Chapter Eighteen
“W hat does it mean?” Rayan flicked through the menu, preoccupied. “ Bougnoule? ”
Mathias looked up. “Someone said it again?”
Rayan nodded, and Mathias exhaled loudly. He had no interest in validating the ramblings of some small-town zealot. “It’s not worth wondering.”
He didn’t expect the flash of anger that crossed Rayan’s face. Rayan put down the menu. “I told Farhan his daughters would be safe here. Safe from some things but clearly not others.”
Mathias shrugged. “That’s true of everywhere. France, Canada—take your pick. The world’s got more than its share of bigots.” He closed his menu and signaled to one of the waitresses.
The restaurant was several blocks from the house, and they came here sometimes when they got tired of cooking.
Mathias suspected it was also because the place reminded Rayan of the restaurants in Montreal that offered classic country fare: pate Chinois , poutine, fèves au lard .
While they didn’t serve those dishes here, the hefty portions of meat, potatoes, and gravy had a similar affect.
It was still early, and the restaurant was not as crowded as it usually got during the dinner rush. Above the bar, a television played one of the mandatory weekend football matches on mute. It was hard to find a place in the city that didn’t make a point of broadcasting the game.
Mathias glanced over at the older man seated at the bar across from them, shoveling a plate of fries into his mouth and washing each mouthful down with a swig of draft beer. Calais certainly doesn’t lack for fine-dining establishments.
When the waitress arrived at their table, Rayan spoke carefully, consulting the menu as he ordered.
Mathias noted how the woman, young with curly brown hair, shifted to look at Rayan, tucking her hair behind her ear.
In an attempt to blend in, Rayan had begun eschewing certain Quebecois words in favor of the formal French equivalent—a futile pursuit, as it was clear as soon as he opened his mouth that he wasn’t from around here.
The locals seemed to find his dialect endearing, especially when the occasional Quebecois word slipped through.
Then there were the words that meant something different.
Rayan had been alarmed to discover that in France, gosse meant child and not—as in Quebec—a particular part of the male anatomy.
The food arrived quickly, and after the waitress had set down their plates, she lingered by the table, commenting on the weather and the local football team.
Mathias found her blatant flirting amusing, particularly because Rayan appeared oblivious, as he often was about these things.
She left the bill by Rayan’s elbow, and Mathias saw she’d scrawled her number along the bottom.
“Seems not everyone’s deterred,” Mathias remarked, picking up his knife and cutting into his meat.
Rayan eyed the phone number like a message in an alien language. He picked up his utensils and began carving into his chicken then stopped abruptly. “Tony once told me you kept me on as a fuck you to the establishment. Was that why—because my otherness was a tool?”
“It is a tool. When someone doesn’t know what to expect, it’s easy to throw them off.”
Rayan stared back at him, his expression guarded.
Mathias set down his knife. “Here’s the thing about belonging, Rayan.
It makes you complacent. You get used to believing you deserve things by the very fact that you showed up.
The men in the family were like that. I worked with soldiers who heard their orders through a thick layer of entitlement.
That wasn’t the case with you. That’s why I kept you on. You were more like me than they were.”
“You never told me that.”
Mathias returned to carving his beef. “That being said, I did enjoy ruffling a few feathers.”
Rayan cocked an eyebrow. “A few?”
Mathias smirked. “You and Tony sat around gossiping about me like a pair of old women?”
“Mathias,” Rayan said suddenly, his voice pitching. His eyes were fixed on the television behind the bar.
Mathias looked up to see the game had been interrupted by the hourly news bulletin.
On the screen were scenes of a city he could re-create with his eyes closed.
There was downtown Montreal, the camera panning to a group of armed police officers lined up along Saint Laurent Boulevard.
The following series of shots were of buildings cordoned off by yellow police tape.
Mathias strode over to the bar. “Turn on the sound,” he instructed sharply. The man behind the register picked up the remote and pointed it at the screen.
