Page 13 of Velvet Chains (The Dark Prince of Boston #2)

Chapter Thirteen: Kieran

I was very good at playing innocent.

What I was not good at was leaving Ruby Marquez alone.

I wanted to protect her, I wanted to watch her back and fucking kill anyone who touched her…but I also knew the best thing I could do to help her was to stay the fuck away. The feds were still sniffing around, watching, waiting for me to fuck up.

They weren’t the first ones to take a seat and wait for my inevitable misstep.

But that meant I knew exactly how to put on a show.

I was on my best boy behavior. I went to the gym in the morning, had lunch at the same spot every day, jogged in the afternoon and then went to a club—whichever club Tristan had me working—at night.

When it was late and Liam would ask me if I wanted to go out the back to smoke a joint with him, I told him to wait until we got in my car.

So that was what we did, and the days and nights passed by in a blur as I slowly felt Ruby slipping away.

I’d flagged her name for news alerts, so I read about her obsessively.

The DA didn’t make the news that often, but she granted a couple of interviews, and I would play a local podcast she had been on on repeat so I could fall asleep to her voice.

Maybe that made me a hopeless romantic, but I didn’t give a fuck; I was also a chronic insomniac, and Ruby’s voice was better than ketamine.

But damn, if it wasn’t fucking hard to stay away from her. I could trick my body into stillness, but not my brain…and I thought maybe I just needed more time for things to settle, then I could swoop back in when there weren’t a thousand sets of eyes on us.

Time, however, wasn’t a luxury I had–because Tristan was on a tighter schedule.

Tristan summoned me to his house within a month of my last encounter with Ruby…which meant something had changed. I’d managed to avoid talking to him one-on-one about anything other than business and distribution, but he was clearly on edge.

I parked in front of the Callahan-Orsini mansion and sighed, looking at my reflection in the rearview mirror before I walked inside.

It was almost Christmas, and there was a thin layer of silvery snow on the ground.

It was almost picturesque, a fucking winter wonderland.

They’d hired decorators to hang lights that covered almost every inch of the grand house, every single window had a wreath on it, and there was a massive Christmas tree in the living room.

And it all looked just like a funeral to me. Or… for me, if Tristan had gotten wind I talked to the feds.

I rang the doorbell, half-afraid that Adriana would answer with a pair of garden shears, ready to chase me out. But when the door opened, I found only empty air–until my eyes tracked downward to find my tiny, angelic blonde niece, Catherine.

“Uncle Kieran!” she exclaimed.

She threw her arms around me, tiny bony limbs almost squeezing the life out of me.

“Hey, little menace. Where are your brothers?”

She shrugged. “I hid them in the coat closet,” she said.

I cocked my head. “Even the baby?”

“Matteo can push the door open if he wants to. He doesn’t want to.”

I held back laughter. “Are they going to be able to breathe in there?”

“We’ll see,” she replied, the smile on her face too wide.

She would get along with Rosie, I thought, then I pushed the idea out before it had time to settle.

“Who’s gonna be able to breathe?” Tristan asked, coming up behind her. “Jesus, Catherine. Leave the man alone and go play with your toys. Your mom is going to kill you if she hears you hid your brothers in the closet, so go get them out.”

“You’re not the boss of me, Daddy.”

“Pretty sure I am, love,” he said, laughing and ruffling her ponytail.

“If you’re the boss of me, and Mommy is your boss, doesn’t that mean Mommy is my boss?”

“She’s got you there, lad,” I said.

He rolled his eyes, smiling. “I mean it. Get them out now, Catherine.” He fixed his eyes on me. “And you. Why do you always look like you’re up to something?”

“I’ve spent my whole life wondering the same about you.”

He smirked. “Have fun with the boys, little menace.” He cocked his head toward the kitchen. “Coffee’s on. Come on.”

She wiggled her eyebrows and then disappeared upstairs, leaving me alone with Tristan.

I watched her go with something that felt like longing. “How’s Adriana?” I asked, following him to the kitchen.

“She’s sick,” he said. “And she’s furious about it because…well, it’s almost Christmas. She wanted to spend as much time as she could with the kids. And she’s weirded out that neither you or Liam have been around lately.”

“Work has been brutal,” I said, pouring myself a cup of coffee. “You know this.”

He nodded, taking a sip from his own mug and leaning on the kitchen island. “Tell me why.”

I could play dumb, but when Tristan wanted answers, there wasn’t much I could say to stop him from getting them. If I held back, he’d push until he had the whole story and then some.

I shifted and looked out the window, watching the snow fall.

He stayed silent, letting me stew.

“It’s going to be bad,” I said eventually. “You’re gonna be pissed.”

“Pissed is better than surprised,” he replied, setting his coffee down. “Not by much, but I prefer it.”

I rubbed my temple. “The FBI is tailing me. I’m trying to be…as low-key as possible.”

He looked me up and down. “Why?”

I swallowed. “It was a mistake. I didn’t think. I just told them.”

“Told who what?” he asked, voice even.

“The FBI. I told them I killed Mickey Russell.”

He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just stared.

“Jesus Christ,” he finally said. “You’d better have a damned good reason. Tell me everything. Don’t leave anything out.”

He clicked his tongue against his teeth like he was biting back a thousand other words, a thousand other questions, a thousand other recriminations. I knew they were coming. I just didn’t know which one would hit first.

I stayed silent and slumped at the kitchen island.

Everything except for the ticking of the clock felt frozen, like time had finally screeched to a halt and left us in suspended animation nervously hovering until the sound of Tristan’s voice shattered it.

