Page 16 of Velvet Betrayal (The Dark Prince of Boston #3)

Kieran

I wasn’t na?ve enough to believe Tristan’s “no strings” line. Neither was Ruby.

Tristan didn’t deal in promises. He banked leverage—cold, quiet, patient—and waited until it stung.

And this? This whole fucking scene? It had been orchestrated. I’d thought I was pulling something clever, bringing Ruby and Rosie here like it was my idea. But he’d been ten steps ahead, leaving the door open just wide enough to make us think we’d chosen it. We hadn’t.

We’d walked straight into his hands.

It was worth it. Because they were safe. But that didn’t mean I liked the terms.

Ruby’s lip trembled. Barely. Her jaw set hard enough to crack a tooth, and I knew that look—knew how much it cost her to keep still. To keep quiet. To let Tristan speak over her like she was just a chess piece instead of the sharpest mind in the room.

If it had been just the three of us, she’d have cut him down with a look. But Rosie was watching. So Ruby blinked fast, pressed her tongue to her back molar, and didn’t break.

I wanted to touch her. Slide my hand across the table, link fingers, tell her without words that I was here. That I’d fix it. That she’d never have to beg for safety again—not while I was breathing.

But I didn’t move.

Because Tristan was watching. And every twitch, every glance, every heartbeat—he’d use it.

Ruby opened her mouth, closed it, then said—soft, careful—“Rosie, why don’t you go look at the fish tank?”

Rosie shrugged, wiped sugar on her shirt with the studied indifference of a bored second-grader, and wandered off.

She paused at the threshold, spun on her heel, and gave me a little salute—like she knew the next minutes were for the grown-ups and didn’t want to mess up the flow. It almost made me laugh.

God, I loved her.

Tristan nodded, approving. “She’s poised,” he said.

“She’s just a kid,” Ruby snapped, voice tight.

“She doesn’t need to understand the rules yet,” he said. “God knows mine don’t. But they will.”

Ruby’s expression tightened. “And that doesn’t scare you? That they’ll grow up and see what you are?”

He smiled—a wolf’s smile, predatory and sharp. “They already see me, Ruby. They don’t know the details yet, but they know I don’t flinch. They know I keep them safe. One day, when the world tries to tear them open, maybe they’ll understand the cost of that.”

His eyes slid back to me, then to Rosie. “Truth isn’t what scares me. It’s what saves us. Because the world’s going to make them choose who to believe—what they hear, or what they’ve lived. And if I’ve done my job, they’ll believe me.”

He took a sip of coffee, calm as anything. “Your daughter will know, too. Not all at once, but eventually. The headlines, the news feeds—they’ll reduce you to bullet points. But she won’t. She’ll know the woman who ran into fire for her. That’s what sticks.”

It hit me then—sudden, sickening: if Rosie ever learned the truth about me from someone else, through a headline or a courtroom whisper, not from me—there’d be no undoing it. No way to claw it back.

The thought made my stomach turn. I’d burn the city to the ground to keep her safe, but I couldn’t control what she’d believe once the world got to her first.

Tristan clasped his hands. “You said Darnell told you something in confidence. I’d like to know what it was.”

Ruby stared him down. “I don’t like this.”

He didn’t stop smiling. “You asked me to handle the Crew. I will. But I need to know what I’m walking into. That’s not control, sweetheart. That’s strategy.”

“She doesn’t owe you shit,” I said, but he ignored me.

She didn’t bother to lawyer herself out of it.

Maybe she was too tired, maybe she just didn’t care.

“She told me that Mickey Russell had infiltrated the Callahan operation. She said he was an informant who had important evidence for them and that, when he died, he didn’t show up to see the FBI agent that he was meeting every month. ”

“He wasn’t a CI for your office.”

Ruby shook her head. “He made a deal with the DOJ, not the DA. That’s why he was granted parole.”

Tristan let that hang, his only tell the tap of a ringed knuckle on wood. “And what does that have to do with you, Ruby?”

“Nothing, I don’t think. He broke into my house.”

“I took care of that,” I muttered.

“Nothing to do with Callahan business?” Tristan pressed.

We both looked at Ruby. Rosie was humming to the fish. Ruby was watching her.

“I don’t think so. He wanted to kill me because I went after him for murder.”

Tristan raised an eyebrow.

“I wouldn’t have if he hadn’t tried to kill his wife.”

Tristan smiled. So did I. “You’re good at your job,” I said.

Ruby laughed, flat. “Yeah, I’m being real good at it right now.”

“What was he supposed to give the feds?” Tristan asked.

“I don’t know,” Ruby said, and I could see how much that stung her.

“Shit,” I muttered.

It made a new kind of sense—why the job on Ruby had gone up so fast, why The Crew wasn’t just background noise anymore.

If someone had gone to Russell first—offered him money, leverage, protection—to take Ruby out, and he botched it?

Then someone else might’ve picked up where he left off. The job didn’t die with him.

Ruby stared into her mug like it might give her a name.

“But you took care of that,” Tristan said.

I nodded. “Because he came for her. I didn’t know there was anyone behind it. I thought it was personal.”

“It was,” Tristan said. “But it might not have been just personal. You kill a problem, someone else with the same motive steps in.”

