Page 14 of Velvet Betrayal
I knew what that meant.
That he would kill for me…that the body count was just going to go up.
He collected himself, took both our mugs to the sink, and washed them in silence. Rosie padded into the kitchen, hair still wild, face open and unscarred by all this. She took in the sight of me in borrowed clothing and Kieran’s hands in the suds and grinned, pleased as a king in exile.
“Good morning!” she said. “I didn’t bring Carty. Can we go back for him?”
“Your bunny is waiting for us at home, mi amor,” I said. “I promise.”
“Can I have pancakes?” she asked next, all expectation.
Kieran smiled. “You can have anything you want.”
She beamed, and for a second I made the mistake of picturing what it would be like to stay. To eat pancakes together in a kitchen with a table big enough for three.
To pretend, instead of plot, a future for us.
I scrubbed at my own face with both hands, trying to get the fantasy out, before remembering how badly I needed coffee. Rosie scrambled onto a stool at the counter, kicking her feet, already at home.
“Can I help?” she said. Kieran nodded.
“You’re going to be my sous chef. That means, if I need a whisk or an egg, you get it for me, right?”
She solemnly nodded.
He set her up with a bowl and let her crack the eggs. She did so with horrifying abandon, managing to obliterate one, splash yolk all over her wrist, and laugh so hard at the carnage that Kieran had to join in.
I tried to imagine my case manager and my regular babysitter watching this—Rosie, covered in sugar and shell bits, her mother clutching a mug and watching while a known murderer helped measure flour like it was the most natural thing in the world.
After a while, Rosie got bored and wandered away to count the birds outside the window. Kieran, with sleeves rolled, kept at the pancakes.
His face changed around her; it softened, even now. I’d never seen him look anything but dangerous, or at least ready for it. But here he looked tired, a man at the end of a long emergency.
And…he looked happy. Like he belonged.
For a second, I thought I could maybe like him again…but then he caught me watching.
“Can you sprinkle chocolate chips?” he asked.
“Sure,” I said.
I poured a small pyramid into my palm, dropped them in trailing lines, unable to fake indifference. Up close, Kieran’s hands were ridiculous—those bruiser’s fingers lumbering as he tried to pick out a few chips at a time, failing, letting them tumble out by the dozen. When I offered to help, he hesitated, then let me guide his hand, our pinkies touching, then knotting, then pretending never to have touched at all.
He kept his eyes polite, never climbing above platonic, but every inch of him thrummed with the memory of the night before. With the memory of me. My skin remembered, too, raw at the waist from where he’d pulled me closer, from where I’d peeled myself away.
The pancakes were good. Rosie ate hers with a plastic fork, piling butter higher than the pancakes. As she worked through the stack, she carried on a running commentary about the birds out back, the weird icicles on the eaves, whether snow-shoveling was an actual job.
Kieran watched her, attention toggling between the pattern of syrup on her hands and the unbroken snowline outside. In another universe, you could drop this scene in the middle of a wholesome sitcom and forget about the blood in their lineage. But I’d seen the crime scene photos, even prosecuted some of the cases. This peace, this domesticity…it was a lie.
I stacked plates as we finished, scraping the mess into the garbage disposal. Rosie drifted back to the living room, drawn by the promise of a TV remote and a blinding spectrum of cable cartoons. Kieran lingered in the kitchen with me, cleaning up like we really were a family. .
I leveled my voice as I rinsed the last plate. “So who was it?”
He blinked. “Who?”
“You said someone was following me. Besides you. So—who?” I shut off the tap and turned, drying my hands on a dish towel. “Or is it another mystery?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He braced his hands on the counter, shoulders tense. “But I can’t be everywhere. That’s why you’re here.”
