Page 15 of Velvet Betrayal
The towel sagged in my hands. “Did you tell your brother we’re here?”
He shook his head. “No. No one knows.”
I dropped the towel on the counter. “I’m not going to make a deal with the Callahans. I’m not going to let you blackmail me or bribe me or anything of the sort. I understand I’m in deep shit with the whole Mickey Russell thing, but I’m still going to do my job as District Attorney if I can.”
Kieran’s lips pulled into a ghost of a smile, more rue than gloat. He reached up, absent-minded, to scratch his head, then dropped his hand. “Nah. The blackmail ship has sailed. It happened a long time ago. If you want to torch your career, that’s on you—but you won’t do it from a fucking coffin.”
All that energy from the morning—panic, survival, shame—plummeted into the base of my gut. I gripped the sink edge and let the cold edge bite my palms. “You don’t think I’m good at what I do,” I said.
Not a question. He didn’t even blink.
“I think you’re the best there is. That’s what makes you a target.” Kieran’s eyes locked onto mine, and in them, I saw all the long, granular history between us: courtrooms and offices and the back seat of a Nissan waiting out summer rain. What I would wear to go to his apartment, the drinks he would offer me when I got there. The way we kept talking about breaking up but never seemed to be able to. Not until he left. Not until he ghosted me. “But you’re surrounded. You made too many enemies, and not enough friends.”
“You think I’m not aware how alone I am?” I said, letting the whisper of it thread out flat as frost. “I can’t even call Alek fromhere. I can’t even—” I snapped my mouth shut, suddenly too aware of the closed-off world in which we’d stranded ourselves.
Maybe he was right. Maybe I really was already dead, but dreaming the last days of myself: pancakes and borrowed fleece, a little girl’s hum drifting from the next room. Maybe this was what came after.
Kieran approached me. “You’re okay. Just breathe.”
I wanted to punch him. I wanted to take the mug and smash it in the sink and scream that I was not okay, that every part of me was throbbing with terror, that I had not been okay since the day I had to face down a man trying to kill me in my own kitchen and then sleep in the scorch-marked silence for weeks after, knowing Kieran was watching me. But instead I just stood there, hands locked at either edge of the steel sink, and did what he said.
I counted out each drag of air, each rattle of the heater, each glint of snow flaring out in the grayed sunlight. There were only three breaths before I lost count.
He put a hand over mine, and I realized we were both shaking a little—him with the recoil of some unarticulated dread, me with an anger I was too exhausted to weaponize. We stood there, silent, until the cheap coffeemaker let out a soft beep and announced it was done.
He looked at me like I was already asking for too much. Like I was back to being difficult, back to resisting his idea of safety. I wanted to scream. I wanted to claw at the walls and run until I hit asphalt or a cell tower or someone who didn’t look at me like I was a ticking bomb. But instead, I picked up the dish towel, dried the last plate, and nodded like a woman who had already made peace with losing.
So that was that. Everything was the fucking same. And I was still trapped.
Ruby
Kieran dropped his hand, but it wasn’t a full retreat. “If you want to call Alek,” he said, “I’ll let you use my phone. Five minutes. Blocked number.”
The offer was so unexpected my brain fumbled it. I almost asked if this was one more trick, some subtle trap. “Seriously?”
“You can’t tell him where you are,” he said. He rummaged in a drawer for a second and placed a burner flip phone on top of the kitchen island. “I have to be there when you make the call.”
I considered saying no, just on principle. But five minutes was five minutes more than zero, and a blocked number still might be enough to make Alek call in every favor he had to get a trace. It was the least Callahan move Kieran had ever made, which only made me distrust it more.
I slid the phone off the counter and flipped it open. Kieran stepped back—not out of earshot, but into a stance of calculated nonchalance, like a dad at a playground who claims to be reading a newspaper, but actually clocks every perimeter threat from behind the print.
I keyed Alek’s number from muscle memory. I’d memorized it a while ago, when we were both in law school.
He picked up before the second ring. “Hello?” His voice was a haze of static and sleep deprivation, but so familiar it stung.
I breathed through it. “It’s me.”
A pause, then: “Ruby. Where the fuck have you been?”
I bit my lip. “I’m safe. Rosie’s safe. I need you to tell the DA’s office that I had a personal emergency. We’re…on a short trip. Can you cover for me? I’ll be back in less than forty-eight hours.”
“Is Rosie with you?”
“Yes, of course.”
I heard him audibly swallow. “Okay,” he said. “I can cover for you for a little bit, but I assume this is Kieran? If Julian finds out, he’s going to freak the fuck out.”
I swallowed. “He’s not the problem this time. There’s something…off. I think we’re being surveilled. Not the feds. Something new, and he’s—” I looked at Kieran, watched the grip tighten on his mug. “He’s helping.”
