Page 31 of Velvet Betrayal (The Dark Prince of Boston #3)

Ruby

I wasn’t supposed to be here this early.

Most people trickled into City Hall late in the sleepy few weeks after Christmas—half-days, long lunches, inbox cleanup.

But I needed the quiet. The air was sharp with bleach and salt, the kind of cold that crept through your coat.

Safe and not safe, both at once. I dressed for the possibility of running: sneakers, hair up, a suit jacket I could ditch in five seconds if I needed to disappear into a crowd.

There wasn’t much of a crowd, which was the point. Less noise, fewer shadows.

Security didn’t even blink at my face. They were looking for the badge, the official shield clipped to my lapel, the word “Commonwealth” stamped around my name like a warning.

“Good morning, ma’am.”

“Good morning, Amanda,” I said. “How was Christmas? How’s the baby?”

She grinned, face softening in a way that made me feel both ancient and jealous. “Good! We did that pancake Santa thing you told me about? She ate, like, three. Syrup everywhere. My wife saw the pictures and said I was taking baking advice from the DA.”

I smiled, grateful for the camouflage. “Just don’t let her near bourbon-pecan pie until she’s at least ten. Trust me, teeth are expensive.”

Amanda barked a laugh, then swept the wand over my bag with the same care she used on old men who’d never seen a metal detector in their lives. She gave me a nod, and waved me through to the elevator.

I took the back route, through the maze of fire doors and maintenance corridors that used to belong to Old Boston and now belonged to electricians and, after hours, to ghosts.

My office was third floor, tucked behind a mural of Ginsberg in full city-council regalia, his painted eyes following every civil servant who dared to walk the north hallway.

Lights were already on. Alek’s coat was draped over the visitor’s chair, and a mug of tea steamed on my desk. He had his feet on the radiator, eyes closed, probably running tomorrow’s news cycle in his head. He hadn’t slept in years, powered entirely by stress and the myth of Russian stoicism.

He was my best friend, but still a little terrifying.

“Thought you’d go to the satellite office today,” he said.

“I don’t want to see anyone in uniform if I can help it. I’m still very annoyed at Kitsuragi.”

He grimaced. “But not at me?”

“Yes at you,” I said. “But you’re my best friend. And I’ve only ever been out drinking with Kitsuragi once.”

He opened one eye, the left, and gave a slow, sly smile. “You were never good at holding grudges.”

“That’s a lie. I’ve kept one going against the University of Chicago since ‘09.”

“‘The Great Hyde Park Incident,’” he intoned, like it was a line from a show about avenging angels and petty academic feuds.

“Yeah, well. My therapist says I should let more things go.” I slumped into the desk chair behind my piles of files. Still warm. Alek must have sat here first, rearranged the room to make it look untouched. The gesture was so transparently protective that, for a second, I wanted to cry.

“You’re not still mad that I...well, I can’t even list everything. Are you?”

“No,” I said. “I get it. You’re not mad I left with him, are you?”

“Am I mad that he kidnapped you?” He pulled a face, then made a noise so exasperated and dramatic I had to laugh. “Yes, I’m furious. But also: you’re alive. So, mathematically, I’m net zero on the emotions. Would you have gone if he’d just talked to you about it?”

I stared at my coffee, watching the swirl of almond milk and gray light.

“Probably. If it kept Rosie safer, yes. If it kept the headlines quiet, doubly yes. But mostly it wouldn’t have mattered.

He would have found a way to destroy himself for my sake, even if I told him to stay away.

So. Here we are.” I met his eyes. “You’re not mad I slept with him again, are you? ”

Alek considered, then shrugged. “It’s your body, Ruby. I mean, I wish you wouldn’t. For your own sake. But you already have a child with him. So, I don’t know. Try not to have another one?”

I made a face. “How generationally Russian of you.”

He snorted, and for a second we both laughed, the tension breaking. He pushed a box of tissues toward me, and I didn’t bother to ask if he thought I’d need them for my nose or my feelings. “What do you know about Russians?”

“Only that you’re all fucking pains in my ass,” I said.

“Yeah, that sounds right.”

Then, for a while, we just let the morning breathe—quiet, broken by little clicks and sighs as we settled into the kind of misery only survivors and prosecutors understand.

I paged through the open case files on my desk, comforted by their heft, the way nothing inside could surprise or hurt me.

The top folder was the grand jury investigation into the Callahan family—my family, in the courts’ perverse sense of genealogy, and according to fucking Tristan Callahan himself.

"Did you know," Alek said, not looking up, "that the probability of an organized crime witness making it to trial in Boston has dropped forty percent since 2009?"

