clamor of loss.

In the office, his boss, Andreas, was leaning against the front desk, speaking loudly to the receptionist as she finalized the following day’s run sheets. He looked up when Rayan entered and fixed him with one of his high-beam grins. “Busy day, Ayari?”

He spoke in elaborately slow Greek. Rayan had been attempting to learn the language, and his boss, relieved, had taken it as a sign to stop speaking to him in English altogether.

Rayan nodded, pulling out his time card and sliding it through the black punch clock mounted to the wall. With a smile, the young receptionist handed him the next day’s run from across the desk. He thanked her, folding it in half.

“You have a friend here to see you,” Andreas said, thumbing toward the front door, which led out to the street. “We asked him to come in, but he wanted to wait outside.”

Rayan gripped the paper in his hand, the room tilting beneath his feet. He’d been on the island barely a month. He didn’t have any friends.

Throwing on an easy smile, he told his boss he would see him tomorrow. At least, that was what he thought he said. His Greek was spotty at best, and his head was churning, making it hard to concentrate. Fighting a growing panic, Rayan stepped out of the office, blinking into the sun.

There he stood, a burning cigarette in hand, leaning against the guardrail on the other side of the street—with a clear view of all who moved in and out of the building. The man was dressed in gray chinos and a light-blue shirt. He wore a pair of sleek black sunglasses, his hair combed back. To a stranger passing on the street, he would have resembled any one of the wealthy Italian tourists who made their way across the channel on vacation.

There could be only one reason Mathias had tracked him down. Leaving had been a gamble as far as family protocol was concerned. If Rayan had been a made man, there would be repercussions. But he was an outsider, and the lines were not so clear. He’d never taken an oath and was never deemed worthy enough to hold a title. He’d assumed with his track record that he would simply be allowed to disappear. Mathias was done with him. Surely it was better that he was gone.

But none of that mattered now. He had gravely miscalculated. No one crossed Mathias—not even Rayan.

Fear hit him first then a rush of relief. For years, Rayan had held a morbid fascination with how it would happen. Working as he did, seeing so many men in their last moments, he’d always imagined when he would meet his. Why not today? The sun was out, the air pleasantly warm. No one to miss him when he was gone.

Rayan walked slowly toward him, closing the distance between them until they stood facing each other on the sidewalk. Mathias straightened up, flicked his cigarette to the ground, and crushed it beneath a polished brown loafer. He pulled off his sunglasses and folded them into his breast pocket.

Their eyes met. Rayan was an open book; he was done hiding. But Mathias was closed to him, his gaze hard and impassive.

“Walk with me.” It was a statement, not a question.

Rayan nodded. This was not the place. He wanted to be far from his work and the bustling streets filled with people. He would head to his apartment, a short distance from the office.

Inclining his head, Rayan gestured toward the main road. “This way.”

It was almost five, and groups of high school students were gathered around shop fronts in their uniforms, men in polos and slacks slipping out from offices on their way home to their families. They walked in silence, Mathias remaining several steps behind as Rayan navigated his way through the crowd of pedestrians.

Rounding a corner, Rayan pointed up at the balcony on the second floor of an old block of apartments. “I’m up there.”

Mathias said nothing as they passed through the front gate and inside to the stairs, his feet making even thumps as he followed Rayan up the two-flight climb. He could feel the hair on the back of his neck stand up. With every step, he readied himself for the cold muzzle of Mathias’s gun against his head, preparing for the split second of surprise before his brains splattered along the corridor. That was how Rayan would have done it—unexpected, from behind, so he wouldn’t have to see the man’s face.

They reached Rayan’s scuffed front door with green paint peeling around the apartment number. He pulled out his keys, let Mathias inside, and closed the door behind them. Mathias walked past him, his footsteps echoing around the sparsely furnished living room.

Besides the faded couch and a small table and chairs, Rayan hadn’t felt compelled to find anything to fill the space. What was the point when eventually, inevitably, he would once again have to start over.

His former capo circled the room, studying it, as though looking for something. Then he came to a stop and stared at Rayan standing by the door. “Should have known Mulroney would roll over on you,” Mathias said finally.

Rayan had gone to Deacon Mulroney, master forger, the family’s go-to contact for falsified documents and IDs. It had been simple enough to get an EU passport, dropping his surname in favor of his mother’s maiden name, giving Rayan access to an entire continent in which to disappear. He’d picked Cyprus on a whim, for the weather mostly, hoping to purge a lifetime of Canadian winters from his bones—drawn also to its isolation and its fractured history. The people here, like him, were not unaccustomed to hardship.

