Page 66 of Velvet Betrayal
“No, I mean…” And here, for once, I hesitated. “You would’ve liked the owner. Sonia. She was a teacher, back in the fifties—one of the only women teaching at MIT then. Her house was fullof books, not even the smart ones, but detective stories and old anthologies and first editions with the covers taped five times over. I just…thought it deserved better than to get gutted by some asshole developer.” I shrugged. “Didn’t even change the walls.”
She blinked, once, and I could see it hit her—the memory of a Beacon Hill kitchen, sunlight on tile, the ghosts of lives half-lived in a city that would bury you under a new money condo as soon as you look at them. “That’s actually really nice,” she said, like it hurt to admit it.
“Don’t tell my brother.”
“Your brother and I aren’t really on speaking terms.”
“Good. If you want my advice, keep it that way.”
“I don’t want your advice,” she shot back, but she was smiling now, just a little. She turned the mug in her hands, thinking. “Okay, last thing before I go get my daughter and pretend the world is normal: What do we do, now that it’s—what, out there?”
I stood up, close enough to touch her, but not making that move—yet.. “We play defense,” I said. “And we don’t panic. I’ll put a guy on you, one Rosie will actually like, and I’ll…” My brain ran ahead, scanning for cracks. “I’ll help Alek. If we know who’s running the Crew account, we can shut it down.”
She let out a breath, slow. “And if you get killed in the process?”
There was still that smile, bruised but alive. “Then at least someone will have made some money off it.”
“That’s not funny,” she said, but her chin set.
“I’m a little funny.”
“Fine. But only if you let me do the ceremony. I need to be sworn in—publicly. In front of cameras, voters, the whole damn city. You said it yourself—the only way to survive this is to stay loud, stay visible, make them chase a harder target.”
I wanted to argue, but seeing her like that—vivid and stubborn and hellbent on being the last one standing—made it impossible. “Do the swearing-in,” I said. “But let me handle the route. And stay in public after. No detours. No lone-wolf shit.”
She exhaled. “Kieran, I know you’re trying to protect me. But you’re a Callahan, Malachy’s favorite from what I’ve read. If the public sees me with you—” She hesitated, just for a second. “It could look like I was never clean. Like the DA’s office is a front.”
“Aw, you think I was my dad’s favorite son? That’s sweet.”
“Kieran.”
I snorted. “It’s Boston. Nobody’s clean. And if people think you’re in bed with a Callahan—literally or politically—it’ll just make the Crew hesitate. They won’t know if they should shoot you or send flowers.”
She rolled her eyes but didn’t, pointedly, deny she was sleeping with one. I pulled her in—not hard, just enough to anchor her—and felt the tremor running through her, small but steady. “You can’t run,” I said. “Not from this, not from Boston. You got elected. You’re the DA until you decide otherwise.”
She tucked her face into my chest, just long enough for me to catch the scent of my shampoo in her hair—the warm, salt-vanilla one she used when she was too tired to remember her own. When she looked up again, I saw the plan snap back into place behind her eyes like a loaded chamber.
“I’ll do the ceremony,” she said. “But you and your brother better have the city on blue lockdown. No leaks. No trigger-happy freelancers. If anyone comes near me—or Rosie—” her voice turned to ice, “I end you, Kieran. Not just you, but everything you love.”
“Okay,” I said, brushing her hair behind her shoulder. “I promise I’ll keep you safe.”
I kissed the top of her head as she braced against me, pulling a breath like she was gearing up for war. Her whole body shuddered.
“I’m so scared, Kieran,” she whispered. “All of this—and I’m so fucking scared.”
I held her, breathing with her, letting the shiver drain out. “Me too,” I said, and she laughed into my t-shirt, the kind of laugh that fell apart before it even got started.
“You are? You don’t seem scared.”
“That’s the trick,” I told her, threading my fingers together at her spine, keeping her anchored just long enough she might actually believe me. “I’m always scared. I just learned to wear it like armor. You want to know the only time it went away?”
She drew back, already guessing, shaking her head like she could shake herself out of it. “Don’t say it,” she groaned, but I was going to anyway, because that’s what you do for the person you almost lost: you make it real.
“We were working out together,” I said. “You know, after we started seeing each other? Our workouts kept overlapping, early in the morning. And you…you had that pink headband, and you said we were there to work out and you didn’t want anyone to find out about us, so you barely looked at me, but every time you ran by you’d screw up your face like you’d rather die than let your form get sloppy in front of me. You remember that?”
She rolled her eyes, but she smirked, just a little. “I remember you lifting twice as much as I did to show off, and then pulling something and blaming me.”
“That’s the moment,” I said, locking eyes with her. “All the noise—gone. No headlines, no family, no city, just you and me, and the certainty that I would rather tear every stitch in my body than let you think less of me.”
