Page 47 of Velvet Betrayal
I loitered on the steps, watching the city shake off the night and brace for a Monday. I pretended I wasn’t waiting for her, but when Ruby blew through the revolving door—red lipstick, hair up, black wool coat buttoned to the chin—I knew my morning started with her. She didn’t see me until I stood up off the granite bench, wagged an eyebrow, and caught her eyes over the heads of three kids and a guy in a hi-viz vest trying to mop up the lobby.
“Are you following me?” she asked without looking at me, voice even.
“Making sure you don’t get jumped on the steps of City Hall.”
She didn’t slow down. “You realize how this looks.”
“Of course,” I said. “So tell me to get lost. Make it convincing.”
She shot me a look, brief and biting. “Don’t think I won’t.”
“Could be fun, actually,” I said. “Boss me around, maybe add in a slap or two.”
“You don’t have to make it sound like foreplay.”
“Itisforeplay.”
Her silence said enough. We walked together, not touching, but close enough to draw questions if anyone was watching. And someone always was.
“You’re already taking heat,” I said, quieter. “Might as well be for something that matters.”
She exhaled, sharp through her nose. “You showing up like this doesn’t help.”
“Disagree,” I said. “But you can yell at me later.”
When we reached the landing, she stopped just short of the doors. “You’re not coming in.”
“I know.”
“If anyone asks…”
“You threatened to have me arrested. I’ll look appropriately chastised.”
Her mouth twitched—something between a smile and a sigh. “You make everything harder than it needs to be.”
“Still walked you here,” I said. “And I’ll be here tomorrow, too.”
She looked at me fully, eyes sharp. “Don’t.”
I held her gaze. “Too late.”
Ruby, through the scanners. Ruby, up the stairs, coat over her arm. She didn’t look back, but I watched until she vanished behind the metal detectors.
I tried to stop myself from trailing after her.
I lasted ten minutes.
There was nothing else to do.
I hit the building’s coffee shop—really just a box of bad light and institutional scones, but it had a line, it had people, it had the churn of foot traffic and voices. The geometry was good: nobody could pass through without being seen, and the plate glass across the street gave a panoramic view of every approach. Old muscle memory took over, and before I knew it, I’d alreadypicked a square grey table and checked every angle for escape or ambush.
When the cold let up, I went out to the plaza and did the slow, loitering walk of a nobody killing time before a meeting. I spent the first hour watching people move. The suits with too much swagger were probably lawyers or lobbyists. The ones with lanyards and bad shoes—city staffers, most of them, pretending they ran shit. Real power didn’t dress like that. The real power came and went with no fuss: clean coats, clean cuts, good instincts. I clocked three runners—fast on their feet, didn’t linger, carried nothing but still managed to leave nervous eyes in their wake. Two watchers in the smoking cluster on the east side. One was faking it. The other wasn’t.
The ones who wanted to be seen were safest. It was the ones who moved quiet that I kept my eyes on.
I kept a low profile all afternoon, moving when the wind picked up or the shadows changed. At lunch, I cased the perimeter again and ate a bagel. I chewed slow and watched, piecing together the comforting rhythms of Ruby’s workday: she went out once at two, walked with two women I didn’t recognize, heads close, talking murder or almonds or whatever DAs talked about. She didn’t notice me, not even when I ducked behind an ice-locked bike rack as she passed, winter sun carving diamonds off her hair.
Nothing about the day set off alarms.