I wanted to kill it, but who could kill time?

It killed you first. If you were lucky.

“I thought I told you to explain.” Tristan raised an eyebrow.

I sipped the coffee until it burnt my tongue, then put the disposable cup I had originally gotten it in down in front of me. “Some things are complicated.”

His fingers curled on the kitchen counter, knuckles white…and I knew he wanted to hit me. “Uncomplicate them for me.”

I exhaled, bracing myself. “The FBI was coming for her. I jumped in and said I’d killed him.”

“Because…you didn’t think the FBI could take care of our problem? You didn’t trust your own process to achieve what you wanted it to, which was to destroy the DA, so she wouldn’t come after the Callahan family?”

I tried to ignore the way his hand was now drumming a rhythm on the counter, the same way our father’s always had when he was about to teach us a lesson.

“Has the DA come after Callahan business? Beyond the FBI tailing me, haven’t you noticed that police presence has gotten less intense around Chameleon and around our other clubs? ”

Tristan studied me.

“Has it?”

“Yeah,” I said. “So maybe my method was unconventional, but it’s working.”

“Your method to…save her from the FBI.”

“My method to make her owe the Callahans something,” I said.

“Like, yes, okay, I panicked. I shouldn’t have confessed.

But don’t you see? If she comes after us, she’s going down too.

I think she knows that. I don’t know why the feds even showed up.

I thought they wouldn’t care about anyone like Russell; he was nobody.

We dismembered him. They must have found a piece.

They actually took me to the station. I didn’t say shit.

But think about it: she’ll never come after us.

As long as she owes us something, and as long as the FBI keeps trailing me, why would she want to fulfill her campaign promises to go after the Callahan family? ”

Tristan looked me up and down. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that we got what we wanted. Her talk about corruption is just…you know. Talk. A way to get elected.”

Tristan’s silence held more weight than his words ever could. Years of unspoken history stretched between us. A million decisions, a million risks, a family defined by them.

I chewed the inside of my lip.

“You think you’ve bought us time,” he finally said, his voice low. “You think tying her to us will make everything go away.” He shook his head, almost like he was talking to a stubborn kid. “And you think that was worth risking it all? Your neck for hers?”

“I know how it looks.” I clenched my fist, then flattened my palm against the cold countertop. “But she’s not a threat to us—”

“She’s not a threat right now,” he interrupted. “Because you think you’ve got her in your pocket.”

“I do have her in my pocket.”

“And if anything changes? If she decides to take us down for kicks? If she gets it in her head to play fucking hero?” Anger flashed in his eyes. Too quick to catch, but it was there.

“If she turns on us, I’ll handle it.”

“You’ll handle it,” he repeated. “Like you handled this?”

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.

“This is a gamble, Kieran. You might have leveraged her for now, but the minute this goes south, we’re fucked.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face, pacing, stopping short. Then he turned to me, and his jaw was set.

“You said it yourself—she’s not stupid. She’s going to use you. She’s going to use this. And when she has everything she needs, when she’s ready to throw us all to the dogs, what’s your plan then?”

“I have it under control.”

He laughed, a hard, breathless sound. “We have our fingers in every pie in this city, and you think you’re the only one who knows what’s under the crust?

” His voice stayed calm, but the anger curdled underneath, the disappointment hanging in the air like smoke.

“You can’t turn your own blind trust into strategy.

Under control? Christ, lad. Not even close. ”

I bit down on the inside of my mouth. Heat rose in my cheeks.

He exhaled, the sound sharp and unyielding. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me sooner.”

“I didn’t want to make it worse than it was.”

“And how do you think this looks now?”

I closed my eyes. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“If the FBI is after you and they just let you go, they want something bigger. Someone bigger,” Tristan said.

I shook my head. “I won’t let them get to you.”

“I’m touched,” he said. “You think that matters if Ruby goes rogue? If she decides you’ve outlived your usefulness?”

“I won’t let that happen either,” I said, wishing I sounded more confident.

“So you’ll kill her.” He stared at me, daring me to blink. “If it comes to that, you’ll kill her.”

“I know what it takes to protect this family.” It was an answer without actually being one. I hoped it was enough.

He rubbed his chin like he was considering whether or not to punch me. “You’re a fool, Kieran. I hope you’re a lucky one.”

“I’ve always been lucky,” I said. I stopped short, not knowing what the hell else I was supposed to say…and like a fucking idiot, I defaulted to the simplest way I knew to get out of an uncomfortable conversation. “I need to take a piss.”

Tristan scoffed. “What are you, five?”

“This coffee is going right through me,” I said, ignoring him.

Then I left the kitchen before I could say anything stupid…before I could tell him that I would never kill Ruby, because she was my family.

Her and Rosie.

The snow was coming down harder when I got to the bathroom. I watched the window turn white, my phone in my hand…because obviously I didn’t need to pee. I needed to call her –to warn her that

if she slipped even once—if she breathed wrong—he’d make the call.

And someone would kill her.Then Tristan would have a much bigger problem then Ruby Marquez.

Me .

I growled and scrubbed my hair as I unlocked my phone, pulled up her contact card…stared at her name. My thumbs were moving before I could stop myself, typing out a message:

Can I see you?

The text sent before I could change my mind.

This wasn’t about staying away anymore.

This was about staying ahead of Tristan.

Because if he ever thought Ruby was a threat again, I wouldn’t be the one making decisions. He would.

And if he did...well, I guess I was just going to have to kill him first.