Page 28 of Velvet Betrayal (The Dark Prince of Boston #3)

Ruby

S omehow, I had to get back to my life. Even if someone wanted me dead.

Kieran was out cold upstairs, sleeping off his concussion and the rest of it.

Getting him to stay in bed had been a full-contact sport, but eventually, he gave in.

I found my phone, thumbed through a dozen missed texts from Alek, then called the office line.

He picked up on the first ring. Not even a hello, just: “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, though I doubted I sounded convincing. “You in the office?”

“I’m always in the office. Where the hell were you last night?”

“Busy.” It was a lie, and he knew it.

“Do you need me to call the police?”

“No.” I hesitated. “We saw each other, Alek. You know I’m back in Boston now. I know he shouldn’t have taken me, but—he was trying to protect me.”

Alek’s voice went flat, the usual warmth stripped out. “He’s not protecting you, Ruby. That’s what they always say. Even when they say they mean it.” A pause, then: “Are you able to meet up with me somewhere? Alone?”

I snorted. “No offense, but you sound like you’re about to stage an intervention.”

He didn’t deny it. “Go to the courthouse. Don’t stop at your place. Don’t let him follow you, don’t let him come inside. I’ll meet you there. Just—please, Ruby.”

I let out a breath, rubbing at my eyes. “He won’t let me out of his sight. He got beat to hell yesterday, Alek. There’s, uh, there’s a contract out for me.”

Dead silence. For a second I thought maybe the call had dropped. Then, in a voice so calm it made my skin crawl: “You need to file that, Ruby. For real. You’re the district attorney. You need to file the threat.”

“Last time I tried to get the police to protect me, Mickey Russell almost killed me.”

A sigh. “I get it. I just—okay. I need to see you. I’m going to your place right now.”

“I’m not at my house.”

“You said you were in Boston.”

“I am. I’m at Kieran’s—”

“ What?! ,” he shouted, loud enough I had to hold the phone away.

Then, nothing, just both of us breathing for a long, ugly four seconds.

Finally: “Text me the address. I’ll meet you in front.”

I hesitated. “Alek, don’t do something—”

He cut me off. “Just text it.”

So I did.

Then I sat in Kieran’s kitchen and drank the last of his coffee, which tasted like burned dirt filtered through a gym sock, and tried not to imagine how Alek would handle any of this.

Upstairs, I could track the soft thumps of Kieran’s footsteps, the way the air shifted when he moved.

The memory of the man in the alley kept replaying, the look he’d given Kieran—something dark and intimate, like they’d been through this before.

Kieran had explained it to me once: after a real fight, you either wanted to kill the guy, fuck him, or never see him again. Sometimes all three.

The oven clock crawled forward. At exactly 9:27, Kieran came down, barefoot in sweatpants, a towel thrown over his shoulders like a cape.

His eye was black from where he’d been bleeding yesterday, his lip split.

He looked like a mess. He took one look at me, head cocked, and said, “Were you crying?”

I rolled my eyes. “Does it look like I was?”

He shrugged, honest as ever. “A little.” He poured himself a glass of orange juice and downed it in two gulps, the thin scar at his temple wrinkling with each swallow. “Don’t you worry about me, sweetheart,” he said. “I’m not easy to kill.”

I scowled at him. “I’m just…thinking.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“No,” I said, sharper than I meant. “But I need you to know Alek is coming over.”

He chewed the inside of his cheek, then: “You want me to go?”

“This is your house. I can’t ask you to go.”

He put the glass down with a click, lining it up just so. “But you want me to.”

I stared at the counter, palms flat to the stone. “I want him to see I’m fine, that’s all. Otherwise he’ll blow this up. You know how he is.”

“I do,” Kieran said. No hurt, just resignation. “I’ll keep it polite.”

“Thank you.”

We let the silence stretch, the way you only could with someone you’d already spent half a life sleeping next to, or fighting with, or both.

I sipped my coffee, watched the sky cycle through shades of dirty gray, tried not to notice the way Kieran’s presence filled the room.

But it was impossible. Even standing still, he had gravity.

I caught myself wondering how Alek would compare, both of them in the same space.

We barely spoke. Just sat there, side by side, until the bell rang.

Kieran tapped his phone. “Come in,” he said. “Door’s open.”

Alek’s shoes barely touched the threshold before he was inside, his anger expanding to fill every cubic inch of air. He took in the towel around Kieran’s neck, my hands white-knuckled on the counter, and skipped right past hello.

