Chapter 5 The Attorney Who Won’t Flinch
The Attorney Who Won’t Flinch
The folder was gone before Roman could even convince himself it hadn’t been.
One second Ava’s slim hand was on the slim folder stamped with her private seal - her evidence, cataloged and ready - and the next her knuckles were empty, her gaze snapping toward the steel cabinet Roman had left locked for exactly three minutes.
The underground parking level answered with a hollow clatter of distant metal, the kind of sound that didn’t belong to a safe house.
Roman’s gun was already up, angled down but never away, when Ava’s breath hitched like she’d been slapped.
“You said you locked it,” she demanded, voice low enough to cut through the stale air. She moved like she was trained to find lies in posture, not words - shoulders squared, eyes sharp, chin lifted. Fear didn’t soften her. It sharpened her.
Roman’s discipline cracked at the edges.
He’d scrubbed the safe house. He’d checked the tunnel entrances, the cameras, the vents.
He’d even tasted the air for dust that didn’t belong.
And yet the folder - her folder - had been removed during the raid’s chaos, snatched clean as if someone inside his command had reached through his ribs.
“I locked it,” Roman said. The words came out colder than the concrete under his boots.
Ava turned, slow and deliberate, scanning the abandoned security signage above them - faded arrows pointing nowhere, a dead monitor hanging crooked like a blind eye. Her lawyer brain moved faster than her body. “Show me the lock.”
Roman didn’t want to. He wanted to keep the truth from her, wanted to protect her from the full scope of what he feared. But he couldn’t stop her without proving her right.
He crossed to the cabinet. The padlock was intact - no forced entry, no shorn metal, no fresh scratches. The only sign of intrusion was the absence of the folder itself, as if it had never been there.
Ava’s gaze dropped to the lock, then lifted to him. “You’re telling me nobody got in.”
Roman’s jaw flexed. “I’m telling you the cabinet didn’t fail.”
“That’s not what I asked.” Her voice tightened. “I asked who took it.”
The parking level smelled like old oil and wet concrete. Somewhere above, water dripped at an irregular rhythm. The sound threaded through the silence like a warning.
Roman kept his eyes on the cabinet, because if he looked at her too long he’d see her calculating the cost of every lie he’d ever told. “We’re not doing this here.”
Ava moved closer anyway, heels clicking against the slick floor.
She didn’t touch him, but the heat of her presence pushed into his space like a dare.
“You brought me into protective custody,” she said, each word placed with surgical care.
“You told me the evidence would stay safe. Then you lost it.”
“I didn’t lose it.” His tone stayed disciplined because his temper was a dangerous thing when it came too close to her. “During the raid, we were interrupted.”
Ava’s mouth curved without humor. “Interrupted by what? The universe? Or by someone who knew exactly when you’d look away?”
Roman’s instinct screamed at him to shut it down - to keep her from drawing conclusions that could get her killed. But Ava wasn’t a civilian. She wasn’t a woman who needed the world softened. She was a blade with a conscience, and she would cut through any veil he tried to wrap around her.
He took a step back, letting the gun angle remain steady. “What do you think happened?”
Ava’s eyes flicked to his hand, then to the direction the tunnel had been.
In the distance, a shuttered gate sat half-open, the kind of careless compromise that told Roman someone had moved through with access.
“I think the folder didn’t disappear like a ghost,” she said.
“I think it was taken by someone who knew you’d keep it locked and still knew you wouldn’t be able to stop them. ”
Roman didn’t answer fast enough. That delay was enough.
Ava’s gaze sharpened. “You’re avoiding the question.”
He could admit nothing without giving her the map to his fear. If she learned the leak’s full involvement - if she understood how deep the sabotage had sunk - then she’d stop asking permission and start filing motions anyway. She’d bet her life on being right.
That had never been her problem.
Her problem was refusing to survive on Roman’s terms.
Ava reached into her jacket, pulling out a folded sheet of paper - thin, creased, handled too much to be casual. “This was in my pocket.”
Roman’s stomach tightened. “That’s not the folder.”
“It isn’t the evidence,” she agreed, eyes never leaving his. “But it’s a copy of something you told me to file. The motion draft you insisted I keep off my external devices.”
Roman stared at the paper like it might bite. “Where did you get it?”
Ava’s voice softened by a fraction, dangerous in its gentleness. “From me.”
He didn’t like the way she said it. Like she’d planned for this moment. Like she’d already been thinking about what to do if Roman failed.
