Page 7 of Velvet Betrayal (The Dark Prince of Boston #3)

He said nothing, letting the silence spill out between us. In the hush, I heard a scuffle at the stairs: Rosie's first few steps, her socked feet sliding careful along the treads. Kieran softened.

“You’re not wrong,” he said, but for the first time he looked unguarded, like the blueprint of his own plan didn’t quite match the reality of her voice, her existence, here.

“In a day. Two, tops. When I’m sure the trail is cold. Then you’ll go back to Boston and pretend none of this happened.”

“And when it all gets hot again?”

“I will take care of it,” he said, and then, softer, “I always have.”

I knew what that meant.

That he would kill for me…that the body count was just going to go up.

He collected himself, took both our mugs to the sink, and washed them in silence. Rosie padded into the kitchen, hair still wild, face open and unscarred by all this. She took in the sight of me in borrowed clothing and Kieran’s hands in the suds and grinned, pleased as a king in exile.

“Good morning!” she said. “I didn’t bring Carty. Can we go back for him?”

“Your bunny is waiting for us at home, mi amor,” I said. “I promise.”

“Can I have pancakes?” she asked next, all expectation.

Kieran smiled. “You can have anything you want.”

She beamed, and for a second I made the mistake of picturing what it would be like to stay. To eat pancakes together in a kitchen with a table big enough for three.

To pretend, instead of plot, a future for us.

I scrubbed at my own face with both hands, trying to get the fantasy out, before remembering how badly I needed coffee. Rosie scrambled onto a stool at the counter, kicking her feet, already at home.

“Can I help?” she said. Kieran nodded.

“You’re going to be my sous chef. That means, if I need a whisk or an egg, you get it for me, right?”

She solemnly nodded.

He set her up with a bowl and let her crack the eggs. She did so with horrifying abandon, managing to obliterate one, splash yolk all over her wrist, and laugh so hard at the carnage that Kieran had to join in.

I tried to imagine my case manager and my regular babysitter watching this—Rosie, covered in sugar and shell bits, her mother clutching a mug and watching while a known murderer helped measure flour like it was the most natural thing in the world.

After a while, Rosie got bored and wandered away to count the birds outside the window. Kieran, with sleeves rolled, kept at the pancakes.

His face changed around her; it softened, even now. I’d never seen him look anything but dangerous, or at least ready for it. But here he looked tired, a man at the end of a long emergency.

And…he looked happy. Like he belonged.

For a second, I thought I could maybe like him again…but then he caught me watching.

“Can you sprinkle chocolate chips?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said.

I poured a small pyramid into my palm, dropped them in trailing lines, unable to fake indifference.

Up close, Kieran’s hands were ridiculous—those bruiser’s fingers lumbering as he tried to pick out a few chips at a time, failing, letting them tumble out by the dozen.

When I offered to help, he hesitated, then let me guide his hand, our pinkies touching, then knotting, then pretending never to have touched at all.

He kept his eyes polite, never climbing above platonic, but every inch of him thrummed with the memory of the night before. With the memory of me. My skin remembered, too, raw at the waist from where he’d pulled me closer, from where I’d peeled myself away.

The pancakes were good. Rosie ate hers with a plastic fork, piling butter higher than the pancakes. As she worked through the stack, she carried on a running commentary about the birds out back, the weird icicles on the eaves, whether snow-shoveling was an actual job.

Kieran watched her, attention toggling between the pattern of syrup on her hands and the unbroken snowline outside.

In another universe, you could drop this scene in the middle of a wholesome sitcom and forget about the blood in their lineage.

But I’d seen the crime scene photos, even prosecuted some of the cases.

This peace, this domesticity…it was a lie.

I stacked plates as we finished, scraping the mess into the garbage disposal. Rosie drifted back to the living room, drawn by the promise of a TV remote and a blinding spectrum of cable cartoons. Kieran lingered in the kitchen with me, cleaning up like we really were a family. .

I leveled my voice as I rinsed the last plate. “So who was it?”

He blinked. “Who?”

“You said someone was following me. Besides you. So—who?” I shut off the tap and turned, drying my hands on a dish towel. “Or is it another mystery?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He braced his hands on the counter, shoulders tense. “But I can’t be everywhere. That’s why you’re here.”

The towel sagged in my hands. “Did you tell your brother we’re here?”

He shook his head. “No. No one knows.”

I dropped the towel on the counter. “I’m not going to make a deal with the Callahans. I’m not going to let you blackmail me or bribe me or anything of the sort. I understand I’m in deep shit with the whole Mickey Russell thing, but I’m still going to do my job as District Attorney if I can.”

Kieran’s lips pulled into a ghost of a smile, more rue than gloat. He reached up, absent-minded, to scratch his head, then dropped his hand. “Nah. The blackmail ship has sailed. It happened a long time ago. If you want to torch your career, that’s on you—but you won’t do it from a fucking coffin.”

All that energy from the morning—panic, survival, shame—plummeted into the base of my gut. I gripped the sink edge and let the cold edge bite my palms. “You don’t think I’m good at what I do,” I said.

Not a question. He didn’t even blink.

“I think you’re the best there is. That’s what makes you a target.

” Kieran’s eyes locked onto mine, and in them, I saw all the long, granular history between us: courtrooms and offices and the back seat of a Nissan waiting out summer rain.

What I would wear to go to his apartment, the drinks he would offer me when I got there.

The way we kept talking about breaking up but never seemed to be able to.

Not until he left. Not until he ghosted me.

“But you’re surrounded. You made too many enemies, and not enough friends. ”

“You think I’m not aware how alone I am?” I said, letting the whisper of it thread out flat as frost. “I can’t even call Alek from here. I can’t even—” I snapped my mouth shut, suddenly too aware of the closed-off world in which we’d stranded ourselves.

Maybe he was right. Maybe I really was already dead, but dreaming the last days of myself: pancakes and borrowed fleece, a little girl’s hum drifting from the next room. Maybe this was what came after.

Kieran approached me. “You’re okay. Just breathe.”

I wanted to punch him. I wanted to take the mug and smash it in the sink and scream that I was not okay, that every part of me was throbbing with terror, that I had not been okay since the day I had to face down a man trying to kill me in my own kitchen and then sleep in the scorch-marked silence for weeks after, knowing Kieran was watching me.

But instead I just stood there, hands locked at either edge of the steel sink, and did what he said.

I counted out each drag of air, each rattle of the heater, each glint of snow flaring out in the grayed sunlight. There were only three breaths before I lost count.

He put a hand over mine, and I realized we were both shaking a little—him with the recoil of some unarticulated dread, me with an anger I was too exhausted to weaponize. We stood there, silent, until the cheap coffeemaker let out a soft beep and announced it was done.

He looked at me like I was already asking for too much.

Like I was back to being difficult, back to resisting his idea of safety.

I wanted to scream. I wanted to claw at the walls and run until I hit asphalt or a cell tower or someone who didn’t look at me like I was a ticking bomb.

But instead, I picked up the dish towel, dried the last plate, and nodded like a woman who had already made peace with losing.

So that was that. Everything was the fucking same. And I was still trapped.