“He’s funny. I can see why you’re close,” I said.
“Put your dick back in your pants, Callahan,” Alek said without looking at me. “You’re more my type than she is. And you’re not my type.”
“You’re gay?”
Alek gave me a look. “You can’t ask people you don’t know if they’re gay,” he said. “Didn’t your parents ever teach you manners? I’m notnotgay.”
“So you’re…” I started, despite myself.
“Not interested in you,” Alek replied with a pitying smile. “Beyond, of course, wondering what you’re doing here at this ungodly hour. Doesn’t the mafia work in the middle of the night? Under the cover of darkness?”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “I think that’s Batman,” I said. “And there’s no such thing as the mafia.”
Alek snorted. “Right. The mafia’s a bedtime story we tell kids to scare them into behaving. Like Krampus.”
Ruby took another sip of her coffee. “I’d kill for a bedtime story version of this.”
“Technically, you already did,” I said.
She didn’t laugh.
Neither did Alek.
The air seemed to thicken. “I didn’t kill anyone, to be clear,” Ruby said. “Give me my phone.”
I sighed, grabbing her phone out of my pajama’s pocket and handing it to her. “Think very carefully about what you’re going to do next, Rubes.”
I watched her throat as she swallowed, the yellow bruises already blooming black on her skin. Ruby ignored me. I watched her fingers tap on her screen for a second. A phone vibrated in Alek’s pocket.
“That was me,” Ruby said. “You should get that.”
Alek did as he was told, furrowing his brow as he looked at the phone’s lit up screen. “Should I know why you just sent me a thousand dollars?”
“That’s your retainer fee, right?” Ruby asked. “When you take a private client?”
“You need a lawyer?” Alek asked.
“I didn’t kill anyone last night,” Ruby said. “Kieran did. Mickey Russell broke into my house and tried to strangle me. Kieran got him off me and beat him to death.”
“Jesus, Ruby,” Alek said. “Why didn’t you call me straightaway?”
“Kieran told me not to. He told me he would take care of it.”
Alek swallowed. “Okay…”
“I was in shock,” Ruby continued. “He’d beaten this man so badly…he—fuck, I don’t know. I thought I was going to die. When he called his men in to dispose of Russell, I didn’t stop him.”
“You just became DA,” Alek said. “Killing a paroled felon who has a vendetta against you with a legally acquired handgun wouldn’t have been a controversy, it would have been a boon.”
“That’s not what happened,” Ruby said, her voice flat and to the point. I wondered if this was what she sounded like in the courtroom. It was a little scary…like, sexy-scary. “Kieran killed him. Otherwise, I would be dead.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Alek said. “Where is he now?”
“I’m right here,” I said.
“Helpful,” Alek replied. “Russell.”
Ruby looked pointedly at me.