“You stole it,” Roman said, accusing, because if he could name her as the thief, he could control the narrative. He could make this about betrayal in the relationship instead of betrayal in his command.
Ava’s expression didn’t flinch - she didn’t even blink. “No.”
The single syllable hit like a gunshot in the stale air.
Roman’s shoulders went rigid. “Then explain.”
Ava lifted the paper slightly. “The draft was in my pocket because I asked for it back. You said no. You said I’d need it later, after the courier situation.” She swallowed. The sound was too small against the concrete. “I didn’t let you keep everything.”
Roman’s pulse beat hard behind his ribs. “I didn’t steal from you.”
“I know.” Ava stepped closer until he could see the faint smear of dust on her cheekbone from the raid. The concrete had kissed her. The thought made his control feel like a thin wall. “I’m telling you the way you’re lying is making you predictable.”
Roman’s hand tightened around his gun. He forced himself to breathe slow. “Predictable is how I survive.”
Ava’s eyes narrowed. “So you’re saying you knew this would happen.”
Roman didn’t answer.
She waited him out. That was her other weapon - patience sharpened to a razor edge, the kind of calm that made men confess just to make the silence stop.
Finally Roman said, “I didn’t know the folder would be taken. I knew someone would test the perimeter.”
Ava’s gaze dropped, then lifted again. “Who?”
The parking level’s overhead lights flickered once, a stutter of illumination.
In that brief dim, Roman saw her symbol - her private seal - reflected nowhere, because the folder was gone.
His mind went to the courier’s bait, the redacted handler name, the way the evidence trail had been manipulated like a puppet show.
Ava’s voice lowered. “You keep talking around it.”
Roman’s discipline held. His honesty didn’t.
He moved, turning his body slightly so his profile blocked the tunnel direction. Not to hide the view - she’d already seen enough - but to keep her from sprinting toward the wrong truth.
“There’s a traitor,” Roman said.
Ava’s lips parted, as if she’d expected him to deny it, as if she’d built her anger on the possibility of him choosing her over his secrecy. When he didn’t deny it, something in her posture went still.
“There’s always been a traitor,” she said softly. “But you’re not just admitting it. You’re measuring what you can afford to tell me.”
Roman’s throat tightened. “I can’t tell you who.”
Ava’s eyes went colder. “Because you don’t know.”
Roman’s silence was an answer.
Ava’s voice sharpened again. “So you’re lying with the truth.”
He couldn’t deny that. He didn’t know the traitor’s name, not in a clean way.
He’d felt the leak’s patterns - timing, access, the way certain messages came through redacted and certain guards had gone missing on days they shouldn’t have.
But the identity was the one piece he couldn’t hand over without detonating everything he’d built to keep her breathing.
Ava stepped even closer, close enough that Roman could smell her soap and the faint metallic tang of adrenaline on her skin. “If you can admit there’s a leak,” she said, “then you can admit how it ties to the attack.”
Roman’s eyes tracked the abandoned signage above her.
A faded decal showed a silhouette of a security guard with a baton, crossed out so thoroughly the figure looked like a threat erased by policy.
He remembered ordering the safe house scrubbed, remembered the tunnel route, remembered the raid’s violence - how it had felt choreographed, like someone had planned his reaction.
“The attack wasn’t random,” Roman said. “It was a message.”
Ava’s jaw flexed. “To you.”
“To me,” he confirmed. Then, because he couldn’t keep her from seeing what she’d already sensed, he added, “And to you.”
Ava’s gaze held his. “Then tell me what mark they used.”
Roman felt the question land like a blade sliding between ribs.
Ava was asking like an attorney - like she could build a case out of the smallest physical proof.
If he gave her too much, she’d connect it to her own evidence trail and decide to file anyway.
If he gave her nothing, she’d keep digging until she found it herself.
He hated the trap both ways.
He said, “You want the mark because you think it points to a faction within The Shadows’ orbit.”
Ava didn’t deny it. “I want it because it proves you’re not just defending me from bullets,” she said. “You’re defending me from information.”
Roman’s silence was heavy.
Ava exhaled, then reached down toward his gun hand - only briefly, fingers hovering near the grip without taking it. The gesture was intimate in a way that made Roman’s restraint feel like a punishment. “Roman.”
Hearing his name like that - like she was placing it under a microscope - made his discipline falter again. “Ava.”