“Are you fucking kidding me with this?” Alek barked, the Russian in his Boston coming out strong. “You’re here, after what happened, and I’m supposed to—what, congratulate you for surviving the night?”

Kieran grinned. “Good morning, Ivanov.”

The only thing scarier than Kieran’s misplaced calm was Alek’s lack of it. I’d seen him win trials without raising his voice, browbeating senior partners with nothing but silence and the weight of his stare. But now, he looked at me like I was about to lie to a grand jury.

“Are you safe or not, Ruby?” Alek said, eyes fixed on me, refusing to even glance at Kieran.

“Yes,” I said. “For now.”

He didn’t buy it. “You think this keeps you safe?” He gestured at Kieran, but wouldn’t look at him. “This means you’re fucked.”

I shook my head. “You don’t get it. There’s someone else after me. Someone tried to kill me today. Why do you think Kieran looks like roadkill?”

Alek froze, recalibrating. “What the hell are you talking about?”

Kieran stepped in, voice steady. “Networking-based hit. Crowdsourced. She was the target. They sent a guy after her when she left City Hall.”

A beat of silence. Then: “Did you report—”

Kieran cut him off. “It was handled.”

Alek scanned the kitchen, clocked the blood on Kieran’s ear, the tremor in my hands, then stared out the window, knuckles pressed flat to the counter like it was holding up the whole city.

“So that’s why he…uh, kidnapped you?”

Kieran rolled his eyes. “I didn’t kidnap her. I just took her away for a weekend. Sure, I didn’t mention it first, but still.”

I shot him a look. “I can speak for myself, Kieran.”

He made a palms-up gesture, apology or challenge, hard to say. “By all means.”

Alek braced himself at the sink, which gave him a height advantage and something to hold onto. He still wouldn’t look at Kieran—tactical, but also kind of childish. The first time I met Alek, he’d given me the same look: someone auditing for truth among bad options.

“Ruby,” he said, softer now, “you know I’m with you no matter what, right?”

I nodded, ignoring the way Kieran’s jaw flexed.

Alek exhaled, then turned—really turned—to face Kieran. A show of control, or surrender. “If you want to keep her safe, Callahan, you’ll need more than fists and shadows. You need lawyers. Strategists. People who know how to wage war in daylight.”

Kieran raised a brow. “You offering to join the mob?”

“I’m offering options.” Alek’s voice sharpened. “I still represent her. But if this Crew thing’s what you say it is, the press conference tomorrow will be a bloodbath. I can’t spin it unless I know what we’re actually up against. And right now, I think you’re both holding back.”

“You think?” I said.

He ignored me. “I’m not asking for confessions. I’m asking for strategy. You want my help, I need to know who’s pulling the strings—and how high up they go.”

“What’s the plan, Ivanov?” Kieran said, all sarcasm gone.

“I don’t know,” Alek admitted. “Because I don’t think I have all the information.”

“You’re right,” I said. “Kieran only agreed to bring me back if I took his brother’s protection. I said yes. Then I went to work, because I needed the distraction. Then someone tried to kill me, Kieran stopped him, and got beat up. Now you’re caught up.”

“We also slept together a few times,” Kieran added. “Wait. Are you going to object? Is that irrelevant?”

Alek just stared at me.

Then he blinked.

Once. Twice. Then: “Jesus Christ, Ruby.” No heat behind it—just something like betrayal, or the cold snap of a realization you can’t take back. “You’re with the Callahans now?”

“I’m not with anyone,” I said. “I’m trying not to die. Tristan was my only option.”

“And you didn’t think I needed to know?” He shook his head, like he couldn’t believe he was still standing here. “I’ve been fielding press calls all week. Making statements. Holding the goddamn line. Meanwhile, you’re playing house with the one family that guarantees you look guilty.”

“It’s not like that.”

“It’s exactly like that.” He let out a slow breath, controlled, but barely.

“You think the Crew is your biggest threat? They’ll kill you, yeah.

But this? This could bury you.” He looked at Kieran.

“And you. You think because you took a few punches, you’re qualified to run point on her safety?

You’ve made her a target. You’ve made it worse. ”

Kieran didn’t reply, shrugging his shoulders. He was used to being told he’d made things worse.

“And what’s your brother planning?” Alek asked. “I deserve to know at least that.”

Kieran tossed a napkin in the bin, shrugging like he was bored. “Flooding the system. False exits, ghost runs, chaos in the chatter. Nobody risks a real move with all the noise. That’s the theory.”

