Page 29 of Velvet Betrayal (The Dark Prince of Boston #3)

Kieran

R uby didn’t move for a long time after Ivanov left—just stood in my kitchen, staring at the her coffee mug, like if she kept her eyes on it long enough, the next disaster might not materialize.

I watched her, waiting for the first sign she was ready to run or break something, but she just breathed, slow and careful.

“Does he always get under your skin like that?” I asked.

She shook her head, not looking at me. “I’ve never seen him that worried before.”

“So you two are…close,” I said, because I couldn’t help myself.

She shot me a look, sharp enough to cut. “Are you seriously trying to figure out if we’ve slept together right now?”

“Is it a bad time?” I asked, deadpan.

“We have not,” she said, flat. “It’s never been that kind of friendship. And he’s mostly into men, so.”

“But he does like women,” I pointed out. “And you’re gorgeous.”

She rolled her eyes. “I’m not thanking you for that. There’s just so much to unpack, I don’t even know where to start.”

“Try anyway,” I said, letting a smile break through. “He’s the only guy I’ve ever met who can out-logic my guilt. But I like annoying him, too.”

She huffed. “You like annoying everyone, Kieran. That’s your love language.”

“Aww, so you do feel my love.”

She ignored that, just twisted the mug between her palms. The grey clouds had been trying to decide between rain or snow all morning, and I guess they’d finally decided on an unhappy combination: sleet, scraping against the window.. “How bad is it going to get, Kieran? Really.”

I went honest, because there wasn’t anything else left.

“It’ll look like a lull, and then, in the next twenty-four hours, someone will make a move.

Tristan can stall the out-of-towners, up the price, confuse the platform for a while.

But it won’t end. You’re better at politics than street math, so…

just imagine the world’s worst primary: every psycho with a burner and a grudge gets a ballot. ”

She watched the clouds smudge out the skyline. “Great. Not terrifying at all.”

“You’re not alone,” I said. “Not ever.”

She snorted. “That’s less comforting than you think.” Then she looked up, eyeing the fixtures in my kitchen. “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah. Anything. I’ll try to answer.”

“Why did you buy this house?” she said, and I frowned, caught off guard.

She kept going. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a gorgeous place, and it must have cost a fortune.

A brownstone, here? But you had a good apartment.

You already owned property. As far as I know, you’ve never been in a serious relationship, or—sorry, tangent. I’m just curious.”

I knew the answer, but I’d never said it out loud.

Not to her, not even to myself when I signed the paperwork and the realtor slid the keys across the table at closing.

It would’ve been easy to say “tax shelter” or “investment,” or the story I sold everyone else: my father got drunk one Christmas and said no Callahan would ever own a house in Beacon Hill, so I went and bought one the second I could, for the spite value alone. Maybe he could see my house from hell.

But that was a lie, or only a sliver of the truth, and as she arched one skeptical eyebrow at me, I realized I wanted to give her the real answer.

“I bought it on a dare,” I said finally.

She made a face. I held up both hands, not even trying to smile.

“No, for real. The old owner was this eighty-year-old lady, died alone, no family. The place went to the state, then the auction. I went to look at a classic car parked in her garage, but I saw how the sun hit the kitchen, and I imagined—just for a second—that maybe someday I’d have more than a couch to crash on.

That, if some freak accident happened, I might wake up to something normal.

Family. Breakfast. Coffee. You know. It’s Sunday, raining outside, and I have two kids and a dog, and the dog brings me my slippers. Silly things.”

She stared at me, all the sharpness gone, and then her mouth ticked up, just a little, and it ruined me. “You bought a two-to-four-million-dollar brownstone because you wanted a kitchen with sunlight.”

“It’s a killer kitchen,” I said, sheepish.

She snort-laughed, shaking her head. “You are genuinely fucked up,” she said, but there was something soft in it, something that caught and lingered.

“Also, it was a little more than that.”

“A little more than four million? Jesus.”

“No, I mean…” And here, for once, I hesitated.

“You would’ve liked the owner. Sonia. She was a teacher, back in the fifties—one of the only women teaching at MIT then.

Her house was full of books, not even the smart ones, but detective stories and old anthologies and first editions with the covers taped five times over.

I just…thought it deserved better than to get gutted by some asshole developer.

” I shrugged. “Didn’t even change the walls. ”

She blinked, once, and I could see it hit her—the memory of a Beacon Hill kitchen, sunlight on tile, the ghosts of lives half-lived in a city that would bury you under a new money condo as soon as you look at them. “That’s actually really nice,” she said, like it hurt to admit it.

“Don’t tell my brother.”

“Your brother and I aren’t really on speaking terms.”

“Good. If you want my advice, keep it that way.”

