Page 1 of Velvet Chains (The Dark Prince of Boston #2)

Chapter One: Kieran

I was obsessed with her.

With the way she wrinkled her nose when she was thinking hard. With the freckles on her nose and around her mouth. With the mole at the hollow of her throat.

With the way her finger curled around the trigger of the gun as she pushed it against my chest.

I wanted to tear it from her hand and tell her to stop this madness.

I wanted to press her against the wall and kiss her until her lips hurt.

I wanted to tell her that she occupied my every waking thought, and that I couldn’t be angry at her—because the idea of anger when it came to Ruby Marquez felt so foreign it bordered on silly.

But I did none of those things.

I waited, arms by my side, and watched her wrestle with whether or not she should pull the trigger. I waited because I had to—because I needed to know what she would choose.

And then the doorbell rang again.

“Do you think our daughter forgot something else?” I asked, just to see her lips tremble. Just to watch the panic in her eyes turn into fury.

“ My daughter,” she snapped. “Rosie is my daughter, Callahan. Not yours.”

A key turned in the front lock downstairs.

“Ruby? Where are you?” a voice, distant and vaguely familiar, called. “I came as soon as I could. I brought coffee. I assumed, from your message, this was the kind of conversation that needed coffee.”

I dropped my voice. “Don’t you want to put your gun away before your lawyer friend comes up here and catches you in flagrante?”

“I won’t shoot him,” Ruby said, her voice surprisingly steady. She smelled like sex and coconut and blood.

“Will you shoot me?”

Her gaze snapped up to look at me, her hand shaky.

She didn’t answer me. Her mouth hung open, and I watched the ridges of her lips, the way the shadows of the blinds played on her skin.

God, she was pretty. I would’ve looked at her for so long. I could’ve looked at her forever.

I took a step closer, slow enough that she could stop me if she really wanted to. The gun dug against my skin, the barrel hard against my bone.

“Will you shoot me, Rubes?” I asked, quieter this time. “Because if you don’t, I’m not leaving.”

She blinked. Once. Twice.

Her grip faltered.

And then her hand dropped.

The gun didn’t hit the floor, it didn’t go off—but it lowered low enough that I could see the pulse hammering in her throat. She was shaking, but she didn’t look away from me.

“Just because I don’t shoot you right now doesn’t mean it isn’t going to happen.”

“I can’t wait to see that, sweetheart,” I said, voice steady.

Downstairs, the rustle of a coat being hung, the creak of floorboards, Alek’s voice calling again.

“Ruby? Everything okay?”

“Answer him,” I said, letting my lips ghost against her ear. She shuddered at our proximity, leaning in even though I was certain she wanted to strangle me. “He’s worried about you.”

“Up here!” Ruby replied. “Did you run into Rosie and Julian on your way out?”

“Huh, no, I must’ve just missed them,” Alek said. He started up the stairs.

“Put the gun away,” I said. “You don’t want him to worry.”

She didn’t answer. Just turned her back on me, like it cost her something, put the gun away, and slid the drawer of her nightstand shut. The gun disappeared, but the air between us didn’t change.

“I think you should leave,” she said softly.

“And I think I should stay,” I replied, matching her tone.

I stepped away, wiping a hand down my face. I tried to look casual, but my heart was hammering in my chest. I could pretend this was just another day; I could act like I hadn’t just dared the mother of my child to shoot me. Like my chest wasn’t burning where the muzzle had pressed against my bone.

Jesus… I was a dad. I’d been a dad for years.

The door opened before either one of us could say anything else, and Alek walked in, holding two cups of coffee and a brown paper bag that smelled like blueberry muffins.

I had seen him before. In pictures, he looked less towering, more serious, less disarmingly sweet.

In person, he stood a few inches taller than me, the expression on his face only shock for a second before he masked it with well-practiced stoicism.

Still…not even that level of stoicism could hide the shock on his face.

“I would say good morning, but I’m not sure what’s happening right now,” Alek said.

Ruby cleared her throat. “Hi,” she said. “Thank you for coming so quickly. Do you two know each other?”