Everything he’d brought with him fit into a backpack. Despite the years that had passed, it was surprisingly easy to toss the rest, displacement a state so familiar it almost came as a reassurance. In his haste, his mind fogged with grief, he’d been unable to find his mother’s book. But he’d already lost so much of himself—what was one more thing? One more tether linking him to a painful past.

Rayan stood unmoving, trying to take in what had happened in such a short time. How often had he caught himself imagining that voice, that face, and now, Mathias was standing in his living room. Yet his presence brought with it a heavy finality.

“How’d you narrow it down to here?” Rayan asked.

“Interpol. Disappointingly corruptible.”

Family connections ran deep within law enforcement. Perhaps, in the back of his mind, Rayan had understood the futility of his efforts—planned it that way even, so Mathias could find him if he wanted. He had simply assumed he wouldn’t. Again, a miscalculation.

“I’m impressed, Rayan,” he said flatly. “Look how far you’ve made it from Quebec.”

Rayan swallowed, caught in Mathias’s unrelenting stare, unsure what to say. “I shouldn’t have left like that.” It slipped from his mouth, but as soon as the words were out, he knew how true they were. Rayan looked at him, searching for resonance, for understanding. “But since Junior, the shooting… everything felt wrong about that life.”

“Everything,” Mathias repeated with a clinical coldness.

Rayan blinked. The man stepped forward so quickly he didn’t see it coming, his fist bunching the fabric of Rayan’s shirt. “I am that life,” he hissed, eyes flashing.

Rayan’s heart thundered in his chest, a fear he thought he’d outrun staring him in the face. “When we first met, I thought you’d kill me,” he murmured. “Guess we’ve come full circle.”

A pained expression crossed Mathias’s face. “What?”

“Why else would you be here?”

Rayan saw the hurt intermingle with surprise before the curtain came back down. Mathias dropped his hand and pulled away.

“I know what you’re capable of,” Rayan said quietly. “Others have paid for less.”

“You have no idea what I’m capable of,” he snarled, advancing.

Rayan drew back .

“You think—” Mathias stopped, jaw clenched. “I’m here to clip you?”

Rayan’s eyebrows furrowed in confusion as a dark-red drop appeared beneath Mathias’s nose. “You’re bleeding.”

Mathias raised a hand to his face then looked down at the blood on his fingers.

Rayan took a towel from the kitchen and pressed it against the man’s nose to stem the flow. “Sit. Look up.”

Mathias sat down at the kitchen table, tilting his head back.

“You should lie down.”

Mathias lay on Rayan’s bed. The room was as shabby as the rest of the apartment, its decor from another era, a relic of the island’s heyday before the messy takeover that had led to its division.

Rayan returned with a glass of water and a pack of painkillers and set them down on the nightstand. He looked the same yet entirely different. Inaccessible, separate from Mathias. Seeing him at his work, Mathias had felt a childish sense of betrayal. How easily he’d moved on.

Mathias closed his eyes. Rayan’s scent was everywhere. After so long, it came as an assault, overwhelming him. His head throbbed, and he felt woozy.

He woke suddenly without realizing he’d fallen asleep. The room was dark, the door cracked open, allowing a sliver of light to cut through the room. Rayan appeared in the frame.

“Do you need anything?”

“No.”

The man sighed, pushed open the door, and sat down at the end of the bed. “You know, I’m not a stray dog. You don’t get to take me in then throw me back out again.”

“I’ll do what I want.”

“The fuck you will. I’m more to you than that.”

Mathias stopped short, silent.

“I know how hard you work not to feel things,” Rayan said softly. “It takes a lot to feel nothing at all.”

The ache was back, cracking open his skull.

“Talk to me,” Rayan murmured.

“About?”

“Anything. You, life before I met you.”

“Shall we braid each other’s hair while we’re at it?” he scoffed.

“Mathias, it’s only me.”

Mathias lay back on the pillow, the fight gone out of him. He stared at the ceiling—the cracks in the molding, the exposed lightbulb hanging like a hypnotist’s pendulum. “I was never meant to be here,” he said finally. “I’m a mistake my mother didn’t have the courage to correct.”

Rayan’s eyes softened. “She cares for you.”

“Tell me about that.” Mathias sat up, lips curling. “Since you’re so clearly an expert.”