“I don’t want your advice,” she shot back, but she was smiling now, just a little. She turned the mug in her hands, thinking. “Okay, last thing before I go get my daughter and pretend the world is normal: What do we do, now that it’s—what, out there?”

I stood up, close enough to touch her, but not making that move—yet.

. “We play defense,” I said. “And we don’t panic.

I’ll put a guy on you, one Rosie will actually like, and I’ll…

” My brain ran ahead, scanning for cracks.

“I’ll help Alek. If we know who’s running the Crew account, we can shut it down. ”

She let out a breath, slow. “And if you get killed in the process?”

There was still that smile, bruised but alive. “Then at least someone will have made some money off it.”

“That’s not funny,” she said, but her chin set.

“I’m a little funny.”

“Fine. But only if you let me do the ceremony. I need to be sworn in—publicly. In front of cameras, voters, the whole damn city. You said it yourself—the only way to survive this is to stay loud, stay visible, make them chase a harder target.”

I wanted to argue, but seeing her like that—vivid and stubborn and hellbent on being the last one standing—made it impossible. “Do the swearing-in,” I said. “But let me handle the route. And stay in public after. No detours. No lone-wolf shit.”

She exhaled. “Kieran, I know you’re trying to protect me. But you’re a Callahan, Malachy’s favorite from what I’ve read. If the public sees me with you—” She hesitated, just for a second. “It could look like I was never clean. Like the DA’s office is a front.”

“Aw, you think I was my dad’s favorite son? That’s sweet.”

“Kieran.”

I snorted. “It’s Boston. Nobody’s clean. And if people think you’re in bed with a Callahan—literally or politically—it’ll just make the Crew hesitate. They won’t know if they should shoot you or send flowers.”

She rolled her eyes but didn’t, pointedly, deny she was sleeping with one.

I pulled her in—not hard, just enough to anchor her—and felt the tremor running through her, small but steady.

“You can’t run,” I said. “Not from this, not from Boston. You got elected. You’re the DA until you decide otherwise. ”

She tucked her face into my chest, just long enough for me to catch the scent of my shampoo in her hair—the warm, salt-vanilla one she used when she was too tired to remember her own. When she looked up again, I saw the plan snap back into place behind her eyes like a loaded chamber.

“I’ll do the ceremony,” she said. “But you and your brother better have the city on blue lockdown. No leaks. No trigger-happy freelancers. If anyone comes near me—or Rosie—” her voice turned to ice, “I end you, Kieran. Not just you, but everything you love.”

“Okay,” I said, brushing her hair behind her shoulder. “I promise I’ll keep you safe.”

I kissed the top of her head as she braced against me, pulling a breath like she was gearing up for war. Her whole body shuddered.

“I’m so scared, Kieran,” she whispered. “All of this—and I’m so fucking scared.”

I held her, breathing with her, letting the shiver drain out. “Me too,” I said, and she laughed into my t-shirt, the kind of laugh that fell apart before it even got started.

“You are? You don’t seem scared.”

“That’s the trick,” I told her, threading my fingers together at her spine, keeping her anchored just long enough she might actually believe me. “I’m always scared. I just learned to wear it like armor. You want to know the only time it went away?”

She drew back, already guessing, shaking her head like she could shake herself out of it. “Don’t say it,” she groaned, but I was going to anyway, because that’s what you do for the person you almost lost: you make it real.

“We were working out together,” I said. “You know, after we started seeing each other? Our workouts kept overlapping, early in the morning. And you…you had that pink headband, and you said we were there to work out and you didn’t want anyone to find out about us, so you barely looked at me, but every time you ran by you’d screw up your face like you’d rather die than let your form get sloppy in front of me. You remember that?”

She rolled her eyes, but she smirked, just a little. “I remember you lifting twice as much as I did to show off, and then pulling something and blaming me.”

“That’s the moment,” I said, locking eyes with her. “All the noise—gone. No headlines, no family, no city, just you and me, and the certainty that I would rather tear every stitch in my body than let you think less of me.”

She shook her head, then let it rest against my chest again, this time at peace.

I knew she’d replay the conversation, turn it into something to armor herself with, but maybe, finally, it would stick.

Maybe there was a version of history we could both walk forward from, instead of dragging the old ones behind us.

“You should’ve stayed away from me,” she said, not moving at all.

“I know. I should’ve.”

But I didn’t. I wouldn’t—not now, not in this life or any other.

The morning ticked forward, the sky outside bruising deeper as winter pressed in.

She stood in my arms, not moving, not even shivering in the draft, just one pulse in her jaw letting me know she was alive and, for the moment, relieved that someone else was, too.

She tilted her head up to look at me. “How do you deal with being this scared all the time?”

I shook my head. “I don’t,” I said, and leaned in, kissing her.