Page 64 of Velvet Betrayal
That got Kieran’s attention. He looked at Alek, then at me, then back again. “Yeah. But we don’t have a choice, do we?”
Alek recalibrated, lips tight. He looked old, suddenly—like he’d spent the night running every nightmare scenario and hated all of them. “No,” he said. “But you can let me handle the public side.”
“Yeah,” I said, not sorry. “We will.”
The three of us just stood there, marooned by the honesty of it. Kieran took the out and drifted down the hall, towel still at his throat, clearing dishes with a kind of brute efficiency. It always amazed me how men who ran on violence could switch to housework, like scrubbing a kitchen could erase centuries of old instincts.
Alek stayed at the counter. I could tell he wanted to say something just to me—warn, or scold, or maybe just commiserate—but I was tired of being everyone’s emotional lint trap. As soon as Kieran’s hulking form moved out of sight, I let the mask slip, let Alek see how brittle I was.
“You love him, don’t you?” he said, voice quiet. Not judgmental. Just the question I’d been avoiding for weeks.
I opened my mouth to lie. To say no, or not like that, or it’s complicated. But the words wouldn’t come. What would’vebeen the point? It was already written on my face, and Alek had known me too long to pretend otherwise.
I laughed once, sharp and hollow. “Does it matter?”
He didn’t look angry. He just looked tired. Something in his expression softened, the way your heart does when someone you care about walks into the fire you tried to pull them back from. “Oh, Ruby,” he murmured, stepping forward and wrapping me in a hug.
He didn’t smell like cologne or aftershave. He smelled like sweat and nerves and too many nights trying to keep the world from collapsing. But his arms were steady, and I let myself lean into him—just for a moment. Just long enough to admit it without saying it out loud.
He held me until my hands stopped shaking.
When he pulled back, his gaze was steady. “Please be careful,” he said. “If you need me to come get you, anywhere, anytime, I will.”
“I know,” I said.
“So what is this…app thing he’s talking about? Why haven’t we heard about it at the office?”
I hesitated, the question more dangerous than it sounded. “The Crew—it’s some new thing, like Uber for killers. Kieran said it’s invite-only. Most jobs don’t get filled—it’s all bots and decoys. But if you pay enough and have the right tools, you can crowdsource a hit for less than it costs to lease a Lexus in Wellesley.”
Alek’s eyes narrowed, then locked on mine. “Any evidence?”
“We took the first hitter’s phone. It was wiped—just the app, no contacts, no name. Burner from a gas station. Kieran probably still has it.”
Alek blinked. “Thefirsthitter?”
I nodded, tight-lipped. “Mmhm…there have been two of them now, plus some sketchy guys who came looking for us in the mountains.”
Alek chewed on that for a second, blowing out a long breath.
“Get it to me,” Alek said. “Or at least send screenshots. If it’s real, I’ll have to cyber plant it with a task force. If someone’s running syndicate-level digital ops, even the feds will care.”
“Tristan Callahan thinks the person targeting me is inside law enforcement. Or government.”
That got Alek’s attention. Fast.
He set his jaw. “I’m going to ignore the part where you’re now taking intel from a Callahan and ask the obvious—based on what?”
Kieran, still stacking dishes in the next room, didn’t miss a beat. “Access. Timing. Pattern of escalation. Someone’s running jobs using insider infrastructure. This kind of hitlist doesn’t build itself.”
Alek absorbed that in silence, jaw working. “Of course it’s coming from the inside,” he snapped. “Where else do you buy that kind of access? The question is who. That’s my job now. He can be your shadow. You let me handle the rest.”
It was so simple—this division of labor and loyalty—that I almost nodded out of pure habit. I felt tired, suddenly, like my bones had been quietly siphoned out overnight, leaving just enough to keep moving forward. “Okay,” I said, not even sure who I was talking to. “Okay.”
Alek stared at me a second too long. “For the record,” he said, “I’m not okay with this. But if it keeps you alive, I’ll do whatever it takes. Rosie deserves to grow up with her mother.”
And as Alek left, I should’ve felt safer. We were circling the wagons, finally figuring this out…finally getting our shit together.
But it just felt like another crack had formed beneath us.