Rayan stiffened, and Mathias felt a sharp spike in his chest, his mind conjuring the cruelest thing. He’d seen the file, read the coroner’s report. Mathias thought of the woman’s inscription, her smiling face in the photo. He remembered how Rayan had woken beside him, speaking her name.

A memory: Mathias had been a child of five or six, standing with his back pressed to the door, listening to his parents scream.

“I told you to get rid of it.”

“You thought things would change because you were stupid enough to get knocked up?”

His mother had gone silent then, as though the truth could not be contested.

“For what it’s worth,” Rayan said, eyes on him, unflinching, “I’m glad you’re here.”

Mathias’s gaze dropped to the man’s hand resting on the bed. That night, holding him down as Martin attended to the mess of his shoulder, he’d watched Rayan dig his nails into the table, leaving marks in the wood.

I’ve loved you for years.

The vise tightened, black spots crowding Mathias’s vision. “Get out,” he growled.

Rayan stood slowly, watching him for a moment before turning and leaving the room.

Rayan awoke on the couch to discover it was morning. He’d spent the night slipping in and out of a half sleep, the events of the previous day as surreal as any dream. He stood, ignoring the tired weight of his limbs, and saw that the door to the bedroom was open, the bed empty .

Regret surged through him. There was so much he still wanted to say. He’d barely touched the man, holding himself back… for what? He would never see him again.

The previous night, he’d watched as a piece of Mathias had caught on something, beginning to fray. To speak of his past like that and see him so conflicted, his own body turning against him…

Rayan grabbed his keys and sprinted out of the apartment. The air was slowly warming, the sky a foggy blue. He strode down the street to the main road, checking in both directions for any sign of him. He knew the chances of spotting him were almost nonexistent. If Mathias had left, he would be impossible to find by now.

But Rayan could not bring himself to return home. He continued, ducking into alleyways, down side streets. Finally, with his heart in his throat, he turned back. He cursed himself. He’d been given an unprecedented chance, and he had utterly blown it.

As he rounded the corner of his apartment building, Rayan saw an unmistakable figure crossing the street ahead. The sureness of his gait, the muscular outline of his body, the way he looked straight ahead as if daring the world to challenge him—he would have recognized Mathias anywhere.

He slowed when he caught sight of Rayan approaching. He held a cigarette in one hand, his wet hair slicked back, wearing a fresh change of clothes. No doubt, he’d returned to his hotel, oblivious to Rayan’s distress.

It dawned on him that this was what Mathias must have felt when Rayan had vanished without a word. But there’d been no flood of relief for him, who’d gone looking and had found nothing, the ache not abating, only intensifying. Rayan felt a barb of remorse. He’d put Mathias through that.

Rayan stopped before him. Not sure what to say, only wanting to keep him there, give himself time to think. “There’s a promenade by the ocean,” he offered hesitantly. “It’s not far from here.”

Mathias looked at him, bringing the cigarette to his lips and taking a long drag. He gave a shrug, and they fell into step, following the curve of the road as it turned toward the sea. After several blocks, they crossed onto a narrow walkway that stretched along the shorefront. It was cloudy and unseasonably cold, and the beach was practically deserted.

“Not sure why I moved to an island,” Rayan said offhandedly. “I can’t swim.”

His mother had been afraid of the water, his father unconcerned with whether he could or not. And they’d never spent holidays at the beach or weekends at the pool. Why bother ?

They walked in silence, the wind curling the smoke from Mathias’s cigarette above his head. Stopping at a small lookout, he flicked the waning butt down to the sand below. From the corner of his eye, Rayan watched as Mathias stared out at the waves, his face implacable. He had trouble believing this wasn’t all a daydream he was experiencing, with the real world clamoring just out of sight, trying to force its way in.

“Your father,” Mathias said after a moment. “He never came back for you?”

Rayan frowned, caught off guard. Shortly after his mother died, he’d been sure his father would find them. They’d had no one else. His refusal to do so had only made their abandonment complete.

“He didn’t want us. Courts can’t make you take kids you don’t want.” A flock of seagulls circled overhead and dropped one by one to the beach. “So many ways for parents to fuck up their children,” Rayan said with a shrug. “Mine left me for dead. Yours taught you about love by withholding it.”

Mathias knocked him backward, and he hit the metal railing. Rayan straightened up, refusing to look away. The man’s eyes were black with rage.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” he said.

Rayan had seen this look many times right before Mathias shattered a jaw, smashed a kneecap, or kicked a man until he pissed blood. The anger was a tool, a way to raze everything left in its wake.

