A Life Betrayed (Montreal #2)

Chapter Ten

F rances watched as the young man shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and strode across the icy quad at the University of Toronto’s downtown campus. Rayan Nadeau. The admissions office had him registered as Rayan Ayari. She hadn’t found any record of that name in her subsequent searches, but the name Nadeau had brought up a plethora of information in the system that seemed to stop dead right around the time the man had turned eighteen.

She knew about the numerous group homes he’d cycled through and the foster family who’d backed out after Rayan refused to be separated from his brother. He had no living relatives except for an estranged father who’d been deemed negligent by the courts and stripped of his parental rights. She’d seen the photos that child protection services had taken of Rayan as a young boy, detailing his bruised face and lacerated neck, which had accompanied the petition for divorce filed by his mother. The divorce was never finalized—several years later, the woman had committed suicide in the apartment where she lived with her two sons. There was a clinical psychologist’s report prepared before the custody hearing for the boys, which described Rayan as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and dissociative tendencies. The assessment also noted he was hyperlexic and an autodidact, intelligent beyond his years. Then there was his criminal record, which detailed a handful of summary offenses committed in his teens and one auto theft conviction that was later dismissed before trial.

Frances followed Rayan with her eyes as he passed by where she stood outside the student union building and headed toward the gates on College Street. From the information the admissions office had sent through, he maintained a 4.0 average and had condensed a four-year degree into five semesters. But he was also the man who appeared in photos with key figures of the Montreal mafia. Now that she’d seen him in person, there was no denying it.

Her guess was that Mathias was using Rayan as a free agent and banking on his erasure from police records to fly under the radar and break into the Toronto crime circuit. Mathias had done something similar in Hamilton several years prior—a city with virtually no mob presence was turned into a hotbed of family activity almost overnight. Perhaps Rayan had never stopped working for Mathias but had simply been stationed elsewhere to establish a new market for the family’s expansion into Ontario, his appearance as a dedicated student nothing more than a ruse.

Frances waited several beats before stepping out. She kept her distance, staying a block behind Rayan as he continued down the street. She hadn’t been following him long when he stopped abruptly in the middle of the sidewalk and turned to her, his brown eyes narrowing.

“Mr. Nadeau.” As she approached, a flicker of recognition crossed his face. “I’d like to speak with you, if that’s all right.” She’d spoken in English, but he gave no indication that he’d heard her request. “Would you prefer Quebecois?” she asked, this time in French.

“I’d prefer if you kept walking,” he said quietly in English, stepping to one side to let her pass.

She didn’t move. “I believe we share a mutual acquaintance. Tell me, how do you know Mathias Beauvais?”

Rayan’s expression didn’t change. He stared at her with a blankness that disguised his obvious intelligence. “Sorry, I can’t help you.”

“Then maybe you can help me with something else,” she said, undaunted. “Nothing official, just a few quick questions. There’s a coffee shop around the corner. Why don’t we get out of the cold and have a chat?”

Rayan turned and continued walking, pulling the strap of his satchel higher up on his shoulder.

“Or I could come by one of your classes instead,” Frances called out to his retreating back. “Tomorrow morning’s lecture on divergent thinking sounds like a real barn burner. I don’t mind stopping by your apartment, too, if that’s easier. It’s a nice building. Summerhill’s a great neighborhood.”

Rayan stopped. When he looked at her, she could see that he knew he was cornered. “Fine,” he said in a voice devoid of polite sentiment. “Lead the way.”

They took a seat in the far corner of a nearby Second Cup, which was teeming with students tapping away at their laptops. Rayan sat across from her at the table, refusing to remove his jacket. He looked like he was seconds from bolting.

“Quite an interesting life you’ve had,” she said, cracking open the lid of her takeout cup and tipping in a packet of sugar. “Can’t seem to catch a break.” She blew across the lip in an effort to cool the molten liquid.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“There’s a pretty comprehensive record of you on file up until age eighteen, and then you just disappear. And I mean comprehensive—not a lot of government departments you didn’t touch. Want to tell me about that?”

