Chapter 15 Ava’s Offer to Burn Bridges
Ava’s Offer to Burn Bridges
Roman’s jaw was clenched so hard his molars ached as he followed the chapel’s service route down into the underbelly of the building.
The air changed first - warmer, older, damp with stone and extinguished incense.
Then the sound: the soft, deliberate drip of water somewhere in the walls, the muted thrum of distant electrical systems that didn’t belong to a place meant for prayer.
Ava moved ahead of him like she owned the dark.
Sedated earlier, she’d woken with a raw, controlled edge that made her dangerous even when her wrists were still marked by restraint burns.
The folder - slim, stamped with Ava’s private seal - wasn’t in her hands anymore.
It rode in his grip beneath his coat, close enough that he could feel the faint heat of it through fabric, as if evidence could still be alive.
He hated that he’d stolen it from her.
He hated more that the theft had felt necessary. The kill switch from the network - Roman still heard the traitor’s warning echoing in his skull like a judge’s gavel. Deeper than data. What did that even mean, when the only thing they’d taken was a flash drive full of ledger truth?
Ava’s voice cut through the tunnel’s damp quiet. “You’re looking at it like it’s a bomb.”
Roman didn’t glance down at the folder. He kept his eyes forward, tracking the narrow corridor, the way the light licked across old mortar. “It’s evidence.”
“It’s a weapon,” she corrected, and her breath came measured, not sedated now - trained, attorney-practiced calm wrapped around panic. “And you’re acting like I’m the trigger.”
Roman stopped at the mouth of the exit tunnel, where the chapel’s basement swallowed into a wider passage built for foot traffic - someone had designed this route to move bodies without leaving witnesses.
He could smell rust from metal fixtures and something chemical, like disinfectant. Not church. Facility.
He turned his head enough to catch her profile in the dim. “You don’t get to decide what happens to your family if you testify.”
Ava’s fingers flexed at her side. The gesture wasn’t casual; it was the kind of movement people made when they wanted to grab something and couldn’t. “I don’t get to decide,” she echoed, voice low, “but you do. That’s your offer? Protect me by keeping me blind?”
Roman’s hand tightened on the folder. He forced his shoulders to stay level, forced his voice to stay flat. “I protect you by controlling the timing. If you go public before we can contain the fallout - ”
“You mean if I go public before you’re sure the traitor doesn’t - ” Ava stopped herself, swallowing the rest of the sentence. Her eyes were bright in the tunnel light, too alert for the sedation that had touched her earlier. “Before you’re sure the traitor doesn’t target my sister again.”
Roman felt the words hit like impact even though he’d known her fear would come back.
He’d watched them drag her through the Lantern Protocol’s medical transfer earlier - watched her fight sedation with teeth and stubbornness.
He’d also watched her flinch when he mentioned family names.
She didn’t volunteer details unless she was cornered. She was cornered now.
“I didn’t say that,” he said.
Ava’s mouth curved without humor. “You didn’t have to. You’re Roman. You assume the worst and act like the only acceptable outcome is the one you can control.”
He stepped closer, keeping the folder between them by habit, like distance could be a boundary. “You’re furious because I took your evidence.”
“I’m furious because you took my choice,” she snapped.
The tunnel’s light flickered once, a brief stutter. Roman’s body reacted before his mind could label it - gun angled down, weight shifting, scanning for movement that wasn’t there. Ava noticed. She always did.
“Tell me what you’re not saying,” she demanded.
Roman’s throat tightened. The truth lodged there: he wanted to keep her quiet because he’d learned the hard way what happened to people who became targets with a pulse. He’d watched men break themselves trying to protect what they loved. He’d watched love turn into leverage.
And he’d watched the Lantern Protocol lock doors behind her like it was sealing a coffin.
He forced the words out anyway. “If you testify, the traitor gets your face on every screen. Your voice on every wire. They can’t destroy the evidence without destroying what’s attached to you.”
Ava’s gaze sharpened, and the sedated softness in her eyes peeled away completely. “Then we don’t testify the way they want.”
Roman’s pulse knocked against his collar. “There is no way they want it. There’s only what happens when you put it out there.”
Ava took a breath and moved so close that Roman felt warmth from her skin through the damp air.
Her scent - soap and something metallic, like she’d been in too many rooms without enough ventilation - hit him and made his restraint feel stupidly fragile.
She lifted her chin, forcing him to look at her.
