Page 35 of Velvet Betrayal (The Dark Prince of Boston #3)

Kieran

R uby was being watched. She was being cared for.

And I needed to see my brother.

Tristan’s so-called office at the harbor wasn’t an office at all.

It was a club, the kind that felt like an Irish wake crossed with a hedge fund’s afterparty.

The sort of place you only visited if you had a death wish—or a damn good reason.

I scanned the block twice, then jogged up the plank stairs.

Even now, no one with half a brain loitered here after dark.

He was waiting, as always, in the back booth. Nobody sat across from him unless they wanted to get ruined, so the seat was clear—a challenge as obvious as a loaded gun.

I slid in, set my hands on the battered wood, and said, “You wanted a face-to-face.”

He didn’t bother with a greeting. “I would rather be home, playing with my kids.”

His Guinness sat untouched, sweating like a trophy.

“Yeah, I know,” I said.

He grinned, all teeth, then buried it and leaned over the table like we were old friends. “You’re not crashing with her again, are you?”

I shrugged, giving him everything and nothing. “She’s still breathing. So, yes. Thanks for the help.”

He waved it off. “I’m not that interested in her. Do you want me to put someone on your daughter, too? I know she’s staying with Ruby’s ex.”

I swallowed. Of course Tristan knew everything. Didn’t mean I had to like it.

He let the silence hang, then kept going: “Didn’t even know you had a daughter until…well, new world every day, baby brother. What’s next? You gonna join the Y?”

I didn’t want to talk about Rosie with him. But if there was a target on her, I needed every ounce of protection—even if it came laced with arsenic.

“She doesn’t even know I’m her father,” I said. “So don’t get clever about custody.”

I should’ve played it cooler. Tristan didn’t miss a thing. He rocked back, weighing the sentence with that wet-glass gleam he’d had since we were kids—the one that said every word counted, every word went in the ledger.

“Smart,” he finally said. “But it’ll be harder on her if this—” he circled the air with a finger-gun, slow and deliberate “—goes the way it could.”

“Don’t.”

Tristan’s lip curled, just enough to invite me to lash out. Classic move. But I kept both hands flat on the table, steady.

“She’s a child,” I said. By which I meant: She’s mine, and if you so much as run a background check on the wrong day, I’ll burn every shithole you ever made deals in.

Tristan nodded, once, like a judge passing sentence. “I’ll keep my hands off. No promises about everybody else, but family’s the line. Which is the reason I wanted to talk to you. I haven’t found anything else about the contract on Ruby, but I’m almost certain it’s someone in the city.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone who isn’t in our business, Kieran. Someone legit.”

He let it ride. Watched me bite down on the urge to guess. Whatever citywide nervous system Tristan had built into his bones, he trusted it more than he trusted me.

“There’s a cutout, sure. But the order didn’t come from the feds or the regular scuz. It reads like a cop, or a judge, or one of your fine DA acquaintances—someone who wants her gone, but not so gone it boomerangs on their own career. You follow?”

I took a pull off his Guinness, steadying the tremor in my hands on the cold glass. “You’re saying it’s blue.”

“Could be blue. Could be black-robe. Could be someone in her own food chain. Point is, it’s not amateur hour. Whoever greenlit this knows the city, and they know how to move a body so it disappears on four levels at once.”

His tone was casual, but the way his nail gouged the table—slow, circular, relentless—was not.

“I need names,” I said.

“Yeah, we all do. But your friend Alek is running the next steps on the legal side. Let him do it. Us, we got a different job: keep her alive until this shakes out.”

I nodded, the threat marrow-deep, and traced the soundtrack of creaking glassware and men’s laughter—fake, staged, as if performed for a jury—in the rooms upstream from us.

“About Alek. There’s something we need to talk about.”

Tristan raised his eyebrows.

“Sure,” he said. “Let’s.”

“He advised Ruby to go public with Russell’s death and her divorce. She’s going to do it.”

It was like watching a chess player announce checkmate when the rest of us couldn’t see the board.

Tristan swirled the last quarter-inch of Guinness, then set it down hard enough I half-expected it to shatter. “Not the worst move,” he said after a beat, grudgingly. “But it’s about as safe as smoking at a gas station.”

