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

Ruby

W hen I woke up, it was dark.

Midnight in the Berkshires.

And I was still fucking kidnapped. But at least, for now, my daughter was safe. I just had to wonder how long that would last.

Rosie was asleep—out cold, little fist curled by her cheek, breathing slow and even. At least she was safe, for now. That was all I could ask for. But sleep wasn’t coming back for me, not with the questions gnawing at the inside of my skull. I needed to know what Kieran was planning.

The house was quiet, but the kitchen glowed too-bright, like a spotlight on the wrong side of midnight.

I stood in the hall for a second, just watching him.

Kieran looked like he belonged there—forearms tense, sleeves rolled, plating pasta like this was some weeknight date and not a hostage situation.

I sat at the counter, picking the seat that gave me a clear view of him and the front door.

He slid a bowl toward me, the fork tapping the edge like it meant something.

“I thought about waking you,” he said, voice rough, throat-scorched, like he hadn’t spoken in hours. “But you looked like you needed it. And it’s eight. Figured it was Rosie’s bedtime. I don’t know much about kids.”

His jaw tightened, then went still. I was waiting for the drop—for that moment he would give me shit again about keeping his daughter from him—but he didn’t say a word.

I twirled the pasta too hard, nerves making my grip too tight.

“She’ll be out for at least nine hours,” I said. “She’s a super sleeper.”

“That’s good,” Kieran said. “I added mushrooms. Hope that’s still on the approved list.”

The food was good, I had to admit—creamy, with a tang of something citrus lingering in the back of the mouth, the kind of thing you’d pay twenty-six dollars for in an Italian place with a single-word name. “Okay, I’ll bite,” I said, after a moment. “Why here?”

Kieran didn’t look up. “Because Tristan has the only off-grid fiber in the Berkshires, and I needed the option to work remote.”

Of course. “You mean so no one could trace us, or so no one could trace you ?”

He shrugged, then ripped off a piece of bread.

“Both. You want wine?” He gestured at the counter, where an unopened bottle of something expensive and Italian sat waiting with two glasses—not wine glasses, just thick-bottomed whiskey tumblers.

The glasses were right there in the cabinet, but Kieran just hadn’t bothered.

He was distracted. Or worried. Or both.

I poured anyway. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on, or are we just…eating carbs and waiting to die?”

“That one. The latter one.”

He looked at me full, then burst out laughing.

If you’d never loved a man like Kieran, it was hard to explain the sound, why it could press a finger to your heart and keep it still, how it echoed through every bad argument and every dumb soft moment you’d ever shared.

He had a mouth born for contempt but he used it, rarely, for real joy.

I took a defiant mouthful of wine and waited.

He let the laugh die. “Someone was trailing you. Someone that had nothing to do with the Callahans. Someone who wasn’t FBI. You’re already in trouble with my brother. Someone else has a hit out on you and on my daughter. I’m not letting anything happen to either of you.”

I hadn’t expected the phrase “my daughter” to detonate me from the inside—concussive, then hollow. I stared, forkful of pasta suspended under my nose. “Excuse me?”

He was busy building a moat of sauce around the bucatini, like this was a war game and not dinner. “I said, you and Rosie are targets. I don’t know who, yet.” He paused. “But I’m not letting my guard down.”

I said nothing at first, waiting to see if it was a mistake, if maybe under stress he’d let slip a pronoun he didn’t mean, but his eyes remained in orbit on me. So I fought back: “How do you know? Is this a vibes thing, or are we talking credible threat?”

He snorted, and for a second looked twenty-something again—the way he’d been when we first met. “You think I’d drag you up a mountain for a vibe?”

“Yes. A hundred percent.”

“There’s an app. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s an app. It’s called The Crew. Decentralized. Gets pawns to do things like keep eyes on targets. Eyes on people like you. I was following you and noticed someone doing the same.”

“You were following me? Again?”

“Yes,” he said. “So I keep you protected.”

He said it like a contract, like “protection” had ever meant anything simple between us. Like it hadn’t always been the word for cage, or threat, or every reason we’d ever blown up. The old anger welded to anxiety came up, familiar as breath.

I shoved my bowl forward, hard enough to slide it a third of the way across the counter. Kieran clocked it, and me, and adjusted—just that tiny shift in posture that meant he was already ten moves ahead. I hated that. Hated that he was right about me. Hated that he was right about the threat.

