27. Chapter Twenty-Seven Ruby
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Ruby
T he kitchen smelled like vodka and blood.
My hands were still wet, my fingertips pruned from how long I had been scrubbing. The sink was empty now, wiped down to its usual clean shine, but I could still see the red-tinted water swirling down the drain, still feel the sticky warmth of someone else’s blood on my skin.
Not someone else’s.
Russell’s.
I gripped the counter, forcing in a breath. The room felt too quiet. Kieran was somewhere nearby, making his calls, handling this like it was just another night, but I couldn’t stop hearing it. The fight. The struggle. The way Russell’s breath had rattled in his throat before Kieran—
I squeezed my eyes shut. No. No.
I had let this happen.
I had let Kieran take control.
I had let him talk me into sending that text to Alek. Had let him take my phone. Had let him call his people instead of mine. Had let him tell me to clean my goddamn kitchen like this was just another mess to scrub out of my life.
I shouldn’t have. I should have called Alek. I should have done something else. But I hadn’t.
And that was the part that ate at me.
The fact that, deep down, I knew Kieran had been right. I slammed a drawer shut harder than necessary, shoved the first-aid kit back where it belonged, tried to pretend my hands weren’t shaking as I wiped down the counters again. And again. And again. The house still felt wrong.
It was supposed to feel safe. I was supposed to feel safe. Instead, there was this, and the more I thought about it, the less real it seemed. It felt like it was happening to someone else. Not to me. Not to the newly elected DA of Boston.
I couldn’t even wrap my head around it. Hours ago, I had been celebrating, congratulating myself on a job well done. I was the first woman to hold the office, making history. Now I was here, cleaning up a crime scene in my own home. I made history again.
Not in a good way.
Everything else had blurred, bleeding into one long moment of chaos, until the noise from the struggle echoed in my head like a bad dream I couldn’t shake. But it wasn’t a dream.
I rubbed at a stain that wasn’t there, tried to make sense of what didn’t make sense. Tried to pretend this was just another tough day. Tried to pretend I could handle this on my own.
It should have felt worse, knowing what Russell had become.
But I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was my fault, that I was the one who pushed him to this.
That my success had been his trigger. He might’ve been a monster…
but maybe if a judge had given him a slap on the wrist, everyone would have been okay. Even Melody.
But that thought quickly stopped making sense.
I was only alive because of Kieran. And Melody, Russell’s ex, was only alive because of me.
He had saved me from this. He had stepped in when I couldn’t, wouldn’t. And I hated that I needed him to.
But I did. I really fucking did.
My hands wouldn’t stop shaking. I held them under the faucet, the water rushing hot and clean over my skin, trying to erase the memory of blood, the feeling of powerlessness.
I’d felt powerless too often lately…so often that it hurt.
I had power, according to all the rules that counted, but it was all a lie.
How long had I stood there, watching Russell die, feeling the shock of it coil tight around my ribs, while Kieran just handled it? Like he’d known this would happen. Like he’d seen it coming a mile away.
He’d been right. But that didn’t make it feel any less like a violation. Like a robbery of something I hadn’t realized was mine to lose.
My peace. My independence.
My goddamn life.
I shut off the water and reached for a towel, trying to dry my hands, trying to stop them from trembling. But I couldn’t. The adrenaline, the aftermath, the sheer weight of it all was too much.
I didn’t know what to do with myself. Didn’t know how to just stand there and let the silence stretch over me like a suffocating blanket.
The house felt wrong. It felt too big, too empty, too haunted by a presence I couldn’t shake.
Russell was dead, and the relief I thought I’d feel was nowhere to be found. I wasn’t relieved. I was just raw.
Because the only thing I felt was guilt. The only thing I knew was that I had let Kieran take control.
I turned away from the sink and forced my body to move.
The kitchen was spotless. I had no reason to keep standing here, staring at nothing, feeling like a stranger in my own house.
I didn’t even know where Kieran was, even though it felt like he was the master of this house.
Maybe in the living room, maybe making another call.
My feet moved before I could stop them.
Not upstairs. Not past the body.
To him.
He was sitting on my couch, one arm slung over the back, watching me like he’d known I’d come looking for him. He was still shirtless, the ugly wound stitched up and crusted over with blood, and somehow it made him sexier than ever.