“I know of him,” Alek said. He didn’t move, his gaze ping-ponging between us.

“We’re just working something out right now,” she said. “If you give us a minute—”

“I think I’ll stay here,” Alek replied. “You needed me urgently. Here I am. Maybe Kieran can give us a minute. You look…”

For the first time since he had arrived, he took a good look at Ruby. He was a pale man usually, but he paled even more then, as his gaze slowly drifted down over the bruises Russell had left on Ruby’s throat, the blood still on her arms, the way her disheveled hair framed her pretty face.

“I’m fine.”

“Cool,” Alek said, clearly not believing her. “I’m still going to stay here.”

“You think I did that?” I said, suddenly offended, though I wasn’t sure why.

The idea that I would ever hurt Ruby…it made something in my stomach coil, it made me sweat in a way I hadn’t anticipated.

I had never cared about what people thought of me.

Indifference came with the territory. If you’re a Callahan, if you earn your living the way I do, you grow a thick skin.

But not this. This felt personal. It felt insulting in a way that I hadn’t anticipated.

Alek didn’t blink. “Shouldn’t I?”

“I’d never lay a fucking hand on Ruby,” I said, my hands fisting at my sides.

“I don’t know you,” Alek replied calmly. “But I know her. I know what she sounds like when she’s in shock. I know what she looks like when she’s trying to hold it together.”

His voice was smooth, measured. I imagined this is what he sounded like in the courtroom. It made me burn with fury.

“I didn’t do any of that,” I said. “You want to be her white knight, great. But don’t confuse me with the villain in this story.”

Alek raised an eyebrow. “If you’re not the villain in this story, why is she shaking?”

I looked at Ruby.

She was shaking.

Just a little, almost imperceptibly. She had wrapped her arms around herself and her fingernails were digging into the fabric of her pajamas like she didn’t know what else to do with them. Her mouth was a hard line, her eyes unreadable.

“I would appreciate it if you two don’t talk about me like I’m not here,” she said. “The dick-measuring contest is a little tired, too. Have men, as a species, considered a new routine?”

Alek approached Ruby, handing her a coffee. “Should I have brought three of these?” he asked.

“He’s funny. I can see why you’re close,” I said.

“Put your dick back in your pants, Callahan,” Alek said without looking at me. “You’re more my type than she is. And you’re not my type.”

“You’re gay?”

Alek gave me a look. “You can’t ask people you don’t know if they’re gay,” he said. “Didn’t your parents ever teach you manners? I’m not not gay.”

“So you’re…” I started, despite myself.

“Not interested in you,” Alek replied with a pitying smile. “Beyond, of course, wondering what you’re doing here at this ungodly hour. Doesn’t the mafia work in the middle of the night? Under the cover of darkness?”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “I think that’s Batman,” I said. “And there’s no such thing as the mafia.”

Alek snorted. “Right. The mafia’s a bedtime story we tell kids to scare them into behaving. Like Krampus.”

Ruby took another sip of her coffee. “I’d kill for a bedtime story version of this.”

“Technically, you already did,” I said.

She didn’t laugh.

Neither did Alek.

The air seemed to thicken. “I didn’t kill anyone, to be clear,” Ruby said. “Give me my phone.”

I sighed, grabbing her phone out of my pajama’s pocket and handing it to her. “Think very carefully about what you’re going to do next, Rubes.”

I watched her throat as she swallowed, the yellow bruises already blooming black on her skin. Ruby ignored me. I watched her fingers tap on her screen for a second. A phone vibrated in Alek’s pocket.

“That was me,” Ruby said. “You should get that.”

Alek did as he was told, furrowing his brow as he looked at the phone’s lit up screen. “Should I know why you just sent me a thousand dollars?”

“That’s your retainer fee, right?” Ruby asked. “When you take a private client?”

“You need a lawyer?” Alek asked.

“I didn’t kill anyone last night,” Ruby said. “Kieran did. Mickey Russell broke into my house and tried to strangle me. Kieran got him off me and beat him to death.”

“Jesus, Ruby,” Alek said. “Why didn’t you call me straightaway?”

“Kieran told me not to. He told me he would take care of it.”

