Page 24 of Velvet Chains

He wasn’t wrong. “If they want to bring charges against me, they’ll appoint special counsel.”

“They won’t want to bring charges against you. You won’t be a risk worth prosecuting,” he said. “But…”

He trailed off, his voice quiet as I looked up at him.

“What is it?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to know the answer.

“If the Bureau’s building a RICO case, and Kieran gave them a confession, he’s either a target or a loose thread. And if they figure out you’ve been protecting him…?. Alek shook his head. “That puts you in their line of fire. Not because of RICO–because of complicity. Obstruction…maybe worse. They could use that leverage over you to get you to do whatever they want.”

I exhaled slowly, letting his words settle into the hollow space just beneath my ribs. Leverage. That was the word. Not guilt. Not evidence. Just pressure. Just enough to make me sweat. Just enough to make me fold.

Just enough to ruin me.

“I’m about to say something that is probably going to annoy you,” Alek said.

“So, standard,” I replied, hoping the joke would lighten the mood even a little bit. It didn’t.

“If you do get questioned, you’re just going to have to blame Kieran,” he said. “Look, you can…you can even tell them he’s Rosie’s bio dad. You can say he was obsessed with you, which is true, he went into your house when he heard you screaming, which is also true, and then he killed Mickey Russell, which is true and he confessed to.”

I hated how easily the narrative slipped into place.

That he was obsessed. That he saved me. That he was the one who crossed the line.

It wasn’t a lie, not exactly. But it made me feel like one. Like I was rewriting my part to make myself look clean, even when I’d stood there and watched the blood dry on the walls.

Even when I had poured vodka on his wound and stitched him up.

Kieran had bled for me. He had washed my hair and told me how much he missed me and then kissed the bruises that Mickey had left on the hollow of my throat as he slowly unwrapped me.

He unbroke me and made me his, even after all these years.

I wasn’t innocent. And using him as the scapegoat—it felt like betrayal. But it would work, wouldn’t it? And it would keep him away from Rosie.

And he had confessed. I hadn’t asked him to do that. Alek had told him to get away from us.

My mouth dried as I looked up at him. “What about everything that happened after that?”

“When you were in shock and probably, fuck, not even conscious while Kieran Callahan was cleaning up his mess? You don’t know anything about that.”

“But I went along with it.”

“I know,” he replied. “And you can tell me that because I’m your lawyer. But beyond that, this never leaves this room. Don’t even tell your therapist.”

“I can’t…”

He sat on the edge of the bed, adjusting my blanket as he did. “Do you remember when you told me you were pregnant?”

I nodded.

Alek and I were already close back then. We’d both ended up in Boston by accident, by ambition, by sheer force of will. We met working under DA Lenta, two overachievers who pretended not to care about the system even as we tried to beat it at its own game. We weren’t the same, not really, but we got each other. We understood the pressure of having something to prove, of being too smart and too tired for our own good.

Our friendship had bloomed quietly, like a shared secret. Late nights in the office turned into late nights on rooftops, passing a blunt back and forth and trading stories that felt too fragile for daylight. He told me about Russia and his mother’s apricot jam and how he still couldn’t eat apricots without thinking of her. He told me about the bitter divorce between his parents, about choosing his mother—and America—over his sister and father in England.

He was twelve. He didn’t have a good reason. He just thought it seemed “cooler.”

I told him about my abuela and the way she always used to say, “Mija, if you’re going to fall, fall with your fists up.”

We never had to explain why we stayed late, why we both felt like guests in rooms we were trying to own.