I was so weak.
“I finished cleaning,” I said. My voice sounded distant.
He didn’t answer right away. Just looked at me with those green eyes that seemed to see everything.
Even the things I didn’t want him to.
Kieran was hurt, but he didn’t look hurt. Didn’t act like someone who’d just killed a man. He acted like someone who’d just finished a long day at the office.
“Good,” he said finally. “You’ll be fine.”
I should have snapped at him. I should have let my anger fly, but it got tangled up in my exhaustion, stuck in my throat until it was just a hollow lump of frustration and something dangerously close to admiration.
He was too damn calm.
And I couldn’t stand it.
I took a step closer, my hands fisting at my sides. “I don’t even know what fine is supposed to look like right now,” I said, trying to keep my cool. “What the hell happens next?”
He stretched, unbothered. “What happens next is that you go on with your life.”
I barked out a laugh. “My life? Do you even know what my life was before this? How do I meet my daughter’s eyes? How do I prosecute criminals? I am a criminal , Kieran.”
My eyes met his, and the raw honesty in his gaze almost undid me. Of course he knew.
“Look, I’m not the lawyer here. You are,” he said, then pointed at the stairs. “That was self-defense. Someone attacked you. I killed him because you couldn’t. Because he was about to kill you.”
“You’re the second-in-command for Boston’s biggest crime family,” I said. “What do you think that does to my reputation as anti-corruption? What do you think it does for me at all?”
He shrugged. “Keeps you alive,” he said. “And everything will be the same after this. I know it doesn’t feel like that right now, but you get used to this.”
I tried to swallow down the knot in my throat. “You…what? You get used to this ?”
Kieran shifted, adjusting himself on the couch like he didn’t have a care in the world. “It’s not the end, Ruby. You just have to let me handle it. Now, do you have any NSAIDs? Aleve? Ibuprofen?”
I stared at him.
“I have a dead man in my house,” I said. “I just sewed you up with a goddamn sewing kit, and you’re asking me if I have Advil?”
Kieran lifted a brow. “You got something stronger? Because that’d be preferable.”
I wanted to throw something at him. I wanted to scream, to shake him, to make him react to this like a normal person. Like a person who should feel something about killing someone. But he wasn’t normal. And he didn’t feel things the way he was supposed to.
And the worst part?
I wasn’t sure if I did anymore either.
I exhaled, turning away from him, pressing my fingers against my temples. My head was pounding. It wasn’t just the adrenaline crash. It wasn’t just the fact that my body still hadn’t caught up to what my mind knew.
It was him.
The way he just sat there. The way he made everything seem so inevitable, like it had always been leading to this, like I had always been on this path.
I walked to the kitchen again, then I opened the cabinet above the sink and grabbed the bottle of codeine, walking back into the living room and tossing it at him without looking. He caught it easily, hand-eye coordination unbroken by the pain.
He was probably used to this.
Being in pain.
Pretending he wasn’t.
“Oh, nice,” he said. “This is better than Advil. You should have one too.”
“Thank the root canal I had two weeks ago,” I said. “Which was, I should point out, less painful than dealing with you tonight. I should have one?”
“Yeah, he beat you up pretty bad,” he said.
“Once the adrenaline wears off, you’ll be in a ton of pain.
You want to stave that off before it gets bad.
” “I’m good, thanks.” I turned back around, arms crossed over my chest. I could still feel his eyes on me, watching, assessing, waiting. “How long until your guys get here?”
He twisted the cap off the bottle, dry swallowed two pills, and checked his watch. Then he handed me the pills. “Soon. Have one. I mean it.”
I exhaled through my nose, my fingers tightening on my arms.
I dry swallowed a codeine pill, too. It tasted horrible.
Kieran sighed, shifting on the couch. “Sit down, Ruby.”
“I don’t want to sit down.”
His gaze swept over me.
“Then stand there and vibrate out of your skin,” he said, tilting his head against the back of the couch. “Your call.”
I clenched my teeth. “I hate you.”
He hummed.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I like you, so I’ll fix this.”
And then he winked at me again.
I stiffened at his voice, at the glint in his eyes.
What the fuck could I possibly say to that?