19. Chapter Nineteen Kieran
Chapter Nineteen: Kieran
S he had told me to stay away.
I hadn’t listened.
It had been weeks. Long enough for her stitches to come out, for the bruising to fade, for the city to forget the near-scandal she almost walked into at the ER. But I hadn’t forgotten. I hadn’t stopped watching.
I told myself I was doing my job. That I was protecting her from Tristan, from what he might do if he thought she was getting too close. That she was still a threat to the family. That I was still following orders.
But it was a lie.
I wasn’t standing outside her office building at midnight because of orders. I was here because I needed to be. Because every day I didn’t see her, didn’t touch her, didn’t hear her voice—I went a little more insane.
She hadn’t noticed me yet. She never did. Or maybe she did and just didn’t want to look too closely. Either way, I wasn’t hiding. Not really. If she glanced even once, really looked, she’d see me.
I leaned against the hood of the car like I owned the fucking street, cigarette burning low between my fingers, hood pulled down just enough to keep the streetlights out of my eyes.
She moved like she didn’t know someone was watching her. Like no one had ever laid claim to her. Like her body didn’t belong to anyone.
I wanted to change that.
Not just because it would make my job easier. Not because I needed leverage. But because it drove me fucking insane to think of her walking around like that—untouched, unclaimed, pretending like what happened between us hadn’t shaken her just as much as it had shattered me.
She’d told me to stay away.
But she hadn’t said I couldn’t watch. Hadn’t said I couldn’t want.
And fuck me, I wanted. Wanted to push her up against the wall of that pristine campaign office and make her say my name like a prayer and a curse, until there was no space left between hate and need.
She thought she could shut me out. Pretend I wasn’t circling, waiting, hunting.
But she didn’t understand.
I wasn’t going anywhere. And when she finally looked up—really looked—I’d be right there. Waiting to drag her back where she belonged.
She was leaving work—late, again—just like the last few times I’d seen her, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d watched Ruby and she didn’t seem like she was drowning in something. Work, maybe. Pressure. Something else.
Something to do with me.
She wouldn’t tell the police about me, I didn’t think. Optics would be bad. Candidate for DA, hard on crime…and she couldn’t even shake the spare Callahan.
Over time, it had become clearer that Ruby was a problem that I wasn’t able to solve.
The only one I had been able to think about for weeks.
Since I promised my brother I would take care of her so she wouldn’t be a problem for us.
Yeah, that was going great. Really fucking well. Look at me, Tristan. She doesn’t even know I’m here.
I was letting myself spiral. I had done my due diligence about people in her life: Aleksey Ivanov, campaign manager and closest friend, Massachusetts certified attorney, first a public defender, now working for the DA.
Clean as a whistle, he’d been an asylum seeker with his mother when he was twelve-years-old, leaving his sister and father behind in Southampton.
Julian Garcia, soon-to-be ex-husband, also clean.
He had married Ruby only a couple of months before her daughter was born, so I had to assume she had been an accident.
Our relationship overlapped…maybe…a little.
But it wasn’t like we’d ever been really serious.
And I’d ghosted her, so I didn’t really have a leg to stand on.
Still, I couldn’t help but bristle at the idea that some yuppie had taken my place.
It wasn’t my fucking business. I told myself that too, but it didn’t stop the itch under my skin. It didn’t stop the way I watched him with her, the way I tried to figure out if they were still fucking, if he still touched her when no one was looking.
If Ruby still let him in.
She had a nasty habit of doing that, letting people in and not seeing where they’d tear her apart. Maybe it was the way she grew up. Always thinking there was some good to find.
I didn’t know.
Maybe it was that she thought she knew best, thought she didn’t need anyone looking out for her. Thought she could handle this on her own.
The way she handled it so far had been with a hurt hand, getting pushed in the water, almost getting beaten up by one of the Callahan men.
She healed up, but fuck me if I was going to let that happen again. She wasn’t built for it. She wasn’t like us.
She was just a regular person who was in over her head.
She was so focused on the Callahans, so sure she knew where the threat was coming from. But the thing about threats? They didn’t always come from the direction you expect. Growing up with Malachy Callahan as my father had hammered that lesson into my head over, and over, and over again.
It was colder than I expected for autumn, a biting chill that cut through layers. Not freezing, not yet, but colder than I remembered. That time of year when the wind picked up, ripped around the edges of things and tried to steal all the warmth from wherever it could.
The buildings downtown were like that too—bare and mean and cold, like even the bricks wanted to tear the heat from a person. A city with sharp edges. A city that made people pay. A city she should have stayed away from, but a city she wanted to save.