Alek snorted, unimpressed. “You realize this isn’t a chessboard, right? You keep ramping up and all you’ll do is start a brush war that buries every Callahan and every elected official between here and the Cape. There are no safe moves. Just slower losses.”

That got Kieran’s attention. He looked at Alek, then at me, then back again. “Yeah. But we don’t have a choice, do we?”

Alek recalibrated, lips tight. He looked old, suddenly—like he’d spent the night running every nightmare scenario and hated all of them. “No,” he said. “But you can let me handle the public side.”

“Yeah,” I said, not sorry. “We will.”

The three of us just stood there, marooned by the honesty of it.

Kieran took the out and drifted down the hall, towel still at his throat, clearing dishes with a kind of brute efficiency.

It always amazed me how men who ran on violence could switch to housework, like scrubbing a kitchen could erase centuries of old instincts.

Alek stayed at the counter. I could tell he wanted to say something just to me—warn, or scold, or maybe just commiserate—but I was tired of being everyone’s emotional lint trap. As soon as Kieran’s hulking form moved out of sight, I let the mask slip, let Alek see how brittle I was.

“You love him, don’t you?” he said, voice quiet. Not judgmental. Just the question I’d been avoiding for weeks.

I opened my mouth to lie. To say no, or not like that, or it’s complicated. But the words wouldn’t come. What would’ve been the point? It was already written on my face, and Alek had known me too long to pretend otherwise.

I laughed once, sharp and hollow. “Does it matter?”

He didn’t look angry. He just looked tired. Something in his expression softened, the way your heart does when someone you care about walks into the fire you tried to pull them back from. “Oh, Ruby,” he murmured, stepping forward and wrapping me in a hug.

He didn’t smell like cologne or aftershave. He smelled like sweat and nerves and too many nights trying to keep the world from collapsing. But his arms were steady, and I let myself lean into him—just for a moment. Just long enough to admit it without saying it out loud.

He held me until my hands stopped shaking.

When he pulled back, his gaze was steady. “Please be careful,” he said. “If you need me to come get you, anywhere, anytime, I will.”

“I know,” I said.

“So what is this…app thing he’s talking about? Why haven’t we heard about it at the office?”

I hesitated, the question more dangerous than it sounded.

“The Crew—it’s some new thing, like Uber for killers.

Kieran said it’s invite-only. Most jobs don’t get filled—it’s all bots and decoys.

But if you pay enough and have the right tools, you can crowdsource a hit for less than it costs to lease a Lexus in Wellesley. ”

Alek’s eyes narrowed, then locked on mine. “Any evidence?”

“We took the first hitter’s phone. It was wiped—just the app, no contacts, no name. Burner from a gas station. Kieran probably still has it.”

Alek blinked. “The first hitter?”

I nodded, tight-lipped. “Mmhm…there have been two of them now, plus some sketchy guys who came looking for us in the mountains.”

Alek chewed on that for a second, blowing out a long breath.

“Get it to me,” Alek said. “Or at least send screenshots. If it’s real, I’ll have to cyber plant it with a task force. If someone’s running syndicate-level digital ops, even the feds will care.”

“Tristan Callahan thinks the person targeting me is inside law enforcement. Or government.”

That got Alek’s attention. Fast.

He set his jaw. “I’m going to ignore the part where you’re now taking intel from a Callahan and ask the obvious—based on what?”

Kieran, still stacking dishes in the next room, didn’t miss a beat. “Access. Timing. Pattern of escalation. Someone’s running jobs using insider infrastructure. This kind of hitlist doesn’t build itself.”

Alek absorbed that in silence, jaw working. “Of course it’s coming from the inside,” he snapped. “Where else do you buy that kind of access? The question is who. That’s my job now. He can be your shadow. You let me handle the rest.”

It was so simple—this division of labor and loyalty—that I almost nodded out of pure habit. I felt tired, suddenly, like my bones had been quietly siphoned out overnight, leaving just enough to keep moving forward. “Okay,” I said, not even sure who I was talking to. “Okay.”

Alek stared at me a second too long. “For the record,” he said, “I’m not okay with this. But if it keeps you alive, I’ll do whatever it takes. Rosie deserves to grow up with her mother.”

And as Alek left, I should’ve felt safer. We were circling the wagons, finally figuring this out…finally getting our shit together.

But it just felt like another crack had formed beneath us.

Someone was after me…and we were running out of time.