“Doesn’t mean you don’t know how. Isn’t that why you’re here?” Rayan challenged.

Mathias turned and headed back down the walkway.

“Look at me!” Rayan knew if he let go now, he would lose the man for good.

Mathias stopped but didn’t turn.

“You wanted me gone. I left. But now you’re here. What does that mean?” Rayan asked.

“It means nothing.”

“The hell it does!” Rayan growled. “What happens when pushing me away doesn’t work anymore?”

Mathias swiveled to fix him with a deadened stare. “I can’t give you what you want,” he said in a low voice.

“And what’s that?” Rayan countered. “There’s nothing I want you haven’t given me already.”

“Orders?” Mathias sneered, eyes narrowing. “What happens now, with no one to tell you what to do? ”

“That’s what you think—I’m incapable of making my own decisions? I’m here, aren’t I? And you may have given the orders, but I was the one who followed them.”

Mathias stalked toward him, his mouth a hard line. “Don’t act like you wanted to do the things I made you do. Once you were in deep enough, you didn’t have a choice.”

“There was always a choice!” Rayan cried.

“Bullshit.”

“I chose you.”

Mathias blinked, his shoulders slackening.

“And I’d make the same choice every fucking time.” Rayan swallowed hard, his heart hammering in his throat. He stepped forward, ignoring the signs of reproach Mathias had been sending him since his arrival, moving as close to the man as he dared. “I’d choose you every time.”

Their eyes locked, and he was finally granted passage past Mathias’s defenses.

“When I saw you that day by the river—” Mathias’s voice tightened. “I couldn’t watch you die.” He pulled Rayan to him, their mouths meeting, everything else falling away.

There was a ferocity to it, as though their bodies weren’t privy to the shaky peace that had been hashed out along the waterfront. They confronted each other in bed like enemies, fighting for territory, for dominance. Rayan embraced the turmoil, a physical manifestation of the chaos that had plagued him for so long.

He knelt on his hands and knees, eyes veiled by a curtain of damp hair, legs trembling as Mathias thrust into him. The man wrapped a hand around his throat, tightening his grip, setting his skin on fire. The intensity of Rayan’s arousal scared him, the months apart having done nothing to quell the depth of his need.

He felt a sudden spasm and dropped the weight on his right arm, pain crackling like lightning from his shoulder to the tips of his fingers. Exhaling through his teeth, he pulled away and flopped onto his back on the bed. Mathias towered over him, naked and erect, both of them breathing hard, neither of them speaking.

Mathias brushed his fingers over the scar tissue, the dimple where the bullet had entered Rayan’s shoulder. His eyes were shuttered, preventing him from seeing inside.

Shame prickled across Rayan’s bare skin. “I don’t need your pity,” he said flatly .

Mathias snorted and, in one fluid motion, scooped Rayan’s legs over his shoulders. He leaned forward, capturing Rayan’s tongue in his mouth as he pushed his cock inside him. Rayan let out a groan, arching into the mounting pressure. His body, so used to mitigating bouts of searing pain, had forgotten how good it could feel.

Mathias wrapped his arms around him, his lips grazing Rayan’s ear. “I don’t do pity.”

Yet he was gentler than he would have been, his movements achingly slow, his face inches from Rayan’s. Their bodies, too, began to work things out, addressing old wounds and revealing a hidden tenderness that had been quashed again and again.

Rayan tried to recall the last time they were together—whether it had been quick and frenzied, as it so often was, or languid, one of those nights where booze stripped Mathias of his cloak of stone. He couldn’t remember. He also couldn’t bear the man’s eyes on him, missing nothing, leaving the very core of him exposed. Rayan turned his head away.

A hand cupped his chin, bringing him back. “Where are you going?”

But he no longer felt able to form words, the pleasure muddling his thoughts. Mathias here with him, inside him, scrambled everything.

“You can’t hide from me,” Mathias murmured.

Rayan met his gaze and saw in it the force that bound them. He twined his fingers through Mathias’s hair, pulling him close, kissing him. Mathias rose to his knees, his hand finding Rayan’s cock. They moved faster now, each thrust shuddering through him, making his toes curl. He felt himself slipping.

“Mathias—” he choked out.

Release slammed into him like a freight train. The edges of his vision went black. Rayan was barely aware of Mathias above him, the man’s body stiffening as he came with a low growl.

They collapsed onto the bed, chests heaving, limbs intertwined. It felt like days had passed since their reunion on the street that morning. They lay side by side atop the sheets without exchanging a word. There weren’t any left to say.