“Let me decide,” she said. “Not you. Not your chain. Not your command. Me.”
Roman’s instinct was to refuse. To wrap his hands around that demand and crush it into compliance. But the way she held herself - like she’d already survived worse than his refusal - made his chest tighten with a different kind of anger. Not at her. At himself.
Because he knew she was right. He’d been treating her like a locked container. Like evidence could be secured by taking away the person who carried it. Like control was the same as protection.
“What’s your plan?” he asked, and the question tasted like surrender.
Ava’s eyes didn’t soften. They sharpened further, as if she’d been waiting for him to ask exactly that. “You want a controlled disclosure.”
Roman didn’t answer. He didn’t like the way she’d named his thought without flinching.
Ava continued, voice steady enough to be legal. “Not a press conference. Not a stunt. We release in a sequence that forces authenticity checks. We use the motion draft I can file and the encrypted chain you can verify - ”
“You’re still talking like the evidence isn’t compromised,” Roman cut in.
“It is compromised,” Ava said, and her honesty struck him harder than any threat. “That’s why we don’t dump the whole ledger and pray. We show enough to make it undeniable, and we keep the rest protected behind custody rules that don’t depend on your faith.”
Roman’s mouth went dry. He could picture his own file protocol - how he’d planned to keep the folder hidden until he could intercept the traitor’s access.
He could also picture Ava’s mind working like a blade against loopholes, against timing traps, against the kind of sabotage that relied on predictable behavior.
He’d built his life on predictability. She built hers on exposure.
“You think you can out-argue a kill switch,” he said quietly.
Ava’s lips parted. For a second, her bravado faltered - not into weakness, but into a vulnerability that made Roman’s stomach twist. “No,” she admitted.
“I think you can’t keep me from being used as leverage.
Not forever. So either we’re partners in controlling what they can reach…
or we pretend you can protect me by turning me into a secret. ”
Roman watched her swallow. The tunnel’s damp air seemed to thicken around them. Water dripped from somewhere behind the wall with a steady, patient rhythm, like time was counting.
“Say what you’re afraid of,” Roman said.
Ava’s eyes flicked to the folder under his coat. “I’m afraid you’ll decide I’m too dangerous to live openly with,” she said. “That you’ll choose your plan over my life, and I’ll never know which moment you stopped seeing me as a person.”
Roman’s chest tightened so sharply it hurt. He’d promised himself he’d never let her feel like a piece on a board. He’d also promised himself he’d never let anyone - anyone - close enough to be used as a hostage.
Somewhere between those promises, he’d become the thing he hated: a man who thought he could choose her safety for her.
“I don’t want you to testify alone,” he said, and the words were rougher than he intended.
Ava’s laugh was a short, bitter sound. “That’s not the offer. That’s the fear.”
Roman felt the tunnel’s air vibrate with a distant hum - facility power cycling somewhere deeper in the building. He couldn’t see the source, but his senses mapped it anyway. The kill switch threat wasn’t theoretical. Something was already reacting.
He reached into his coat and pulled out the flash drive he’d stolen from the dais exchange earlier - small, black, unassuming. He held it at his side, letting the dim light catch its edge. “The network purge could hit at any moment.”
Ava stared at it, her expression tightening. “You already have it.”
“I have it,” Roman confirmed. “And I have a choice I didn’t want to make.”
“Tell me,” she said, and her voice didn’t shake, but her fingers did. She pressed them against the tunnel wall like she needed the texture to keep herself anchored.
Roman’s gaze swept the corridor behind her. No footsteps. No movement. Just that chemical smell growing stronger, like sterilization after violence. “If I keep you hidden, I control the narrative, but the traitor targets your family and - ”
Ava cut in, sharp enough to slice. “And if you let me testify, the evidence burns and I die anyway.”
Roman closed his eyes for one heartbeat. The pressure behind his lids felt like a bruise. When he opened them, Ava was watching him with that maddening attorney focus - waiting for the exact truth, not the softened version.
“Yes,” he said.
The word landed between them like a loaded bullet.
Ava’s throat bobbed. “Then don’t make it my choice between two kinds of death. Make it ours.”
Roman stared at her. He could feel the old discipline in him fighting the new idea - partnership meant shared risk. Shared risk meant losing control of outcomes. Shared risk meant trusting someone he couldn’t fully guard.
But Ava wasn’t asking for trust as charity.