Page 79 of Velvet Betrayal
His tone was casual, but the way his nail gouged the table—slow, circular, relentless—was not.
“I need names,” I said.
“Yeah, we all do. But your friend Alek is running the next steps on the legal side. Let him do it. Us, we got a different job: keep her alive until this shakes out.”
I nodded, the threat marrow-deep, and traced the soundtrack of creaking glassware and men’s laughter—fake, staged, as if performed for a jury—in the rooms upstream from us.
“About Alek. There’s something we need to talk about.”
Tristan raised his eyebrows.
“Sure,” he said. “Let’s.”
“He advised Ruby to go public with Russell’s death and her divorce. She’s going to do it.”
It was like watching a chess player announce checkmate when the rest of us couldn’t see the board.
Tristan swirled the last quarter-inch of Guinness, then set it down hard enough I half-expected it to shatter. “Not the worst move,” he said after a beat, grudgingly. “But it’s about as safe as smoking at a gas station.”
“She wants to control the story.” I didn’t bother hiding my admiration. “She’s good at it. Said she has a sympathetic journalist at the Herald who reported on Russell’s original arrest and won’t look kindly on him being used by the DOJ.”
“She’s not the only one who reads the Herald. You go loud, you can’t pull back. Every cop, every creditor, every old man counting on your silence—they’ll all see a dead girl walking. If not literally, then at least her political career.”
I waited. Tristan liked to give you the worst-case, then circle back with weaponized optimism. Family trait. Or just a tactic.
He laced his fingers, bone-white under the bar’s dead light. “If she’s going to do this—if she’s really going to play the card—what’s your angle, Kieran?”
I didn’t know. Not for sure. I wanted to believe I could thread the needle—keep her breathing, keep the family from going under, keep Rosie’s world from cracking in half.
But every version of the next few days ended in a red wash.
“I want her to win,” I said.
Tristan huffed through his nose. “Not the answer I expected. You love her.”
I finished the Guinness. “Didn’t say I wanted it for me.”
He looked at me, eyes narrowed.. “You ever consider what happens if she does make it through? What it means for us? For the family?”
He meant: for me. For the brother who’d broken every rule, who never gave a damn about legacy but still wound up holding the pieces no one else wanted. If Ruby made it—if she fought her way out, kept her kid safe, and stayed above water—that meant there was still a way through.
For her.
For me.
For all of us.
One that didn’t end in a funeral or a choice I’d spend the rest of my life trying to undo.
“It’s not about the family,” I said, but the lie twisted in my mouth. “I just don’t want Ruby or Rosie buried by the same bullshit that buried Dad. Ruby’s too smart for that.”
Tristan leaned in. “You don’t really think the city’s ever going to let them go, do you? It’s like traffic along the Charles: every time you think you’re free, you get funneled back into some unforgiving bottleneck. That’s how this works. Every safe exit is already mapped, by someone you’ll never see coming.”
I grinned, even though I didn’t feel it. “Good thing you raised me to take the ramps at speed.”
He barked a laugh—just one, sharp and ugly. “Don’t get yourself killed, Kieran.” All the pretense dropped, and for a second, he was the big brother again, nineteen and hungover. “I need you. All of us do.”
“So you’re not going to try to get me to talk her out of it?”