“Why I slipped through the cracks, or what a shitty job child protection does looking after the kids in its care?”

“How you managed to disappear.”

Rayan gave her a cold smile. “Walk the streets any given night, and you’ll see how easy it is for a person to disappear.”

“Is that when you started working for the family?” She pulled a folder out of her bag and placed the photos she’d found of him with Mathias and with Antonio Giraldi at Russo’s funeral on the table. “Look familiar?”

Rayan’s eyes briefly skimmed the images before returning to her. “Seems you’ve already made up your mind, so why don’t you tell me why you’re here?”

“How rude of me,” she said, taking a card from her pocket and sliding it toward him. “I’m Inspector Frances Allen, with the RCMP Organized Crime Branch. We’re taking down your boss, Mathias Beauvais, and we’d very much like your cooperation.”

Rayan picked up the card and studied it carefully, his face giving nothing away.

“It’s a common tactic. I see it all the time,” she continued glibly. “Throwing a subordinate under the bus to escape conviction. Suddenly, everything was your idea. If I were you, I’d stay one step ahead and get your statement in first.”

“What makes you think I have anything to say?”

Frances took a sip of her coffee, biding her time. “Don’t you think it’s strange the cops never pursued your brother’s murder?” She saw Rayan’s eyes widen in surprise. “I mean, looking through the police report, it’s clear they could have done more.”

Rayan crumpled her card in his fist, and Frances suppressed a triumphant grin. It had been a shot in the dark, but she’d found it—the man’s exposed nerve.

“Didn’t that make you angry? Or maybe…” She paused deliberately. “You were relieved they didn’t look too closely into what happened.”

This time, Rayan wasn’t able to hide the horror from his face. “What?”

“In the next-of-kin section on the coroner’s report, you’re listed as missing. And sure enough, your records seem to drop off right around the same time. Awfully convenient, isn’t it? I wonder what else we’ll find when we start digging.”

Rayan shook his head wordlessly.

“It was lucky the police were able to identify him at all,” she remarked. “He was in rough shape when they found his body. Turns out one of the officers remembered taking a mug shot of a kid a couple months before. Had a rather unmistakable tattoo.” Frances reached into her folder and slid another photo toward Rayan.

The man stood bolt upright, knocking the table and sending her coffee splashing to the floor. His face had gone slack, his eyes fixed, unblinking, on the image between them. Then he grabbed his bag and pushed his way out of the café.

Several people at the other tables had turned to stare. Frances carefully returned the photos to her folder, which she slipped into her bag. Then she stood.

She stopped by the counter on her way out and pushed a twenty into the tip jar. “Sorry about the mess.”

Rayan stared down at the scribbles his brother had made on a grease-spotted napkin.

“Well?” Tahir pressed, beaming like it was a work of art. “Pretty fucking sick, right?”

They were in a booth at the back of Pizza Pizza, with a plate of old slices the owner sometimes set aside for them. If Tahir behaved and business was slow, he let them sit inside like customers and looked the other way as they shook a thick layer of parmesan over the greasy sheen of cold cheese and pepperoni.

“Where are you putting it?” Rayan asked, skeptical. The napkin depicted a crudely drawn snake, its mouth open wide to swallow its own tail.

“Right here,” Tahir said, raising a hand behind his ear and bringing it down along the right side of his neck. “It’s like creation and destruction in one.”

Rayan chewed on the remainder of his crust and gave a shrug. “I guess.”

“I already know who’s going to do it,” Tahir continued, taking back the napkin and folding it into his pocket. “Len has a friend who owns a parlor in the Plateau.”

Rayan felt a surge of irritation. “You have the money for that? They’re not cheap.”

“Let me worry about the money. I’ve got it covered,” his brother said blithely.

