Chapter 5 The Attorney Who Won’t Flinch #2
“Don’t treat me like a witness you have to protect from cross-examination.” Her voice softened, but her eyes didn’t. “I can handle the truth. I just need you to stop editing it.”
Roman stared at her hand, then forced his gaze back to her eyes. “The mark tied to the attack is a faction symbol branded into the weapon’s grip.”
Ava’s brows drew together. “A brand.”
“Yes.” Roman swallowed. “Not a tattoo. Not a patch. A mark pressed into material.”
Ava’s mouth tightened. “What weapon?”
Roman’s mind flashed to the fight from the raid - hands in motion, the slam of bodies against concrete, the way one attacker’s weapon had caught the light at an angle. He’d been too busy keeping her behind him then. Too focused on survival to catalog the details.
Now the details mattered.
He forced himself to speak around the pieces he didn’t want to hand over. “A pistol used at close range. The grip had the mark.”
Ava’s eyes widened by a fraction. “Who was the shooter?”
Roman didn’t answer.
Ava’s voice sharpened again. “Roman.”
He hated how she said his name now - like she was demanding a confession. Like she’d already decided he was capable of truth, and she was angry that he was rationing it.
He let out a slow breath through his nose, then said, “The shooter wasn’t one of ours.”
Ava’s stare didn’t move. “Then why would their faction mark be inside our orbit?”
Roman’s cold discipline cracked, not with emotion but with effort. “Because someone invited them.”
Ava’s throat bobbed. The air around her seemed to go thinner, like the parking level had decided to squeeze the space between them. “So the leak isn’t just someone siphoning information,” she said. “It’s access. It’s arrangement.”
Roman nodded once, tight and controlled. “Yes.”
Ava’s shoulders dipped, a fraction of surrender that didn’t look like defeat - it looked like calculation turning into fury. “You knew this would happen,” she said again, but now the anger had a different edge. Not accusation. Grief for how long she’d been letting him steer her away from the truth.
Roman couldn’t pretend he hadn’t.
He admitted, “I suspected the leak before the raid. I couldn’t prove it. Not cleanly.”
Ava’s gaze dropped to his gun, then back up. “And you brought me anyway.”
Roman’s chest hurt. He hated the honesty because it made him feel like he’d failed her twice - once by trying to keep her safe, and once by letting her walk into a trap he should have dismantled first.
“I brought you because I trust you,” he said. “And because I believed we could contain the evidence before it became a target.”
Ava’s voice went quiet. “But it became a target anyway.”
Roman’s jaw clenched. “Yes.”
Silence stretched. The drip of water overhead sounded louder now, each drop like a countdown.
Then Ava moved - fast, fearless. She reached for the side pocket of her jacket and pulled out a small strip of cloth, darkened at the edge like it had brushed against something dirty. She held it up between them.
Roman’s stomach turned. “Where did you - ”
“In the raid,” Ava said, eyes locked on his. “I grabbed it when the shooter went down. It was stuck to the weapon’s grip when the attacker dropped it near the tunnel.”
Roman’s gun felt heavier in his hand. “You kept that.”
“I kept it,” she corrected. “Because I knew you wouldn’t show me everything.”
Roman watched her thumb rub the cloth’s edge, careful and meticulous.
The mark wasn’t visible on the cloth itself - not in a way you could photograph and submit.
But Ava’s instincts had already done what his caution couldn’t: she’d connected the physical world to the story he was trying to keep from collapsing.
Her voice broke just slightly, like the truth had teeth. “You’ve been telling me there’s a traitor, Roman. That’s the yes. But you’ve been withholding the who and the how.”
Roman’s silence was a confession again.
Ava took a step closer, and Roman felt the heat of her body through the air. “Now I’m asking you to tell me what you’re afraid I’ll do if I know.”
Roman could have lied. He could have said he was afraid she’d file the motion. He could have said he was afraid she’d get herself killed.
But Ava deserved a real fear, not a strategy.
He said, “I’m afraid you’ll choose justice over breathing.”
Ava’s eyes shimmered, but she didn’t look away. “I already did.”
The admission should have ended the argument - should have made it romantic, should have softened the edges.
Instead it sharpened the tension into something more dangerous. Ava reached past his gun hand, brushing her fingers over the side of his wrist where his pulse beat hard beneath skin. The touch was brief, deliberate, and it made Roman’s discipline feel like a lie he’d told himself.
“I’m choosing you,” Ava said, and her voice was steady even when her eyes weren’t. “Until you give me a reason not to.”
Roman’s body reacted to the promise before his mind could.
He leaned in, controlled and slow, and kissed her once - hard enough to steal her breath, gentle enough to ask for permission in the only language he trusted: restraint.
Ava’s fingers tightened on his wrist, then loosened as if she was deciding whether to believe him.
He pulled back to see her face, to make sure she was still here.
“Until I give you a reason,” Roman echoed.