“She wants to control the story.” I didn’t bother hiding my admiration. “She’s good at it. Said she has a sympathetic journalist at the Herald who reported on Russell’s original arrest and won’t look kindly on him being used by the DOJ.”

“She’s not the only one who reads the Herald. You go loud, you can’t pull back. Every cop, every creditor, every old man counting on your silence—they’ll all see a dead girl walking. If not literally, then at least her political career.”

I waited. Tristan liked to give you the worst-case, then circle back with weaponized optimism. Family trait. Or just a tactic.

He laced his fingers, bone-white under the bar’s dead light. “If she’s going to do this—if she’s really going to play the card—what’s your angle, Kieran?”

I didn’t know. Not for sure. I wanted to believe I could thread the needle—keep her breathing, keep the family from going under, keep Rosie’s world from cracking in half.

But every version of the next few days ended in a red wash.

“I want her to win,” I said.

Tristan huffed through his nose. “Not the answer I expected. You love her.”

I finished the Guinness. “Didn’t say I wanted it for me.”

He looked at me, eyes narrowed.. “You ever consider what happens if she does make it through? What it means for us? For the family?”

He meant: for me. For the brother who’d broken every rule, who never gave a damn about legacy but still wound up holding the pieces no one else wanted. If Ruby made it—if she fought her way out, kept her kid safe, and stayed above water—that meant there was still a way through.

For her.

For me.

For all of us.

One that didn’t end in a funeral or a choice I’d spend the rest of my life trying to undo.

“It’s not about the family,” I said, but the lie twisted in my mouth. “I just don’t want Ruby or Rosie buried by the same bullshit that buried Dad. Ruby’s too smart for that.”

Tristan leaned in. “You don’t really think the city’s ever going to let them go, do you?

It’s like traffic along the Charles: every time you think you’re free, you get funneled back into some unforgiving bottleneck.

That’s how this works. Every safe exit is already mapped, by someone you’ll never see coming. ”

I grinned, even though I didn’t feel it. “Good thing you raised me to take the ramps at speed.”

He barked a laugh—just one, sharp and ugly. “Don’t get yourself killed, Kieran.” All the pretense dropped, and for a second, he was the big brother again, nineteen and hungover. “I need you. All of us do.”

“So you’re not going to try to get me to talk her out of it?”

“Would you be able to?”

I shook my head. “No. Of course not.”

He nodded. “Then you back her. You clean up the mess. That’s the job. If you want me to run interference, I will. But don’t lie to me, Kieran. Not about her. Not about Rosie. Not again.”

“Okay.”

He leaned in, voice even. “She’s going to need more than a DA badge when this is over. You know that, right?”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“She’s a threat now. That makes her valuable. To us. To anyone watching. If she survives this, she won’t just walk away clean—she’ll have leverage. And if she’s smart, she’ll use it.”

“To do what?”

“Climb,” he said. “AG. Maybe something bigger. Once she’s in, she’s in. She keeps going, builds the profile, builds protection. Makes herself too public to hit, too useful to push out.”

I stared at him. “I can’t imagine she’ll let you use her. Ruby doesn’t play games.”

“She’s playing one now,” he said. “You think any of this is real life? It’s all stagecraft. She’s already got the story. All she has to do is let us direct the next act.”

“She’d never let you.”

“She won’t have a choice if she wants to keep you safe. ” He smiled, faint and razor-edged. “Don’t worry. We’ll make it look like it was her idea.”

Tristan looked up then, just in time for me to hear footsteps behind us. “You’re late,” Tristan said.

I glanced back to find Liam coming in, hair slicked back, his expensive coat sporting just a touch of blood on the cuff that he didn’t bother hiding. “Traffic,” he said. “You know how it is.”

“Yeah,” I sighed. “We were just talking about that.”

He grinned, sliding into the booth beside me. “Hey, brother. Tristan said I should join.”

“Great,” I muttered. “A family reunion. Just what I needed.”

“If Ruby is going to go public with this, Liam needs to know about it. You don’t happen to have a picture of this Mickey Russell guy, do you?”

I shook my head. “Well, no, but I can give you his mugshot.”

I thumbed through my phone, dug up an old article about his arrest, and spun it across the table.

Liam caught the phone just short of his beer, thumbed once, and looked at the picture for a second. “Wait,” he said, turning to Tristan. “Why are you showing me this?”