Alek swallowed. “Okay…”

“I was in shock,” Ruby continued. “He’d beaten this man so badly…he—fuck, I don’t know. I thought I was going to die. When he called his men in to dispose of Russell, I didn’t stop him.”

“You just became DA,” Alek said. “Killing a paroled felon who has a vendetta against you with a legally acquired handgun wouldn’t have been a controversy, it would have been a boon.”

“That’s not what happened,” Ruby said, her voice flat and to the point. I wondered if this was what she sounded like in the courtroom. It was a little scary…like, sexy-scary. “Kieran killed him. Otherwise, I would be dead.”

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Alek said. “Where is he now?”

“I’m right here,” I said.

“Helpful,” Alek replied. “Russell.”

Ruby looked pointedly at me.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “I expect some parts of him are somewhere and some parts of him are somewhere else. He’s very…distributed.”

“You dismembered him?” Alek asked.

I heard Ruby audibly swallow.

“Well, I didn’t do anything,” I replied. “I outsourced. And he was dead before any modifications to his body were made.”

Alek pinched the bridge of his nose like he was trying to physically ward off a migraine.

“Ruby,” he said slowly, like he was coaching himself through it, “you could’ve called the police.”

“I was going to die,” Ruby shot back, her voice tight.

“Russell had me in a chokehold on the stairs, called me a bitch, and the last thing I saw were his eyes. I thought about Rosie… about the bill for therapy she’d need if she walked in and found the walls painted with me. And then Kieran stepped in.”

A beat passed. Alek’s jaw flexed.

“Because he had been watching you,” he said.

Ruby didn’t flinch. “Because he had been watching me.”

“I killed him with my bare hands,” I added, like it needed saying. “I had a gun. I didn’t use it. I just… punched him until he stopped moving.”

Alek stared. “You didn’t stop him?”

Ruby shook her head, slowly, like the memory was still settling behind her eyes. “I couldn’t,” she said. Then, after a pause, “I mean—I maybe could’ve. I didn’t want to.”

“You couldn’t have,” I said, and I meant it.

Alek’s mouth opened, then shut again. He raked both hands through his hair like he was on the edge of either screaming or praying.

“Jesus Christ, you two.”

He didn’t sound angry. Not anymore.

Just scared.

“There’s something else,” Ruby said, leaning against the side of the bed.

Alek snapped his head up to look at her. “The punching the guy to death wasn’t enough?”

Ruby sighed. “He knows.”

It took a second for him to process this. “About…her?”

“Yes,” Ruby said. “He put it together. He knows Rosie is his daughter. By blood, if nothing else.”

“That is all she needs to be my daughter,” I said.

Alek blinked at me like I’d slapped him. He waved me off as if I hadn’t said anything.

“You didn’t tell him?”

“I wouldn’t have,” she said quietly. “Then Russell showed up. Then I almost died. Then Julian and Rosie showed up. Then he put it together.”

Alek started to pace. “Fuck,” he said. “This is—this is a lot. Legally, ethically, professionally—”

“I don’t give a fuck,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “I want access to my daughter.”

“You going to sue me for custody?” Ruby said, no humor in her voice. “Like I said, try.”

“Okay,” Alek said slowly, the lawyer in him waking up. “You want access? Fine. But right now, we’re going to table the family court drama and deal with the real problem.”

He looked at Ruby. “There’s a dead man. A paroled felon, disposed of off-the-books. We know he was chasing after you. Someone might have heard the kerfuffle. This is bad, especially if the FBI gets involved. You just got voted in as DA last night, so we’re officially in damage control mode.”

Then he looked at me. “And you, Batman, just confessed to murder in front of an officer of the court. In front of two officers of the court.”

“You’re not on the clock,” I said.

“I am now,” he replied. “So everyone sit the hell down.”

“Are you going to fix this?” I asked.

“Yes,” Alek said after a moment.

“Good,” I replied. “Because if you don’t, I will.”

I didn’t have to tell them that I would kill anyone who got between me and Ruby and my daughter…including him.

But from the look on their faces, I could tell they already knew.