Page 70 of Velvet Betrayal
I stared at my coffee, watching the swirl of almond milk and gray light. “Probably. If it kept Rosie safer, yes. If it kept the headlines quiet, doubly yes. But mostly it wouldn’t have mattered. He would have found a way to destroy himself for my sake, even if I told him to stay away. So. Here we are.” I met his eyes. “You’re not mad I slept with him again, are you?”
Alek considered, then shrugged. “It’s your body, Ruby. I mean, I wish you wouldn’t. For your own sake. But you already have a child with him. So, I don’t know. Try not to have another one?”
I made a face. “How generationally Russian of you.”
He snorted, and for a second we both laughed, the tension breaking. He pushed a box of tissues toward me, and I didn’t bother to ask if he thought I’d need them for my nose or my feelings. “What do you know about Russians?”
“Only that you’re all fucking pains in my ass,” I said.
“Yeah, that sounds right.”
Then, for a while, we just let the morning breathe—quiet, broken by little clicks and sighs as we settled into the kind of misery only survivors and prosecutors understand. I pagedthrough the open case files on my desk, comforted by their heft, the way nothing inside could surprise or hurt me. The top folder was the grand jury investigation into the Callahan family—my family, in the courts’ perverse sense of genealogy, and according to fucking Tristan Callahan himself.
"Did you know," Alek said, not looking up, "that the probability of an organized crime witness making it to trial in Boston has dropped forty percent since 2009?"
"I didn't know the number," I said.
"It's a bad number," he said, closing the folder. "You always think they're going to stop before it reaches you."
“You still want me to do the ceremony tomorrow?” I asked. “We could postpone, say it’s for weather or something, maybe relocate inside—”
“If there’s a bounty on you, and there’s a decentralized app of kills-for-hire, and you’re being protected by your baby daddy’s brother, I don’t see how visibility could be a bad thing. Kieran can think about this app shit, but I’m more interested in the DOJ—and the more publicity you have and the sooner you’re sworn in, the more insulated you are from that shit. You should do it.”
“You sound certain.”
“You keep throwing variables my way,” he said. “My most challenging project.”
“Ew.”
“I get to make fun of you. At least give me that.”
“Fine,” I said. “So what do you think I should do?”
“I think you need to call a friendly but reputable reporter. Erica Fields, Herald, maybe? Make sure she has a tip ready for the press conference after the ceremony tomorrow.” He hummed. “You put her on the story, embargo it until after the conference, then pretend you don’t know how it leaked. Turn the city’s tabloid appetite to your advantage.” He smiled, tight andcold. “Makes you look less like the target and more like the tip of the spear.”
“I hate the media,” I said. I didn’t, not really, but I hated how they could murder nuance in a headline and how power was always the most convenient villain.
“You are the media,” he said. “Whether you like it or not. Stop ceding ground you don’t have to.”
“So then what?”
“So then go into the press conference. Tell them that Mickey Russell, a man who broke into your house, ended up dead. That you tried him years ago for almost murdering his wife. The public will immediately be on your side. Then drop the fact that the DOJ is investigating you because they had turned him into a CI working for the Callahan family. Pretend you’re not upset. Pretend they’re just doing their due diligence. Tell the media you back their investigation. Tell them you didn’t call the police because you panicked and you didn’t want your daughter to find out. Announce your divorce.”
I blinked. “Oh, so just…just that?”
He nodded, like a full audit of my life—confession to scandal—was as routine as reading donor names at a fundraiser. “Just that,” he said, but his jaw tightened like he was bracing for the spin. “You’ll get the hardest questions out of the way at once. If you look scared, it’s over. If you look like you give zero fucks, it’s catnip for the morning shows. And whoever wants you dead…well, they have less reason to kill you if the secrets are already out.”
“What about Kieran’s involvement? The fact that he killed Russell? That he defended me? The DOJ knows that Kieran and I are involved.”
He winced, like the memory of my testimony in Fitzgerald’s office was a hangover that never let up. “Don’t lie, but don’t volunteer. If anyone asks if you’re romantically involved—if theyuse the word affair—say you’re not talking about your private life out of respect for the ongoing investigation. The less you acknowledge, the less they can spin against you.”
“But the DOJ will also go on the offensive. They’ll leak the info. Everyone will know. What about Mickey’s body in the Charles?”
“Let them gossip. Half the city only got out of Boston Latin because they could memorize dirt on the principal’s wife.” He leaned in, dropping his voice. “If you want this to end well, or at least not in abject humiliation, you need to stay on the offensive. Nobody roots for the mobster’s girlfriend. But everyone roots for the DA who won’t back down.”
“You’re not answering my question,” I said. “Okay, so in this version of events, I shot Mickey Russell in self-defense. Then what? How does he get in the river?”
Alek studied me, then said quietly, “Don’t offer a story unless you’re cornered. If the grand jury goes there, say you called your lawyer, and your lawyer advised you to limit comment for the safety of your daughter and yourself. If you walked away and left the body, say you panicked and can’t remember. If the world asks how Russell ended up in the Charles, blame the same people coming for your head now.” He shrugged. “There are a thousand plausible hands to toss a corpse in this city. Let them spin their wheels. You know how to be quiet. Ruby, you’re a lawyer. Be a lawyer.”
