Chapter 5 The Attorney Who Won’t Flinch #3
Ava’s gaze slid to the cloth again. “Then answer me one more thing.”
Roman’s throat tightened. “What.”
She turned the cloth slightly so the texture caught the overhead light. “The symbol on the weapon grip,” she said. “The faction mark. Tell me what it looks like.”
Roman swallowed. His mind fought itself - telling her would put her on a collision course with the faction he was trying to keep her away from. Not telling her would keep her from understanding the full scope of the betrayal. Either way, she was already moving.
He forced the words out. “It’s a stylized raven with a broken wing.”
Ava went still.
The parking level’s air seemed to freeze around her. Her eyes lifted, and for the first time since the raid, she looked less like a woman chasing answers and more like a woman recognizing a pattern she’d hoped didn’t exist.
“Raven…” she whispered.
Roman watched her face carefully. “What?”
Ava’s hand tightened around the cloth. Her voice sharpened, and now it wasn’t only attorney logic - it was personal history. “I’ve seen that mark before.”
Roman’s pulse spiked. “Where.”
Ava’s eyes met his, and the fear in them wasn’t for herself. It was for what the mark would mean about the betrayal’s reach. “On a weapon recovered from a case I prosecuted,” she said. “A case tied to a faction that - ” She stopped herself, as if she’d almost said too much.
Roman felt the cost of partial confession rising like smoke. “Ava.”
Her gaze flicked to his gun again, then to the abandoned signage. “I’m not asking you to tell me everything,” she said, voice tight. “I’m asking you to stop pretending you don’t know what I’m about to connect.”
Roman’s mouth went dry. “If you connect it, you’ll put a target on your own back.”
Ava’s smile was small and deadly. “I already have one.”
The overhead lights flickered again, and somewhere deeper in the parking level, a metal latch clicked - soft, precise. Not the sound of a random stumble. The sound of someone arriving with intent.
Roman moved first, gun tracking the shadowed corridor. He felt Ava behind him, close enough that he could feel her breath against his shoulder.
“Roman,” she said, and her voice didn’t shake. “What are they coming for?”
Roman didn’t have the luxury of a full answer. He turned his head just enough to look at her, to see what the raven mark had done to her certainty.
“Me,” he said. Then, because honesty was the only thing he had left that didn’t feel like a lie, he added, “And you.”
The latch clicked again - closer now - and a figure’s silhouette cut across the corridor light, wrong height, wrong gait, moving like someone who knew the layout.
Roman tightened his grip and stepped into the space between Ava and the approaching shadow.
Ava’s voice was a razor slice of resolve. “That symbol,” she said, eyes fixed on the corridor, “belongs to the faction you said wasn’t ours.”
Roman couldn’t stop the truth from forming in his throat, couldn’t stop it from tearing at his discipline.
But the figure rounded the corner, and Roman saw the grip of the pistol clearly enough to confirm what Ava already suspected.
The broken-wing raven wasn’t just familiar.
It was stamped - brand-new - on the weapon aimed straight toward them.
Roman’s gun barked once, a single crack shattering the stale air.
The shot didn’t stop the attacker. It only bought Roman half a second - and in that half second Ava lunged to the side, trying to reach the evidence cloth, trying to reach the proof she needed, while Roman shoved her down with his body because he refused to let the next bullet find her.
Cold concrete scraped her dress. Her breath came fast, furious, alive.
“Roman!” she snapped, looking up at him as more footsteps hit the floor above and the corridor filled with movement. “Tell me the truth - right now.”
Roman leaned close enough that she could feel the heat of his anger, the restraint he’d been bleeding out since the folder disappeared. He could lie. He could ration.
Instead he said, “The traitor exists.”
Ava’s eyes flared, furious and desperate at once.
Roman swallowed hard, and the words cost him something he couldn’t name. “And the raven faction is inside our orbit - because someone in command brought them in.”
Ava stared at him like she was trying to memorize every angle of his face for later use in court, later use as a weapon.
Then the attacker’s pistol shifted in the corridor light, and Roman saw a second mark on the inside of the shooter’s wrist - one he’d never wanted Ava to recognize.
A symbol that belonged to Roman’s own chain of command.
Ava’s gaze followed his, and her expression went utterly still.
“Who,” she whispered, voice empty of everything but dread, “is your traitor?”
Roman opened his mouth.
Ava’s answer came from the corridor instead - because the attacker stepped into the light, and the broken-wing raven on the gun grip wasn’t the only thing branded there.
It was the name etched into the metal, clear as a confession - one Roman had trained himself never to speak aloud.
END OF CURRENT OUTPUT READY FOR CONTINUE