Page 6 of Velvet Chains

“Okay. She still needs to go to the ER. You can…”

“What?” I asked when he trailed off.

“You can say Russell came in here. You fired a warning shot. He scampered off. You were in shock and sat here until I came to see you.”

“What about me?” Kieran asked.

“You were never here.”

Kieran’s jaw flexed. “So you’re just going to erase me from the narrative?”

Alek turned his head to face him, his eyes narrowing a little. “You want credit, Callahan? From who? The government?”

“That’s not what I’m saying,” he replied, annoyed now. “I just want it to be clear she wouldn’t be safe if I hadn’t—”

“Yeah, I clocked that, Batman,” Alek said. “You don’t get a medal for killing the villain in a story that you started yourself. You want to help? Disappear. Lay low. Go back to your mansion and have your butler bring you meals in your batcave.”

“Can you not, please?” I asked, despite myself. I didn’t want to defend Kieran, but Alek was getting angrier, and I found that I didn’t like the two of them arguing with each other. Something about it didn’t sit right with me. I told myself that it was because Kieran was a terrifying man, not because I wanted my best friend to like him.

Because that would be…insane, right?

Like absolutely crazy.

I shook off the thought.

“He isn’t lying. About the scream, about how close I came to dying. He might be an asshole, but he did save my life.”

Kieran’s expression softened, only for a second. “I don’t care who gets the credit,” he said. “But I’m not going to lay low when I just found out I have a daughter who I’ve only ever had one conversation with. Whatever happened between us, you don’t get to keep her from me.”

“Ruby is Julian’s daughter,” I replied. “You weren’t there when she was born. He was.”

Kieran flinched like I’d slapped him. “That’s not fair,” he said, low and rough. “I didn’t know.”

“You could have known,” I said, voice sharper than I meant it to be. “You could’ve called. You could’ve written. You ghosted me.”

“I had my reasons.”

“And now I have mine.”

We stared at each other, neither of us blinking. The air between us was so thick it could’ve been cut with the knife Russell brought into my house.

Alek cleared his throat. “I hate to interrupt this…emotional bloodbath, but time is ticking. Ruby, you need documentation of your injuries, now. Kieran, you need to be anywhere but here. If someone puts the two of you together last night, this whole thing falls apart.”

“I’m not leaving.”

“You are,” Alek said, standing up. “Because if you care about her, or about Rosie, even a little bit, you’ll get out of here before the neighbors start to walk their dogs.”

Kieran looked at me for a long second. His gaze slid down from my eyes, to the bruises around my neck. As if he was trying to memorize my face, the color of my skin.

Then he stood. “I’ll be back,” he said. “You can count on it.”

“I’m sure you will,” Alek muttered under his breath.

I didn’t say anything. I had no idea what I was supposed to say to that.

When the door finally clicked behind him, it was like the tension was sucked out of the room all at once. Alek got up, walked the few steps between us and sat next to me. The mattress sagged under his weight. His voice was gentle when he spoke. “You okay?”

“No,” I replied, caught between hysterical sobbing and hysterical laughter. I ended up landing on neither…which felt like the wrong reaction. “We slept together, Alek. After it was all said and done. He washed my hair and then he fucked me in the shower and on the bed. And then again this morning.”