Ruby looked up then—clear-eyed, focused. “Tell me what I’m missing. You know the pattern. If Russell was the first attempt and someone else picked up the job, who is the threat now?”

Tristan’s gaze flicked to Rosie, then back to Ruby, and something in him softened—just for a breath. “If it’s not my outfit, and not a rogue, then it’s someone bigger. A client who doesn’t trust syndicates. Someone with reach and no patience.”

He tapped the edge of his coffee cup. “If they’re using the Crew, they’re using it because they don’t want accountability. That’s not a rival. That’s a civilian.”

“A civilian with money,” I said. “And motive.”

Tristan nodded once. “That’s what makes it messy.”

Ruby absorbed it with a wince, her mind already turning over the angles. “So you think Russell wasn’t the end of it. He was the opening shot.”

“I think someone sent him,” Tristan said. “Someone without contacts of their own. And when that didn’t work, they went to The Crew.”

“Which means they’re not an operator,” I added. “They’re a client. Outsourcing the violence.”

Ruby’s eyes narrowed. “Then we’re looking for money, not muscle. Someone who wants me dead, but doesn’t have the reach to pull it off themselves.”

Tristan nodded. “Not a rival family. Not a fed. Someone close to the system, but not in it. A fixer. A lawyer. A firm. A judge’s campaign fund. Whatever it is, they’re not shooting their own gun. They’re renting someone else’s.”

Ruby stared at her hands, then at the strip of sunlight crawling across the floor.

I recognized that look. It was the same one she wore before a closing argument, the world shrunk to the edge of her skin.

“I don’t want to believe that,” she said. “But—”

She didn’t finish. Tristan grinned. “You don’t have to. Whatever you believe, that’s what will become the truth. The important thing is, you know enough to survive it. You’re not prey. Not anymore.”

Rosie came back from the fish tank, catching the last flicker of her mother’s composure. She squeezed into the booth next to me, tuned in to the mood, but all she said was, “Can I have another muffin?” I passed her the basket.

Tristan said nothing for a while. Rosie made an excited noise as a fish darted past and she went back to look at the tank, her nose pressed to the glass.

“The Crew will stand down,” he said. “That’s my promise. I’ll monitor the traffic for the next day or so, but you’re no longer a counterparty in anyone’s contract, Ruby. Not unless you make new enemies—which, I have to warn you, you’re quite adept at.”

“So what now?” Ruby asked.

Tristan’s answer was already locked and loaded. “Now? You go home. You take a week off. You visit—with Kieran, if possible—a cabin somewhere upstate. Unplug. When the noise dies, you’ll know if anyone’s still hunting.”

“And if they are?”

Tristan’s face was pure paternal instinct, even if the wiring underneath was all razor wire. “You call the number.”

“But you won’t have to,” I said. “Because I’ll be right here. Helping you. I promise.”

“Yes, I have no problem believing my little brother will keep you safe,” Tristan said, his gaze flicking between Ruby and Rosie. “He’s had some issues with communication, but he’s been doing a great job of that so far.”

Ruby pressed her lips together, silent.

Rosie came back from the fish tank and put on her best pout for Ruby. “Can we go to the playground after, Mami? It’s Saturday. I want to go outside.”

“Maybe later,” said Ruby.

“You should take her to Jamaica Pond,” Tristan offered, folding his napkin. Quiet this time of year. I’ll have it swept before you go.”

Ruby blinked. “Swept? It’s a public park and it’s below freezing. I can’t imagine this is sniper weather.”

“That’s the advantage, isn’t it? I’ll imagine it for you.” He smiled for Rosie, who wasn’t listening—she was busy running back and forth with a darting fish now—and then, with zero drama, he stood. “I have meetings. You know how to reach me.” He glanced at me. “Handle your business, Kieran.”

No handshake. No hug. Just a shadow vanishing toward the stairwell. We watched him go, three pairs of eyes tracking the same line of absence.

Rosie cocked her head. “I thought he was your brother, Key. He talks like your boss.”

“He’s both,” I said.

After a minute, when the plates were a ruin of crusts and cooling eggs, Ruby said, “We should go home now, right? That’s the plan?”

I nodded. “I’ll sweep the car. Tristan will have people trailing. It’s safer if you don’t change your routine too much.”

She looked like she wanted to argue, but just deflated, her hand coming to rest on Rosie’s hair, smoothing the wild tangle with surprising gentleness. For a second, Rosie puckered her lips to the side—the exact way Ruby did—and I felt a jolt of affection hard enough to almost knock me off center.

“I’m done with the adventure,” Rosie said. “Am I going to see Daddy tomorrow?”

Ruby swallowed. “Yes, love,” she said. “Just like you do every Sunday.”

I wanted to tell her I was her father. That she didn’t need to spend every Sunday with “daddy” because I was right here. That Julian had stolen my place in her life. But when I saw the look in Ruby’s eyes, I said nothing.

For a second, Ruby caught my gaze. And then she mouthed a quiet thank you.

And for that second, nothing else mattered.

But as she gathered her coat and got ready to leave, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was keeping them safe from The Crew, but I’d just handed them over to Tristan and the Callahan family.

And nobody got out of that untouched.