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

Chapter Two: Ruby

I had plotted a lot with Alek over the years.

It had always been for someone else…and now I could only hope he would save my skin too, because if he couldn’t, my entire life would be destroyed.

Nevermind my career. Fuck my career. I just wanted to keep my daughter. If this leaked and Julian went for custody…

Kieran had obeyed Alek’s command, and he was sitting a couple of feet away from me on the bed, his body coiled like he was still waiting for a fight.

My heart was beating so hard in my chest it was like I could feel it in my throat, in my ears.

Alek grabbed the chair from right in front of my vanity and flipped it to straddle it in front of us.

“A few quick things,” he said as he took his phone out of his pocket. “I’m her lawyer. Not yours.”

“I think I can fix that with ten grand and a bottle of 1974 Midleton Silent Distillery.”

“I’m more of a tequila guy,” Alek replied with a plastered on smile. “You’ll want representation, but it won’t be me. I like my job and I don’t want the FBI bugging my toothbrush. But I’m also not going to let Ruby take the fall for something you did.”

He locked eyes with Kieran, then added, “So until you call your family lawyer—or find someone else morally bankrupt enough to represent you—you’ll sit down and keep your mouth shut. In my presence, anyway.”

“I—what?” Kieran asked. He sounded genuinely surprised, like the idea of someone telling him to shut up had never even occurred to him.

“If you want to protect Ruby, you’ll shut up. Deal?”

Kieran gave me a sideways look, his voice quiet when he spoke. “I would do anything to protect you. Both you and Rosie.”

“And yet you’re still talking,” Alek said.

“He’s really good at his job,” I told Kieran, who had inched closer to me, so close that I thought he might grab my hand. “Let him do it.”

Kieran rolled his eyes. “Everything is already cleaned up. The body is disposed of, there’s no blood to speak of, no one saw anything because it was the middle of the night. You might be good at your job, Alek, but so am I. I cleaned up after myself.”

Alek didn’t flinch. “But you didn’t clean up Ruby,” he said. “You need to go to the ER.”

That got Kieran to still. His gaze flicked to me again, to the bruises on my neck, to the blood under my fingernails, to the tremble I hadn’t been able to fight or stave off.

“You need to go the ER,” Alek repeated. “You’re the elected District Attorney.

You’re incredibly popular in this city right now and everyone will want to stop you to chat.

You wince when a scarf touches the bruise on your neck and it becomes a huge problem.

No one’s going to leave you alone when they realize you got beaten up.

They’re going to blame him, if anyone has spotted you two together. ”

He glared meaningfully at Kieran and I felt myself sink further into the mattress.

“No one has spotted us together,” Kieran said. “I’ve been careful. I ran in here because she was screaming, Alek.”

“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.”

Alek blinked. Just once. Very slowly.

Like maybe if I didn’t react, the words would vanish.

I looked into Alek’s eyes. They were cerulean blue, but they had darkened into something ashen and almost colorless.

“You know what I remember the most from when he and I slept together?” I asked, because it felt like I couldn’t stop talking now. “Not like, last night. Eight years ago. Before I got pregnant.”

“I don’t want to—”

I ignored him. “I remember how he used to talk to me,” I said. “He would whisper in my ear and tell me everything I did to him, like he was narrating a play or something. And it would make me come apart.”

“Ruby, this isn’t really—”

I trained my gaze on him. “You have never been prudish,” I said. “You have always asked and shared details. This is the detail. This is it. I have never felt as loved as I do as when Kieran is fucking me. Do you understand that?”

His hand was on my shoulder, squeezing tight. I couldn’t see anymore. My eyes were brimming with tears, hot and heavy and painful.

So…not hysterical laughter.

We were going with tears.

“I don’t want him to take my daughter. He did me a huge favor when he ghosted me.

I’m old enough to see that now. I think, in some way, I was furious but that was…

I don’t know. Immature. No. Worse than that.

Callow. Shortsighted. He was right to do it.

Now he’s back in my life, demanding his place in Rosie’s life.

And he’s just killed a man for me. How do I love and hate him all at once? How’s that possible?”

He sighed. “Well, I’m not a therapist, but I don’t think you love him.”

“I mean…you don’t?”

“He’s clearly really good at making you feel loved, and when you’ve been married to someone like Julian as long as you had, any man who makes you feel loved is a man welcome in your bed, I think,” he said slowly, softly, as if he knew he was treading into dangerous territory. “But I also don’t think you hate him.”

“You don’t?” I asked again. I wanted to argue with him. To tell him how wrong he was.

Except I couldn’t, because he wasn’t wrong.

Whatever smart retort I had, it immediately died on my tongue when I looked at his face.

“I think that you know this is a bad idea. I know you know this is a bad idea.”

“What, telling you the truth?” I asked. “Sorry—bad joke. Emotions make lawyers uncomfortable.”

He rolled his eyes, didn’t even flash me a pitying smile.

“You’re a lawyer, Ruby,” he said. “And you know it’s all a bad idea.

Letting him stay last night, letting him touch you.

But you know what’s the real mistake here?

The way you’re thinking about this. The way you’re framing it in your own head.

You’re talking about it, about him, like he’s a dream.

He’s not a dream. He’s a panic response—and, well…

a killer. Just because he killed someone who deserved it doesn’t mean he hasn’t killed people who didn’t.

The sex was a trauma bond. You’re in shock and you’re confusing survival with something else. ”

I turned away from him, the shame hitting harder than I expected.

Alek let a breath out through his nose, then reached for my hand. His palm was clammy. “Kieran will never take Rosie away,” he said. “I don’t care what choices you make. I’ll fight like hell to make sure that never happens. And so will you.”

“The Callahans can’t ever know she’s one of them.”

“She’s not,” he said. “She’s Ruby Marquez’s daughter. She’s the daughter of Boston’s DA, not the criminal underworld.”

“Right.”

“But before any of that, we need you to take care of yourself. Rosie needs her mom to take care of herself. You can keep spinning in circles about how you feel for Kieran and about what it means, but you need to pull yourself together before the weekend is over. You have to sell the idea that you’re still married to Julian to the press for another, I don’t know, six months, a year?

You need to keep him on your side. He can’t know about Kieran. ”

“He saw the bruises. I told him I slept with the window repair guy and he got carried away with the choking.”

For the first time, Alek laughed. “Did he buy it?”

“God, no,” I replied. “But he pretended like he did, which was nice.”

“Okay, keep that up for as long as he’ll go along with it,” Alek said. “And in the meantime, we have to get you to the ER.”

“And what about Kieran?” I asked.

Alek thought for a second. “Forget about him,” he said. “Right now, he doesn’t matter.”

He was wrong. Kieran mattered.

He had started to matter almost as much as the air I breathed. I already knew that cutting him off would be like peeling off my own skin.

But I also knew that, for Rosie, I would do anything.