Page 7 of Velvet Chains (The Dark Prince of Boston #2)

Chapter Seven: Ruby

T he hospital felt like it was closing in on me. The yellowing ceiling panels, the chemical smell of bleach, the constant flicker of fluorescent lights.

The way it hurt every time I tried to swallow.

Everything felt like it was eating at me.

But that wasn’t it. Not really.

It was Kieran.

Intervening like it was nothing. Like confessing to murder and throwing himself at the mercy of the FBI was on the same level as buying me a coffee. I didn’t know whether I wanted to thank him or slap him so hard that he wouldn’t show his face for another eight years.

“Did you know he’d do that?” Alek asked, breaking the silence. We’d been sitting here in shock ever since he came back in, now–apparently–Kieran’s attorney, too.

I sank further into the hospital bed, letting out a shaky breath. “I knew he was stupid.”

Alek’s mouth twitched, somewhere between sympathy and exasperation. “Stupid enough to confess in front of federal agents while wearing a shirt with someone else's blood on it?”

“That was his own blood. Russell stabbed him while Kieran was trying to get him off me.”

“You didn’t tell me that,” Alek said, sinking into the plastic chair next to the bed.

“It didn’t come up.”

Alek ran a hand over his face. “Well, fuck.”

This was fraught. Complicated, even.

I was used to having a plan.

It was how I had survived this long. But now the feds were circling, and Kieran was leaving a trail of chaos like gasoline waiting for a spark.

I hadn’t let anyone else in after Kieran came in and confessed, and all I wanted to do now was–what? Cry? That wasn’t me. It wasn’t who I’d become, it wasn’t who I needed to be. But everything felt hopeless, and I could feel all the control slip away like running water through my fingers.

For Rosie…I had to hang on.

I couldn’t go back to what life was like with Julian: picture-perfect on the surface but hollow as a rusted ship underneath…

a man who cared more about his work than me.

We had only gotten married because it looked good when we were young and ambitious.

We had been friends, practical to a fault, but we had tried to make it work.

Partially because it looked good, partially because we both really wanted it to work for Rosie, if nothing else.

Julian might not have been her biological father, but he was her father in every way that mattered. Kieran might’ve been hurt, but he should’ve understood.

Kieran was the opposite of Julian in every way. Dangerous. Unpredictable. And there was a part of me that was starting to realize that terrified me just as much as it tempted me.

Alek got up again and started pacing. He looked a little disheveled, his black button-up more wrinkled than usual, shadows under his eyes.

I knew what the pacing meant. He was officially in lawyer mode again, which I appreciated.

I didn’t want to think about the emotional fallout anymore.

I wanted to occupy myself with practical matters.

“You’re going to need a public narrative. Something that explains why you’re here. Why you’re injured.”

I cocked my head. “I gave the nurse the basics.”

“Yeah, for triage,” he replied. “We need optics. What happens when someone leaks the visit? When someone realizes the feds were here? You don’t want reporters speculating about what happened or about who was in your house.”

I flinched at that. “We didn’t name Russell anywhere,” I said. “You didn’t name him in the report to the FBI, did you?”

He laughed, throwing his head back. “Yeah, no, I totally did that.”

“Sorry, sorry,” I said. “I had to ask.”

“Anyway, there’s no report,” he said. “Not yet. Let’s keep it that way. The doctor is going to push you to speak to the police. Don’t. If you don’t confirm anything, there will be nothing to contradict when this blows up.”

I bit the inside of my mouth. “I’m aware how this sounds, but I don’t want to lie.”

“You’re not lying. You’re just not saying anything.”

I nodded. He was right. “What about the FBI?”

“What about them?”

“They know.”

Alek shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest. “The feds don’t know anything concrete. They know what they think they heard. No body. No warrant. No Miranda. If they want to make something out of it, they’ll have to do it the hard way.”

“They have the SIM card.”

“They have a SIM card, not necessarily Russell’s, which they found in a river, allegedly near a femur, and they have a man who said something dramatic happened in a hallway without counsel. That’s not a case, Ruby. That’s gossip.”

He wasn’t wrong. “If they want to bring charges against me, they’ll appoint special counsel.”

“They won’t want to bring charges against you. You won’t be a risk worth prosecuting,” he said. “But…”

He trailed off, his voice quiet as I looked up at him.

“What is it?” I asked, not sure if I wanted to know the answer.

“If the Bureau’s building a RICO case, and Kieran gave them a confession, he’s either a target or a loose thread.

And if they figure out you’ve been protecting him…

?. Alek shook his head. “That puts you in their line of fire. Not because of RICO–because of complicity. Obstruction…maybe worse. They could use that leverage over you to get you to do whatever they want.”

I exhaled slowly, letting his words settle into the hollow space just beneath my ribs. Leverage. That was the word. Not guilt. Not evidence. Just pressure. Just enough to make me sweat. Just enough to make me fold.

Just enough to ruin me.

“I’m about to say something that is probably going to annoy you,” Alek said.

“So, standard,” I replied, hoping the joke would lighten the mood even a little bit. It didn’t.

“If you do get questioned, you’re just going to have to blame Kieran,” he said.

“Look, you can…you can even tell them he’s Rosie’s bio dad.

You can say he was obsessed with you, which is true, he went into your house when he heard you screaming, which is also true, and then he killed Mickey Russell, which is true and he confessed to. ”

I hated how easily the narrative slipped into place.

That he was obsessed. That he saved me. That he was the one who crossed the line.

It wasn’t a lie, not exactly. But it made me feel like one. Like I was rewriting my part to make myself look clean, even when I’d stood there and watched the blood dry on the walls.