A city I needed to save her from.
Even if she didn’t want me.
I needed her to stay alive. I needed her to stay safe.
I should have left. Should have turned my back and let her have her little campaign, let her stay in her polished world, pretending she wasn’t in deep with men like me.
But then I saw it: a car parked two spots down from mine, engine running low.
The driver wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at her. At first, I thought it was some political reporter or another crony from Tristan’s payroll, but no—this was different.
The guy wasn’t taking notes, wasn’t on his phone. He was watching her like he was waiting. Like he was looking for an opportunity. And I knew that fucking look. Predatory. Calculating. A man who thought he was in control.
My gut told me it wasn’t Callahan business. It wasn’t Tristan, and it wasn’t the Orsinis. I knew every player in Boston’s game. But I didn’t know him. And that made him a problem.
I rolled the cigarette between my fingers, thinking. Thinking about how close he was to her. Thinking about how long he’d been sitting there. About how many more seconds would tick by before I had to make a choice.
The hood of my sweatshirt was slipping down. I yanked it back into place, kept myself hidden. He didn’t see me yet, didn’t notice I was watching.
It wouldn’t be that way for long.
Ruby walked out by herself. My gaze darted between her and the man in the car. She was alone, and I didn’t want to reveal myself.
She was too focused on unlocking her car, one hand rubbing at her temple like the day had already wrung her out. If I knew her, she’d barely eaten. She’d been running herself into the ground trying to prove something. And this asshole? He was waiting for his moment.
Just like I had been.
She would’ve had my head for that one. I told myself that as I took the first few steps away from my car and toward his.
I told myself that this was the difference. This was the reason I couldn’t let go. I was protecting her. I was keeping her safe, even from Tristan.
But I still wasn’t fucking telling her, and maybe I should have felt worse about that than I did.
Leaves scattered ahead of me, rushing into the dark. I kept my pace slow, casual. One hand jammed in my pocket, other one clenched tight.
I stepped forward, closing the distance between me and the guy’s car. I wasn’t subtle about it. I didn’t have to be. The second he saw me coming, his head snapped up, body tensing.
He knew.
Even before I rapped my knuckles against his driver’s side window, he knew exactly who the fuck I was. Good. Let him be scared.
He rolled the window down an inch. Not enough. “Problem?”
I smiled. It wasn’t friendly.
“Yeah. Problem is, you’ve been sitting here staring at someone who doesn’t know you exist. That’s a problem,” I said. “Why are you sitting here and watching her?”
His mouth twitched, eyes narrowing on me. But he didn’t do shit. He sat there, hands on the wheel, eyes on me. Waiting to see what I’d do. Waiting to see if I’d back off.
I didn’t.
The wind picked up, icy gusts whipping through the lot and chilling me to the bone. I didn’t move. Didn’t flinch. And neither did he.
His mouth twitched. “Just waiting on someone.”
I tilted my head, considering. He obviously wasn’t. He wasn’t particularly discreet. The Rossis had been disbanded years ago and the Orsini-Callahan union was well cemented. I didn’t recognize this man and I didn’t think another faction would be trying to take over Boston.
So who was he?
Why was he watching Ruby?
What the fuck did he want with her?
“Yeah? Who?”
That gave him pause.
He glanced at Ruby again, like maybe he still had a shot at whatever he was planning, but I stepped closer, blocking his view entirely. I didn’t say anything else. I just looked at him.
Long enough that his fingers twitched on the wheel, long enough that the muscle in his jaw ticked, long enough that he realized I wasn’t moving.
The guy thought he was tough. That much was obvious.
He thought he had time, thought he had the upper hand. But I could tell the moment it shifted. The moment he knew I wasn’t some fucking intern from her campaign. The moment he realized I was Kieran fucking Callahan—I wasn’t Alek. That I wasn’t one of her precious law and order types.
She thought I was her problem. But she had no fucking idea who else was watching.
A beat. Then he shifted the car into reverse. “Didn’t know she had security.”
I let my smile sharpen. “She doesn’t.”
The guy didn’t ask any more questions. He pulled out, disappearing down the street, and I didn’t watch him go. I was still watching her.
Ruby, oblivious, slipping into her car, exhausted and unaware.
She didn’t look up. She didn’t look around. She didn’t see me. Not anymore.
But she clearly needed me.
She needed someone to look after her.
I should have stopped. But I didn’t.
I should have let her go. But I wouldn’t.
She thought she was done with me. But I wasn’t done with her.
So I got in my car. And I followed her.