Rayan swallowed a bite of stale crust. If you’re not worried about money, why the fuck are we eating day-old pizza? “She wouldn’t have liked it,” he said. It was the first thought he’d had after Tahir had shown him the design.

His brother scowled. “It’s got nothing to do with her,” he snapped. “Christ, Rayan, you’re always going on about that shit.”

It was a common tension these days, with Tahir thinking they could slough off their history like an ill-fitting coat. Maybe he didn’t believe it so much as he wanted to.

When his brother went to the parlor the following day, Rayan tagged along anyway. He stood by the door while Tahir engaged in a heated argument with Len’s friend behind the counter. The tattooist agreed in the end, despite it being unclear what had been promised as payment. With how light-fingered Tahir had become with Bastien’s profits, Rayan figured the money was something his brother had no business giving away. The tattoo turned out misaligned, the snake’s head awkwardly grazing Tahir’s jaw—no doubt a token of the artist’s reluctance.

Later, as he watched his brother furiously inspecting the botched tattoo in a McDonald’s bathroom, Rayan had wondered if it wasn’t all some cosmic joke—the idea that creation itself could be destroyed by the corruption of a steady hand. Or perhaps Tahir had just been unlucky. Bad fortune had followed them around like a black cloud, ready at any moment to open up above their heads.

In the photo the cop had pushed across the table toward Rayan, Tahir’s face was unnaturally bloated, the skin split and discolored. Not much about his features was recognizable, but the ink remained, the snake curving around his throat, taunting, as though it had been an omen all along—destruction, ceaseless and circular, coming for his life from the very beginning. The image was etched into Rayan’s brain. As if it was not enough to have witnessed his brother’s last moments, now he’d seen the aftermath—his body abandoned to the elements, a shameful, undignified end.

Back at his apartment, Rayan pulled things out of the wardrobe and stuffed them into a duffel bag. He scoured the room, stacking textbooks and notebooks into piles and quickly realizing that they wouldn’t fit.

He looked down at months of work, poring over lofty concepts and theories, and gave a bitter laugh at his audacity. Stupid, to think he could finally be happy. The past two years had been the most content he could remember—possibly the most content he’d ever been. He felt a burning rage blistering in his throat. He had no choice but to extract himself once again, uproot the threads of belonging he’d tentatively cultivated and cast himself back into a world seemingly intent on his punishment.

Once, Rayan had assumed his natural state was a transitory one, but now the thought of leaving brought on a surge of outright refusal. Even as he shoved his life into a bag, his mind rose up to fight, pulling at his hands and challenging his resolve: No. Not again .

Rayan recalled the woman’s smug face and the shock of terror he’d felt when she’d spoken that name, the one he’d thought he’d shed like an unwanted skin. She was with the federal police, and if they’d found him, who knew what they already had on Mathias?

He froze, the panic solidifying into a cold lump of dread. Perhaps, by finding him, they had also found Mathias, connecting the two of them. Rayan had done it again—he’d become the weak link, the point of pressure they would exploit, leading to Mathias’s downfall.

He pulled a hat down over his ears, threw on as many layers as would fit beneath his jacket, and shoved whatever else he could into the duffel bag. Then he pocketed his keys, his phone, and what little cash he had on hand and slipped out into the darkening streets. If they knew where he lived, it was likely they were still following him. Fortunately, Rayan was no stranger to making himself invisible. He would spend the night weaving through the city until they lost his trail. Then he’d get on the first bus out of Toronto.

Rayan had thought that if he avoided Montreal, he would succeed in avoiding his old life. But it was coming for him either way. If he was going to be held accountable for the actions of his past, he wanted to be in the place where it had all begun. He would find somewhere to hole up and get word to Mathias.

As he trudged through the muddy snow, the freezing wind burning his cheeks, Rayan felt the churn of memories he’d long suppressed. Here he was once again, fated to keep reliving the same old nightmare.