Page 65 of Velvet Betrayal
Someone was after me…and we were running out of time.
Kieran
Ruby didn’t move for a long time after Ivanov left—just stood in my kitchen, staring at the her coffee mug, like if she kept her eyes on it long enough, the next disaster might not materialize. I watched her, waiting for the first sign she was ready to run or break something, but she just breathed, slow and careful.
“Does he always get under your skin like that?” I asked.
She shook her head, not looking at me. “I’ve never seen him that worried before.”
“So you two are…close,” I said, because I couldn’t help myself.
She shot me a look, sharp enough to cut. “Are you seriously trying to figure out if we’ve slept together right now?”
“Is it a bad time?” I asked, deadpan.
“We have not,” she said, flat. “It’s never been that kind of friendship. And he’s mostly into men, so.”
“But he does like women,” I pointed out. “And you’re gorgeous.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not thanking you for that. There’s just so much to unpack, I don’t even know where to start.”
“Try anyway,” I said, letting a smile break through. “He’s the only guy I’ve ever met who can out-logic my guilt. But I like annoying him, too.”
She huffed. “You like annoying everyone, Kieran. That’s your love language.”
“Aww, so you do feel my love.”
She ignored that, just twisted the mug between her palms. The grey clouds had been trying to decide between rain or snow all morning, and I guess they’d finally decided on an unhappy combination: sleet, scraping against the window.. “How bad is it going to get, Kieran? Really.”
I went honest, because there wasn’t anything else left. “It’ll look like a lull, and then, in the next twenty-four hours, someone will make a move. Tristan can stall the out-of-towners, up the price, confuse the platform for a while. But it won’t end. You’re better at politics than street math, so…just imagine the world’s worst primary: every psycho with a burner and a grudge gets a ballot.”
She watched the clouds smudge out the skyline. “Great. Not terrifying at all.”
“You’re not alone,” I said. “Not ever.”
She snorted. “That’s less comforting than you think.” Then she looked up, eyeing the fixtures in my kitchen. “Can I ask you something?”
“Yeah. Anything. I’ll try to answer.”
“Why did you buy this house?” she said, and I frowned, caught off guard. She kept going. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a gorgeous place, and it must have cost a fortune. A brownstone, here? But you had a good apartment. You already owned property. As far as I know, you’ve never been in a serious relationship, or—sorry, tangent. I’m just curious.”
I knew the answer, but I’d never said it out loud. Not to her, not even to myself when I signed the paperwork and the realtorslid the keys across the table at closing. It would’ve been easy to say “tax shelter” or “investment,” or the story I sold everyone else: my father got drunk one Christmas and said no Callahan would ever own a house in Beacon Hill, so I went and bought one the second I could, for the spite value alone. Maybe he could see my house from hell.
But that was a lie, or only a sliver of the truth, and as she arched one skeptical eyebrow at me, I realized I wanted to give her the real answer.
“I bought it on a dare,” I said finally.
She made a face. I held up both hands, not even trying to smile. “No, for real. The old owner was this eighty-year-old lady, died alone, no family. The place went to the state, then the auction. I went to look at a classic car parked in her garage, but I saw how the sun hit the kitchen, and I imagined—just for a second—that maybe someday I’d have more than a couch to crash on. That, if some freak accident happened, I might wake up to something normal. Family. Breakfast. Coffee. You know. It’s Sunday, raining outside, and I have two kids and a dog, and the dog brings me my slippers. Silly things.”
She stared at me, all the sharpness gone, and then her mouth ticked up, just a little, and it ruined me. “You bought a two-to-four-million-dollar brownstone because you wanted a kitchen with sunlight.”
“It’s a killer kitchen,” I said, sheepish.
She snort-laughed, shaking her head. “You are genuinely fucked up,” she said, but there was something soft in it, something that caught and lingered.
“Also, it was a little more than that.”
“A little more than four million? Jesus.”