Even when I had poured vodka on his wound and stitched him up.

Kieran had bled for me. He had washed my hair and told me how much he missed me and then kissed the bruises that Mickey had left on the hollow of my throat as he slowly unwrapped me.

He unbroke me and made me his, even after all these years.

I wasn’t innocent. And using him as the scapegoat—it felt like betrayal. But it would work, wouldn’t it? And it would keep him away from Rosie.

And he had confessed. I hadn’t asked him to do that. Alek had told him to get away from us.

My mouth dried as I looked up at him. “What about everything that happened after that?”

“When you were in shock and probably, fuck, not even conscious while Kieran Callahan was cleaning up his mess? You don’t know anything about that.”

“But I went along with it.”

“I know,” he replied. “And you can tell me that because I’m your lawyer. But beyond that, this never leaves this room. Don’t even tell your therapist.”

“I can’t…”

He sat on the edge of the bed, adjusting my blanket as he did. “Do you remember when you told me you were pregnant?”

I nodded.

Alek and I were already close back then.

We’d both ended up in Boston by accident, by ambition, by sheer force of will.

We met working under DA Lenta, two overachievers who pretended not to care about the system even as we tried to beat it at its own game.

We weren’t the same, not really, but we got each other.

We understood the pressure of having something to prove, of being too smart and too tired for our own good.

Our friendship had bloomed quietly, like a shared secret.

Late nights in the office turned into late nights on rooftops, passing a blunt back and forth and trading stories that felt too fragile for daylight.

He told me about Russia and his mother’s apricot jam and how he still couldn’t eat apricots without thinking of her.

He told me about the bitter divorce between his parents, about choosing his mother—and America—over his sister and father in England.

He was twelve. He didn’t have a good reason. He just thought it seemed “cooler.”

I told him about my abuela and the way she always used to say, “Mija, if you’re going to fall, fall with your fists up.”

We never had to explain why we stayed late, why we both felt like guests in rooms we were trying to own.

We baked together. Always something overly complicated.

He liked pastry; I liked frosting. We were a good team.

We once stayed up all night trying to make croissants from scratch.

We burned the first batch and ate them anyway, sitting on my kitchen floor with our backs against the oven, butter on our lips and grease on our hands.

We put on a marathon of bad heist movies and yelled at the screen every time a lawyer character did something wildly unethical.

We did shots when the bailiff would have tackled someone.

We munched on our overbaked pastries, laughing so hard we hurt ourselves, our heads tossed back against the edge of the sofa, neither one of us even thinking about sleeping.

It was the closest I’d felt to safe in a long time.

And when I found out I was pregnant, when I sat on that same kitchen floor with a test in my hand and a knot in my chest so tight I could barely breathe, he was the one I called.

I hadn’t even finished the sentence. I’d just said, “Alek, I just took a pregnancy test, and I think, fuck, maybe, I don’t know, what if I’m pregnant? And I think this guy I’m seeing—he won’t pick up my calls, I—”

I heard his car start, his keys turning in the ignition. He was already on his way over.

He brought soup and a notebook full of checklists, one for if I decided to terminate the pregnancy and one for if I decided not to. He didn’t try to fix it. He didn’t say anything stupid. He just sat next to me and said, “Whatever you decide, I’ve got you.”

And he meant it.

So yeah, I remembered.

Of course I remembered.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told you before.”

I looked up at him.

“I went to find him. When you told me, I mean. I think Rosie was three? I don’t know.

We got drunk and you told me, and I felt like I should go find him.

Not because I wanted to bring him into Rosie’s life or anything, but I really needed to know why he had ghosted you.

You know how I am about unresolved questions. ”

“What?” I asked. “You went to…what do you mean, you went to find him?”

“I went to the places you told me you had met up,” he said.

“The coffee shop, the gym. When that didn’t work, because I assume you had done that, I looked him up in the system.

I didn’t want to go to his apartment because that felt like stalking but I did find some of the Callahan pubs and clubs in the system. I went to the pub and saw him.”

“You talked to him?”

Alek shook his head, a small smile pulling at the corner of his lips. “No,” he said. “They immediately clocked me as someone who shouldn’t have been there. But I saw him, you know? With his brothers. With Tristan and Liam Callahan. And with Adriana and Carmen Orsini.”

“Jesus.”

“They didn’t pay attention to me. But as soon as I got there, I…I don’t know. I guess I realized that you would be better off without him. I should’ve told him that you needed him, that you were pregnant, but how could I? You’re who you are now in spite of him, Ruby. Not because of him.”

I stared at him. My throat ached, not from the bruises but from the weight of everything he wasn’t saying.

“You should’ve told me,” I said quietly.

“I know,” he replied, just as quiet. “But it wasn’t my choice to make.”

“You didn’t trust me to handle it?”

“I trusted you to survive it,” he said. “But I didn’t think he deserved to be part of that survival.”

There it was. Not anger. Not judgment. Just bone-deep belief. He thought I had clawed my way out of the wreckage, and that Kieran had been the fire.

And maybe he wasn’t wrong.

But it didn’t make it easier to breathe.

“I think about it sometimes,” he admitted. “What would’ve happened if I’d told him. If he’d shown up. If he’d fought for you.”

“And?”

He looked at me, eyes clear. “And I’m glad he didn’t. Rosie has a family. Okay, so Julian’s a smug asshole, but he loves that little girl as much as you do. And I—” He stopped, then shrugged like the truth was obvious. “I’ve got you. Both of you.”

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.”