Page 26 of Velvet Betrayal
He let the words settle. It was controlled, like he was handing me a live grenade and waiting to see if I’d pull the pin.
“I don’t want to not exist. I’m the DA of Suffolk County, Kieran. I get to go on a little vacation. That’s it.”
“Then don’t disappear. Face it down. But you won’t face it down alive if you’re on your own.” His voice was gentler than I’d heard in years. “They’ll find you if you go back to regular life without protection.”
“I ran for DA on an anti-corruption campaign. On an anti-mobster campaign. On an anti-Callahan campaign.”
He barked out a laugh. “I’m not sure what you think you’re telling me right now.”
“That I did all that and managed to survive—”
“Thanks to me,” he interrupted.
I stared at him, eyes narrowed. “Kieran…you don’t get to take credit just because you happened to be in the right place at the right time.”
“Oh, Rubes…you don’t even know the half of it.” He glanced over at Rosie to make sure she was still asleep, then leaned in close enough that I could feel the heat of his breath on my neck. “I sat outside your place and watched you every night formonths…because Tristan wanted you out of the picture, and I didn’t know who else might. You’re alive right now because ofme. You should start thinking about that when you take risks.”
I stiffened. “I made promises to my constituents.”
“Okay. And how can you keep your promises if you’re dead?”
He let it hang: the fact that I belonged to him, no matter what I believed, what I did, what promises I’d made. It made me want to hurt him, just a little, so I could believe I was still on my own side.
“I shouldn’t have taken you,” he said, so quiet I almost missed it. “I should have called. Let you hate me from a distance and just sent money and flowers and a couple of bodyguards and called it a day.”
I stared at my water glass, traced the rim with a shaky pinky. I thought of his hands, how they could cradle or break in the same motion. “You’re not wrong. You should have.”
He smiled, but it was empty. “But you would have ignored it. You’d have rolled your eyes at the threat and bull-charged your way down the courthouse steps and right into the sights of whoever wants this enough to get through the door without a key. I love that about you. But I have to protect you. And, honestly, Rubes, I have to protect her too.”
I smirked. All those years forcing the world to treat me like an adult, and here I was: two blocks from the Boston Common, stashed away by a mobster ex who still called me by my lawschool nickname and poured hotel club soda like it was holy water. “So you’ll leverage your brother’s criminal empire to keep your ex and your daughter from getting murdered. That’s your pitch?”
“It’s a pretty good one. Unless you have a better offer?”
“No. I don’t.” I reached for my glass, then changed my mind and, for the first time in hours, really met his eyes. “Okay. Let’s say I agree. How does this actually work, once Tristan gets involved?”
“I don’t really know,” he said.
“What do you mean you don’t know? Isn’t he your brother?”
“He is. He’s also the boss, Rubes. I don’t know what he’ll do at the best of times.”
Kieran wasn’t a liar, but omission was his native tongue, and I’d spent a decade reading men’s faces for a living. His was shuttered. Whenever he ran out of answers, he’d retreat, let the silence fill, let you imagine the rest.
“So we’re just… gambling,” I said.
He shrugged. “Not a bad strategy in this family.”
“That is not how lawyers work.”
“Good thing your baby-daddy is a lawless miscreant.”
He was right. I wasn’t. This…it wasn’t my world, and there was a good chance I would get myself and maybe my daughter killed if I tried navigating something I didn’t understand. I was sitting in a luxury hotel, several floors above the frozen city, on the eve of giving myself to a world I’d spent a career trying to destroy. I should have felt panic, or fury, but mostly I just felt tired. And the tiredness made space for something like relief. It was easier to stop fighting him and start plotting the next move.
I stood, a little unsteady from the wine, and almost tripped over Rosie’s sock at the foot of her bed. She’d kicked off the comforter and sprawled, starfish.
Kieran caught me before I fell. “Hey,” he whispered. “Don’t fall. I can’t deal with you being hurt.”
“I’m not going to break.”
