Page 35 of Velvet Betrayal
Tristan raised an eyebrow.
“I wouldn’t have if he hadn’t tried to kill his wife.”
Tristan smiled. So did I. “You’re good at your job,” I said.
Ruby laughed, flat. “Yeah, I’m being real good at it right now.”
“What was he supposed to give the feds?” Tristan asked.
“I don’t know,” Ruby said, and I could see how much that stung her.
“Shit,” I muttered.
It made a new kind of sense—why the job on Ruby had gone up so fast, why The Crew wasn’t just background noise anymore. If someone had gone to Russell first—offered him money, leverage, protection—to take Ruby out, and he botched it? Then someone else might’ve picked up where he left off. The job didn’t die with him.
Ruby stared into her mug like it might give her a name.
“But you took care of that,” Tristan said.
I nodded. “Because he came for her. I didn’t know there was anyone behind it. I thought it was personal.”
“It was,” Tristan said. “But it might not have been just personal. You kill a problem, someone else with the same motive steps in.”
Ruby looked up then—clear-eyed, focused. “Tell me what I’m missing. You know the pattern. If Russell was the first attempt and someone else picked up the job, who is the threat now?”
Tristan’s gaze flicked to Rosie, then back to Ruby, and something in him softened—just for a breath. “If it’s not my outfit, and not a rogue, then it’s someone bigger. A client who doesn’t trust syndicates. Someone with reach and no patience.”
He tapped the edge of his coffee cup. “If they’re using the Crew, they’re using it because they don’t want accountability. That’s not a rival. That’s a civilian.”
“A civilian with money,” I said. “And motive.”
Tristan nodded once. “That’s what makes it messy.”
Ruby absorbed it with a wince, her mind already turning over the angles. “So you think Russell wasn’t the end of it. He was the opening shot.”
“I think someone sent him,” Tristan said. “Someone without contacts of their own. And when that didn’t work, they went to The Crew.”
“Which means they’re not an operator,” I added. “They’re a client. Outsourcing the violence.”
Ruby’s eyes narrowed. “Then we’re looking for money, not muscle. Someone who wants me dead, but doesn’t have the reach to pull it off themselves.”
Tristan nodded. “Not a rival family. Not a fed. Someone close to the system, but not in it. A fixer. A lawyer. A firm. A judge’s campaign fund. Whatever it is, they’re not shooting their own gun. They’re renting someone else’s.”
Ruby stared at her hands, then at the strip of sunlight crawling across the floor.
I recognized that look. It was the same one she wore before a closing argument, the world shrunk to the edge of her skin.
“I don’t want to believe that,” she said. “But—”
She didn’t finish. Tristan grinned. “You don’t have to. Whatever you believe, that’s what will become the truth. The important thing is, you know enough to survive it. You’re not prey. Not anymore.”
Rosie came back from the fish tank, catching the last flicker of her mother’s composure. She squeezed into the booth next to me, tuned in to the mood, but all she said was, “Can I have another muffin?” I passed her the basket.
Tristan said nothing for a while. Rosie made an excited noise as a fish darted past and she went back to look at the tank, her nose pressed to the glass.
“The Crew will stand down,” he said. “That’s my promise. I’ll monitor the traffic for the next day or so, but you’re no longera counterparty in anyone’s contract, Ruby. Not unless you make new enemies—which, I have to warn you, you’re quite adept at.”
“So what now?” Ruby asked.