"I didn't know the number," I said.

"It's a bad number," he said, closing the folder. "You always think they're going to stop before it reaches you."

“You still want me to do the ceremony tomorrow?” I asked. “We could postpone, say it’s for weather or something, maybe relocate inside—”

“If there’s a bounty on you, and there’s a decentralized app of kills-for-hire, and you’re being protected by your baby daddy’s brother, I don’t see how visibility could be a bad thing.

Kieran can think about this app shit, but I’m more interested in the DOJ—and the more publicity you have and the sooner you’re sworn in, the more insulated you are from that shit. You should do it.”

“You sound certain.”

“You keep throwing variables my way,” he said. “My most challenging project.”

“Ew.”

“I get to make fun of you. At least give me that.”

“Fine,” I said. “So what do you think I should do?”

“I think you need to call a friendly but reputable reporter. Erica Fields, Herald, maybe? Make sure she has a tip ready for the press conference after the ceremony tomorrow.” He hummed.

“You put her on the story, embargo it until after the conference, then pretend you don’t know how it leaked.

Turn the city’s tabloid appetite to your advantage.

” He smiled, tight and cold. “Makes you look less like the target and more like the tip of the spear.”

“I hate the media,” I said. I didn’t, not really, but I hated how they could murder nuance in a headline and how power was always the most convenient villain.

“You are the media,” he said. “Whether you like it or not. Stop ceding ground you don’t have to.”

“So then what?”

“So then go into the press conference. Tell them that Mickey Russell, a man who broke into your house, ended up dead. That you tried him years ago for almost murdering his wife. The public will immediately be on your side. Then drop the fact that the DOJ is investigating you because they had turned him into a CI working for the Callahan family. Pretend you’re not upset.

Pretend they’re just doing their due diligence.

Tell the media you back their investigation.

Tell them you didn’t call the police because you panicked and you didn’t want your daughter to find out. Announce your divorce.”

I blinked. “Oh, so just…just that?”

He nodded, like a full audit of my life—confession to scandal—was as routine as reading donor names at a fundraiser.

“Just that,” he said, but his jaw tightened like he was bracing for the spin.

“You’ll get the hardest questions out of the way at once.

If you look scared, it’s over. If you look like you give zero fucks, it’s catnip for the morning shows.

And whoever wants you dead…well, they have less reason to kill you if the secrets are already out. ”

“What about Kieran’s involvement? The fact that he killed Russell? That he defended me? The DOJ knows that Kieran and I are involved.”

He winced, like the memory of my testimony in Fitzgerald’s office was a hangover that never let up.

“Don’t lie, but don’t volunteer. If anyone asks if you’re romantically involved—if they use the word affair—say you’re not talking about your private life out of respect for the ongoing investigation.

The less you acknowledge, the less they can spin against you. ”

“But the DOJ will also go on the offensive. They’ll leak the info. Everyone will know. What about Mickey’s body in the Charles?”

“Let them gossip. Half the city only got out of Boston Latin because they could memorize dirt on the principal’s wife.

” He leaned in, dropping his voice. “If you want this to end well, or at least not in abject humiliation, you need to stay on the offensive. Nobody roots for the mobster’s girlfriend.

But everyone roots for the DA who won’t back down. ”

“You’re not answering my question,” I said. “Okay, so in this version of events, I shot Mickey Russell in self-defense. Then what? How does he get in the river?”

Alek studied me, then said quietly, “Don’t offer a story unless you’re cornered.

If the grand jury goes there, say you called your lawyer, and your lawyer advised you to limit comment for the safety of your daughter and yourself.

If you walked away and left the body, say you panicked and can’t remember.

If the world asks how Russell ended up in the Charles, blame the same people coming for your head now.

” He shrugged. “There are a thousand plausible hands to toss a corpse in this city. Let them spin their wheels. You know how to be quiet. Ruby, you’re a lawyer. Be a lawyer.”

He made it sound so simple. But nothing about this was simple. It was blood and legacy and love and wire-cutters and old, teeth-baring risk. It was every hour of every day, bracing for the next high-velocity ricochet.

I thought about the way Kieran’s hands had felt on my neck, the blue of his eyes when panic overtook the bravado.

I thought about how many times I’d watched him lie and never flinch, but this wasn’t a lie.

I knew exactly how the city would respond: with world-class indifference.

What the press called “complicated history” was just “plausible deniability” in better shoes.

“I’m going to get all my ducks in a row,” I said. “Then I’m going to get Rosie from Julian, tell him I’m announcing our divorce, and then, I don’t know. Have a divorce party?”

“Right. And then your press conference. Easy peasy, right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah…easy.”