“Why not tell me?” I managed. “Why not just say ‘Hey, Ruby, someone’s out to kill you, let’s pack up and do a snowed-in holiday together?’”

His mouth twisted, and just for a second the calculating mask gave way to a strange, almost adolescent embarrassment.

“Would you have believed me?” He braced his arms on the counter, knuckles whitening.

“You’d have called someone, tried to run, and either pissed off Tristan or gotten yourself in more trouble.

You don’t hide well, Ruby. And…would you have come with me? Would you have wanted to?”

“That was my decision to make.”

“No. I keep both of you alive. That’s my decision to make. Not yours.”

“I can protect my daughter.”

“You’re only one person. Rubes, let me help.”

“So?” I said. “What’s the plan, then, oh Protector?”

Kieran’s eyes flicked up to mine. “We stay here. We eat, we sleep, we watch for signals. My guess: if they knew this place existed, we’d already have company. I want to figure out who before making a move.”

“And then?” I asked.

He shrugged, a wolf’s shrug, sharp and narrow. “And then I burn their entire fucking operation down. Clean and fast. You get your phone back. We go home.”

"But that's insane," I said, because that's what people said when their ex abducted them to the woods for their safety, which was, by now, almost a genre of true crime. "You didn't call the cops? Or, I don't know, me? You just—"

His fork punctuated the air, not at me but near. "You don't call the cops when your brother's got most of the department on his payroll, even now. And if I told you, you would have gone to your boss, gone through the official channels, and then you'd both be dead in a week."

That shut me up for a second, though I covered it with more wine.

Kieran must have caught the flicker of doubt. He dropped his gaze to his plate, shifting pasta to one side as if clearing away an intrusive thought. “You asked me for the plan,” he said, lower now. “It’s not pretty. But it’s the only one that works.”

I set my glass down and tried to rehearse what I might say next, but it all felt dumb and procedural. I could almost smell the courtroom polish on my own voice. “I have to know,” I said. “Was it really a hit? Or just some low-life tailing for Tristan?”

“This wasn’t a Callahan job.” He said it with the kind of authority that came from knowing exactly how and when a Callahan job got done. “And it wasn’t the Feds, either. Their kind of surveillance is careful. Doesn’t spook you, doesn’t risk a scene.”

“So I should be scared.”

“No,” he said, reaching out to touch my hand. “No. I’m right here.”

His touch stunned me. The hand that used to pick locks, reassemble semiautomatics in the dimmest closet, thumb cufflinks into place for donor galas, now lay heavy and plain and mortal on top of mine.

For a full second, I couldn't move. Every inch of me expected pain, or threat, or hunger disguised as care. But he was just there, warm and ordinary. His thumb grazed my knuckle, then withdrew, leaving behind the print of a promise he’d never said out loud.

I turned my palm face-up as if that would prove something to both of us. It was not trembling. “You know I don’t do idle, Kieran.”

“There isn’t idle. There’s only waiting.”

“What do you want from me?” I asked.

He let it hang. Didn’t reach for the easy lie. Just flattened his hand on the counter like he was trying to remember what touch felt like.

I knew it then; he didn’t want nothing. He wanted everything.

“I want you alive,” he said. “I want Rosie alive. I want you to go back to your courtrooms and your conference rooms and have a life. And I want…”

He set his fork down, rounded the island. I smelled him before I felt him: warm skin, salt, the worn cotton of his shirt—like the ghost of sweat and sun.

His arms slid around me, slow, sure, pulling me in until his breath was at my temple.

And I—oh, God—I wanted. Wanted so badly it burned.

I wanted to tear my clothes off and feel him.

I wanted to give in. Just for a minute, let myself stop fighting it and drown in this, in him, in the safety that suddenly tasted like hunger.

His hand fit at the small of my back, the pressure gentle but firm enough to remind me just who I belonged to.

I tried to breathe shallow, tried not to give him the weight of me—but my body had already decided.

My forehead found his chest, and heat bloomed where we touched.

I felt him through the thin barrier of fabric, solid, vital, alive.

I waited for the roughness, the demand. But all he gave me was stillness. His hand found my neck, thumb brushing below my ear, fingers sinking into my hair. My eyes closed. His blood beat steady beneath his ribs, and it was all I could do not to press closer, not to beg.

“I don’t want to fight anymore,” I whispered, surprised by the sound of my own voice, and how tired it seemed. “Just for a night.”

“You don’t have to fight me, Rubes. I want to make you feel good.”