“Days of upheaval following the murder of Montreal mob boss Giovanni Bianchi. The city has descended into chaos, instances of infighting and retaliation occurring too frequently for police to intervene. It’s unsure whether the killings are related or premeditated, but the crime family has pledged to counter any threats to its power… ”
Mathias turned and wordlessly made his way out of the restaurant. He began walking down the street, unsure where he was heading.
“Hey.”
He felt a pull at his elbow, and Rayan was beside him, breathing fast. “Do you know what happened? Was it an inside job?”
Mathias came to a stop. He remembered Belkov’s ominous question: “What happens when the whole thing topples over?”
He was struck by an overwhelming urge to return to Montreal. He couldn’t put his finger on why—the logic kept slipping. Mathias had thought he’d shaken the family’s hold on him, but it remained, lurking silently in the background.
He continued toward the house, vaguely aware of Rayan following him. Perhaps a part of him still wanted it—the power, the respect. Knowing which rung on the food chain he occupied.
Mathias reached the front door and scaled the stairs to the bedroom. He heard the thump of Rayan’s footsteps behind him. He took a small case from the wardrobe and began throwing things inside.
Mathias attempted to piece a plan together.
There were glaring gaps—getting into the country, for one.
Early on, he’d made some inquiries and discovered there were ways around Inspector Allen’s bureaucratic blockade.
Remarkable what you could do with money and a decent counterfeit passport. Still, that would take time.
What he would do when he got there was another matter altogether. Belkov had alluded to the rumors that had circulated in Mathias’s absence, and Mathias wasn’t sure what influence he had left in the city. And then there was this: the life he’d made in Calais.
“It’s not your fight anymore,” Rayan said from the doorway.
Mathias whirled around. “And a hell of a lot of choice I had there! Giovanni made sure of that.”
Saying his name aloud sent Mathias’s thoughts spiraling. He didn’t know why news of the man’s death brought him no satisfaction. Instead, it stirred a feeling akin to grief.
“Is that why we couldn’t go back?” Rayan asked.
“It doesn’t matter now.”
Rayan stepped into the room. “Mathias, no good will come from you returning to Montreal.”
“You don’t fucking get it,” Mathias snarled. “My whole life, I was a burden no one wanted. But I was someone there—more than my name, more than my history.”
“The closest thing you had to a family.”
Mathias froze, his hand on the zipper of the suitcase. He knew then why he’d been compelled into action. He felt it still—the need to act when his family was threatened.
“But they pushed you out, remember?” Rayan said. “That’s not what a real family does.”
“A real family?” Mathias sneered. “And what exactly does that look like?”
Rayan stood before him, searching his face. “This.”
Mathias blinked. He recalled those paralyzing few weeks after they’d arrived in France.
He had found himself unable to leave the house, the mere act of lighting a cigarette sapping the strength from his bones.
He’d been felled by the past that had come to haunt him.
Because, despite all he’d fought for and grown and accomplished, the family had cast him aside, just as his father had done—that first cardinal rejection.
Mathias hadn’t realized the hurt ran so deep until it stopped him in his tracks.
Yet it hadn’t consumed him. Because for the first time in his life, he wasn’t alone. And moving forward was as much an obligation to Rayan as it was to himself.
“I don’t need you to prove that you’re better or more deserving. You don’t need to prove anything to me,” Rayan said, his voice tight. “You think because your parents didn’t want you that you’re not worthy?”
Mathias felt a jolt as Rayan brushed against an open sore he had no business touching. “Don’t—”
“Fuck them,” Rayan whispered. “You are. Not by surpassing your father or your brothers and not because of some rank or title. You’re worthy exactly as you are.”
Mathias stood mutely, unable to conjure a response. Here was someone who had chosen him and, despite Mathias’s best efforts to push him away, had stayed.
A look of resignation came over Rayan’s face. “But if it’s what you want, I won’t stop you.”
