Page 89 of Velvet Corruption

She was leaving work—late, again—just like the last few times I’d seen her, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d watched Ruby and she didn’t seem like she was drowning in something. Work, maybe. Pressure. Something else.

Something to do with me.

She wouldn’t tell the police about me, I didn’t think. Optics would be bad. Candidate for DA, hard on crime…and she couldn’t even shake the spare Callahan.

Over time, it had become clearer that Ruby was a problem that I wasn’t able to solve.

The only one I had been able to think about for weeks.

Since I promised my brother I would take care of her so she wouldn’t be a problem for us.

Yeah, that was going great. Really fucking well.Look at me, Tristan. She doesn’t even know I’m here.

I was letting myself spiral. I had done my due diligence about people in her life: Aleksey Ivanov, campaign manager and closest friend, Massachusetts certified attorney, first a public defender, now working for the DA. Clean as a whistle, he’d been an asylum seeker with his mother when he was twelve-years-old, leaving his sister and father behind in Southampton.

Julian Garcia, soon-to-be ex-husband, also clean. He had married Ruby only a couple of months before her daughter was born, so I had to assume she had been an accident. Our relationship overlapped…maybe…a little. But it wasn’t like we’d ever been really serious. And I’d ghosted her, so I didn’t really have a leg to stand on. Still, I couldn’t help but bristle at the idea that some yuppie had taken my place.

It wasn’t my fucking business. I told myself that too, but it didn’t stop the itch under my skin. It didn’t stop the way I watched him with her, the way I tried to figure out if they were still fucking, if he still touched her when no one was looking.

If Ruby still let him in.

She had a nasty habit of doing that, letting people in and not seeing where they’d tear her apart. Maybe it was the way she grew up. Always thinking there was some good to find.

I didn’t know.

Maybe it was that she thought she knew best, thought she didn’t need anyone looking out for her. Thought she could handle this on her own.

The way she handled it so far had been with a hurt hand, getting pushed in the water, almost getting beaten up by one of the Callahan men.

She healed up, but fuck me if I was going to let that happen again. She wasn’t built for it. She wasn’t like us.

She was just a regular person who was in over her head.

She was so focused on the Callahans, so sure she knew where the threat was coming from. But the thing about threats? They didn’t always come from the direction you expect. Growing up with Malachy Callahan as my father had hammered that lesson into my head over, and over, and over again.

It was colder than I expected for autumn, a biting chill that cut through layers. Not freezing, not yet, but colder than I remembered. That time of year when the wind picked up, ripped around the edges of things and tried to steal all the warmth from wherever it could.

The buildings downtown were like that too—bare and mean and cold, like even the bricks wanted to tear the heat from a person. A city with sharp edges. A city that made people pay. A city she should have stayed away from, but a city she wanted to save.

A city I needed to save her from.

Even if she didn’t want me.

I needed her to stay alive. I needed her to stay safe.

I should have left. Should have turned my back and let her have her little campaign, let her stay in her polished world, pretending she wasn’t in deep with men like me.

But then I saw it: a car parked two spots down from mine, engine running low.

The driver wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at her. At first, I thought it was some political reporter or another crony from Tristan’s payroll, but no—this was different.

The guy wasn’t taking notes, wasn’t on his phone. He was watching her like he was waiting. Like he was looking for an opportunity. And I knew that fucking look. Predatory. Calculating. A man who thought he was in control.

My gut told me it wasn’t Callahan business. It wasn’t Tristan, and it wasn’t the Orsinis. I knew every player in Boston’s game. But I didn’t know him. And that made him a problem.

I rolled the cigarette between my fingers, thinking. Thinking about how close he was to her. Thinking about how long he’d been sitting there. About how many more seconds would tick by before I had to make a choice.

The hood of my sweatshirt was slipping down. I yanked it back into place, kept myself hidden. He didn’t see me yet, didn’t notice I was watching.

---