Page 27 of Velvet Corruption

“It’s my business to keep tabs on people who describe my family as the scourge of Boston,” he shrugged.

“Fair enough,” I muttered, though it really wasn’t fair at all. “And you’re one to talk. You live in one of the fanciest buildings I’ve ever seen in my life.”

He shrugged. “Touché,” he said, the smirk never leaving his face. “But you know me, Ruby. I’m a simple guy with simple tastes.”

I had to laugh at that, despite myself. Kieran was many things, but simple had never been one of them. Complicated, conflicted,even contradictory—but never simple. The laugh dissipated some of the tension in my shoulders, and for a brief moment, it felt like we were two old friends catching up.

“I mean it,” he said, more serious now. “You’ve built quite the life for yourself.”

The compliment took me off guard. Coming from anyone else, it would have felt patronizing, but from Kieran it carried a weight of genuine respect. Maybe even a touch of envy.

“Thanks,” I said, unsure how to take his sudden sincerity—or the fact that he apparently knewexactlywhere I lived and how to find me

We were both silent for a beat.

Then he winced…and there it was—thereasonfor the sincerity, the manipulation.

“Okay, I lied. There’s a point to this. I sought you out because…look, how things ended between us, it wasn’t right.”

I looked up at him again. How things had ended between uswasn’tright, that was true. He had blocked me on his phone, made it impossible to tell him I was pregnant. And before all that—there were nights. God, there werenights. The kind that rewrote you from the inside out, his hands on my hips, his lips on my throat, the way he looked at me like I was the only real thing in his world.

Maybe that’s what made it so much worse. He hadn’t just left. He’d erased it—erasedus.

And then his uncle and his brother had been arrested before DA Lenta had Bellamy Callahan sent back to Ireland for a whole plethora of crimes. Kieran had, of course, been involved. I didn’t know how—he had miraculously managed to escape arrest, and he had walked the streets of Boston free while his older brother, Tristan Callahan, ran the whole fucking show.

I didn’t know the details, but I did know that he wasn’t the kind of man who could be a good father to my daughter.

“Now that your face is everywhere, I have to deal with some of my more unwise decisions from my younger years,” Kieran continued.

The way he said it grated on me, reminding me of Julian—like my career was an inconvenience, likeWhy can’t you just be a good woman and shut the hell up?The air in the coffee shop grew thicker, as if it were conspiring with the tension between us. I set my coffee down, the ceramic making a sharp clink against the table.

“Is this the part where you apologize?” I asked, though I wasn’t not sure I wanted to hear it. An apology from Kieran would mean acknowledging everything: the sneaking away with each other, his disappearance, the child he didn’t know about. The secret that was mine alone to carry.

He ran a hand through his hair, a gesture that made him look momentarily vulnerable. “I’m sorry for leaving you in the lurch, Rubes. For disappearing like I did. You have to understand, things were…complicated.”

Complicated. That was one way to put it. Another way was fucked up beyond all reason, but I held my tongue.

“I had no choice,” he continued. “The situation with my family…I thought if I cut ties, it would protect you.”

“Protect me?” I almost laughed out loud. “From what? From whom?”

“From myself,” he said quietly. “My dad died, my brother started to spiral and I—how could I bring you into that, Ruby? You had a bright future ahead of you. You still do.”

I wanted to scream. To tell him that cutting me off hadn’t protected me from anything, that all it had done was leave me alone and confused, trying to navigate a future I hadn’t been prepared for. That it had left me with a daughter who would one day ask about her real father, a man I couldn’t even begin to describe to her because I barely understood him myself.

But I said nothing. Kieran’s eyes held a depth of sorrow that I wasn’t prepared to confront. Was this genuine regret? Remorse? Or just another ploy to get back into my good graces now that I was in a position of power?

“Why now?” I asked, my voice steadier than I felt. “Why not tell me all this before?”

“Because before, you could afford to hate me in private,” he said. “Now, if you go after my family during your campaign, it’s all going to come out. The nights we spent together. The fact that I left you high and dry. The public loves a good scandal, Ruby.”

There it was. The real reason.

He wasn’t here to make amends; he was here to save his own skin.

“So this is a warning,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “You’re threatening to expose us if I go after the Callahans.”

“Your predecessor and my brother had something good going,” he said. “They understood each other. He didn’t need to create a crusade to clean up the streets, Ruby. He knew where to push and where to let go. If you’re smart, you’ll take the same approach.”