Page 26 of Velvet Chains

I reached out and grabbed his hand. “We’re very lucky,” I said. “But you shouldn’t have to be there for us. You should be doing something better than holding my life together.”

“Too bad,” Alek replied. “It’s a full-time job now. Benefits suck.”

I smiled, but it didn’t reach my eyes.

“You should unionize. Get dental.”

He laughed. “The DA telling people to unionize. Sloane would love that.”

“He sucks. I should’ve run for mayor instead.”

We both laughed at that.

“Well,” he said, getting up again. “Now that we’re done with that walk down memory lane, let’s get back to the order of business. Keeping you in office…and hopefully out of jail.”

Chapter Eight: Kieran

Telling Liam would change everything.

I knew that. Had known it all day while I paced my house like an animal, the weight of what I’d done sinking deeper with every hour. Every time I closed my eyes, I felt her again—her skin under my hands, the heat of her breath on my throat, the echo of her voice in my bones. And over all of it, the sick knowledge that I had killed a man to keep her alive. That I’d do it again.

By the time I got to Liam’s building, I wasn’t even sure what I planned to say.

His apartment didn’t smell like anything. No cologne, no stale coffee, no old takeout containers shoved in the sink. Just sterile, scentless quiet. The kind that crawled up your spine and settled under your skin.

I stepped inside and shut the door behind me, automatic. The floors gleamed. The leather couch looked like it had never been sat on. Everything was sharp, angular, expensive.

It looked like a catalog spread. Or a tomb.

And yet—it felt like Liam. Stripped down, hard-edged, all surface. A place where nothing could touch him.

Until now.

He had driven back from the city as soon as I had called him and he was waiting for me in his apartment, which was right by the bay area. I had every code to get into the place, but I rarely visited him here. I saw him a lot; at dinner parties with Adriana and Tristan, whenever we hung out with the kids, at church sometimes.

We worked together all the time—on books, clubs, contracts, the kind of things that didn’t leave a paper trail. Tristan trusted us both. Separately.

It wasn’t that he didn’t trust us together. It was just that, after the marriage with Adriana and the Orsini-Callahan union, he had more pressing things to worry about. It was busy, being a mafia kingpin and a family man, expanding and defending an empire that always seemed as fruitful as it did fragile. Over the years, Liam had slowly become more guarded. I couldn’t blame him—this life didn’t exactly leave a lot of space for emotional intimacy and seeing your girlfriend get killed in front of you would probably fuck anyone up. But the core of him, the things that had made him our snarky kid brother, hadn’t really changed. He was still all dry wit peppered with being justannoying enough to either get on our nerves or make us laugh, and as I’d gotten older, I’d only learned to appreciate him more.

Tristan always had to take everything so seriously. It was nice to share some DNA with someone who got that all this mafia shit was, at the end of the day, absolute fucking bullshit.

"You look like you're about to stage an intervention," came his voice from somewhere inside, smooth and amused. He padded out from the hallway in socks and a half-buttoned shirt, tousled hair like he’d just rolled out of bed and decided he looked good enough to greet death.

Which, honestly, was pretty on-brand. He gave me that stupid little grin of his, the one that said he’d already sized me up and was now watching for entertainment. "Drink? Or is this one of those drop-in-to-cry-about-Tristan visits? Because if so, I’m gonna need tequila."

I didn’t smile. I didn’t move.

The grin faltered—just slightly. He caught the shift in the air.

"Okay," he said slowly, heading to the bar. "Definitely tequila."

“I told you I was coming.”

“Yeah, but I thought you might’ve been playing it up a bit,” he said. “Don’t take this the wrong way, lad, but you can be a bit dramatic sometimes.”

I grunted, at a rare loss for words. Sometimes I felt like maybe I wasn’t dramatic; maybe I was the only one who was sane in our family, who had actual,reasonablereactions. I mean…ouruncle had slit Liam’s girlfriend’s throat in front of all of us years ago and he had barely been nineteen. If he didn’t think that was dramatic enough to elicit a reaction, how big of a deal was me having a secret daughter?

“You’re quiet,” Liam said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you quiet.”