“Because apparently, this man was employed by us. I don’t remember him. Kieran doesn’t remember him. Do you?”

Liam stared harder, knuckles blanching to white on the edge of my phone.

A hesitation spread in his jaw, some circuit stuck between memory and denial.

“Maybe?” he said. “Looks like a guy who ran pickups for Southie for a bit. Used to work with Yarrow’s crew.

Quiet. Got the shit punched out of him in a garage, then vanished. ”

“Think hard. You brought him in,” Tristan said, voice steady.

Liam stared at the mugshot. “Fuck.”

“You remember him?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He didn’t even try to spin it. “He came in through me.”

Tristan didn’t speak, which was somehow worse than shouting.

Liam looked up, jaw flexing. “It was a year back or so. He didn’t have any heat on him then—clean on paper. Southie needed a driver, I needed warm bodies. I slotted him in.”

“You didn’t check him?” I asked, voice low.

“I did,” Liam snapped. “But not enough. We were stretched thin, and I was trying to prove I could handle it without you two breathing down my neck.”

I sat back, hands clenched. “So you fucked up.”

Liam didn’t blink. “Yeah. I fucked up.”

“And now Ruby’s paying for it.”

He flinched like I’d slapped him.

Tristan’s voice, when it came, was clinical. “He was in her house. That close. And you brought him in.”

“I didn’t know he was going to hurt her.”

“You didn’t know anything, Liam,” I snapped, standing up, looming over him. He didn’t back down. “That’s the problem.”

Liam met my gaze. “I trusted him.”

“That’s worse,” I said. “You trusted him and he almost killed my daughter’s mother. Don’t you fucking get that? I should break your fucking nose right here and now.”

Liam went quiet.

“You gave a man with a sealed domestic violence conviction keys to the damn pipeline,” I said. “He scouted Ruby from inside our own operations, and you fucking let him.”

“Kieran, I—”

My fist was in his face before I could think it through.

I hit him once, hard enough to send a wet splatter of blood across the table and halfway up Tristan’s sleeve. Liam didn’t raise a hand to block. He just took it, head snapping sideways, eyes closing for a heartbeat before he straightened, wiped the blood, and stared at me, silent.

Nobody at the bar moved. They all knew better.

Tristan didn’t interfere. He waited for the violence to land, then pulled his own handkerchief from the inside of his jacket, slow and ceremonial, as if even this had to be on the record. He tossed it to Liam, then fixed me with a gaze cold enough to slow my pulse.

“You got your shot,” Tristan said. “But if you do it again, I’ll knock out your teeth myself. He’s family. And we don’t change family.”

“I’ll fix this,” Liam murmured.

“You’re right,” Tristan said. “You’re going to fix it. Get every name tied to that hire—Yarrow’s people, your backups, anyone who signed off on Russell or his fake paperwork. I want a full chain. And if it leads where I think it does, we’re going to need bodies.”

Liam stood slowly, like the weight had finally landed. “I’ll get it done.”

He looked at me, then, regret written all over his face.

“I didn’t mean for her to get hurt,” he said.

“Intent doesn’t matter,” I replied. “Ruby doesn’t need your guilt. She just needs to stay alive. She’s Rosie’s mother, Liam.”

“Well, I didn’t fucking know that,” Liam said, reaching up to delicately stem the blood in his nose.

Tristan glared at me. “He’s right. You could’ve just told us.

But Kieran is also right, Liam. This is more than just a little fuck up; you not only let in a violent criminal, but a DOJ plant.

You’re going to need to go through every single fucking hire you’ve made lately.

Again. Make sure they’re not using aliases.

Kieran, you’re on Ruby. Convince her. Get Ivanov on your side. Both of you, get to work.”

“You have a mean right hook,” Liam said.

“Do you want more?” I snapped. “Because I don’t want to see you right now.”

“Liam. Shut up,” Tristan said, already tired. “Go.”

Liam raised both hands like it was all a joke, then slid off the booth. “Fine. Message received.”

He didn’t look back as he left—just disappeared down the same hall he came in through, coat brushing the corner of the bar, footsteps soundless on tile.

The room felt colder after.

None of us spoke.

Tristan went back to his drink. I watched the door Liam had gone through, waiting for the echo of him to fade.

I used to know where the danger was. Lately, it felt like it lived at our own table.

And it was closing in fast.