And Mathias knew he meant it. Rayan would watch him pack his bag and go back to Montreal if that was what he decided to do. That was what Mathias would be giving up if he left—the only person who truly gave a damn.
Mathias let his hands drop from the suitcase. His loyalty to the family, once a solid, irrefutable fact, withered in comparison. Having known something better, he could now see that what he’d held onto had been a hollow substitute.
Rayan woke in the middle of the night to find the bed beside him empty. Mathias had spent the evening holed up in the study, and Rayan thought it best to leave the man alone. He’d assumed Mathias was catching up on news of the developing situation, if only to better make sense of what had happened.
The images of Montreal on the television screen had been shocking.
They’d made the right choice getting out when they did.
He thought of having to watch those scenes from his apartment in Toronto, not knowing if Mathias was alive or dead and imagining the worst. Rayan had headed to bed on his own, figuring Mathias would eventually join him.
But by the look of the undisturbed covers, that hadn’t happened.
He got out of bed and threw on some clothes then made his way downstairs.
There was a light on in the kitchen, and he found Mathias sitting at the counter staring into a half-full glass of scotch.
Mathias wasn’t one to be kept awake by errant thoughts, yet here he was, up in the small hours of the night, drinking.
Since moving to France, Mathias had reached less frequently for his signature bottle of Macallan.
Rayan brought a hand to the base of Mathias’s neck, and the man leaned into his touch. He combed his fingers through Mathias’s hair, gently massaging his scalp. “What’s on your mind?”
Mathias let out a sigh. “By the end of it, I hated the old man’s guts. So I don’t know why…” He stopped, his forehead furrowing. He lifted his glass and downed the rest of his drink then placed it on the counter with a purposeful thud. “It’s the end of an era of greats—Russo, Tony, Giovanni—”
“You.”
Mathias turned to look at him. “I wouldn’t count myself among them.”
Rayan dropped his hand to Mathias’s shoulder. “I was there. You’d walk into a room, and the air would shift.”
Mathias shook his head with a small smile. It was true. The old guard had hated how much clout he’d had for someone who wasn’t full-blooded. Men on the ground, out in the streets, respected him. And it had always shown.
“You miss it,” Rayan said quietly.
Mathias frowned and looked away. “The higher I got, the more I realized how precarious it all was. Walking the wire, trying to anticipate from which direction someone would come at you.”
“Is that why Giovanni thought you were after his job?”
“The paranoia got to him.”
“Was it ever something you wanted?” Rayan asked, almost afraid of the answer. “Maybe not then but someday?”
Mathias was silent for a moment. “It might have been.”
Since their hurried exit from Montreal, Rayan had thought a lot about what might have happened if things had played out differently. Mathias had it in him to lead the family, but if he’d succeeded Giovanni, there was no version of that reality where he and Rayan could have occupied the same world.
“If you’d become boss, you never would have gotten out.”
Mathias held his gaze as though he, too, understood the full implication of that decision. Rayan stepped over to the cabinet above the sink and took down another glass. He picked up the bottle of scotch and poured some into both glasses then held his glass aloft.
“To the greats.”
Mathias raised his glass, and the two of them knocked back the liquor.
It rushed hot and searing down Rayan’s throat, and he resisted the urge to cough.
Mathias chuckled, giving him a knowing look.
Then he stood and pulled Rayan close. Rayan looped his arms around Mathias’s neck and breathed him in.
He was well aware of what Mathias had given up—was giving up—for him.
“Come to bed.” Rayan tilted his chin to kiss Mathias, the taste of scotch lingering on his lips.
In bed, Rayan let himself be lulled by the even sound of Mathias’s breathing as he drifted off to sleep.
Still, a wisp of fear remained. He’d told Mathias he wouldn’t stop him from going back, but that was a half-truth.
Rayan would do everything in his power to hold him in place like an anchor—tether the man to him so he wouldn’t be tempted to return to the darkness.