Chapter 20 Ava’s Target List Turns Personal #2
And on that chair, slumped forward, was a man Roman recognized from the past - someone who’d been under his protection once, someone whose name had vanished from the official records after the internal purge years ago.
His eyes opened when Roman entered, pupils shrinking under the harsh light. A purple bruise bloomed along his temple. His lips moved around something that might’ve been a name.
Roman’s chest tightened so hard it felt like his ribs were trying to break him. “Hold on.”
The man’s gaze cut to Ava, and Roman saw the recognition there too. The man’s throat worked, and he managed a whisper that sounded like it had been scraped raw. “Ava… don’t…”
Ava stepped forward, face pale, and Roman caught the way her hand twitched toward the folder beneath Roman’s jacket. She wanted to do something. She wanted to fix it with evidence and law and exposure.
Roman moved between her and the chair, gun trained but lowered just enough to show restraint. “You’re not touching anything.”
Ava’s eyes burned. “He’s one of your people.”
“He’s one of their targets,” Roman corrected, voice low. “And if you pull that folder out right now, they’ll trigger the rest of the list like it’s a countdown.”
Ava flinched at the word trigger, like it landed in her ribs. “So what? We stand here and let him die?”
Roman hated that the answer was complicated. Hated that he’d trained his entire life to make decisions under fire and now the decision required mercy - something he didn’t trust himself to perform.
The man on the chair coughed, a wet sound. Blood smeared his lips. His gaze locked on Roman with a desperate clarity.
“Roman,” he rasped.
Roman stepped closer despite himself. “I’m here.”
The man’s head tilted toward Ava. “She won’t - ”
The next sound wasn’t a cough. It was a click.
Roman’s reflexes kicked in before his mind caught up. He spun, gun up, scanning the corners of the room - then saw it: a small device clipped to the underside of a bench, barely visible against grime. A pressure trigger. A timer.
Ava saw it too. Her eyes widened. “Roman - ”
He didn’t have time to tell her what the device was meant to do. He lunged, grabbing the bench and yanking it away from the device, metal screeching across the floor. The timer beeped once, then twice - too fast.
Roman slammed the bench aside and kicked the device toward the drainage grate. It skittered, then clanged into the grate with a metallic finality.
The beeping stopped.
Silence filled the room so abruptly it felt like a vacuum sucking sound out of Roman’s ears.
Ava stared at the drainage grate like she wanted to understand how someone could plant a kill mechanism in a room built for discipline. Her voice came out rough. “They’re inside this place.”
“They’re everywhere,” Roman said, and his anger finally found a shape. Not at the shooters. Not at the syndicate. At the watcher that kept turning the same lever: Ava’s need to act, Ava’s need to be right.
The man on the chair shuddered once, then went still. His eyes stared at nothing, light fading around the edges.
Roman felt it happen in real time. No slow drift. No dramatic last words. Just the body choosing silence.
He caught the man’s shoulders before he could slump forward, hands pressing against slick skin. Warmth seeped into his palms, then cooled. The scent of old sweat and blood filled the room.
“No,” Roman said, and it wasn’t a command. It was a fracture.
Ava’s breath hitched behind him. When she moved, her movement was sharp - fast enough to be reckless. She stepped into Roman’s space, staring at the man’s face as if she could reverse it with anger.
Roman’s grip tightened, not on the man - on the moment, on the reality he couldn’t change. His gun remained in his hand, but his body didn’t know what to aim at anymore.
Ava looked up at him, and the fury in her eyes wasn’t only about the death. It was about the lie he’d built around it.
“Why didn’t you tell me there was a timer?” she demanded.
Roman blinked once. Rainwater had run down his temples and mixed with the sweat at his hairline. He tasted metal on his tongue.
“I didn’t - ” he began.
“You knew,” Ava snapped, stepping closer until her coat brushed his. “You knew the syndicate was close enough to plant something in a room tied to your past. You knew they’d come through that door with a list already running, and you still kept the folder under your jacket like it was poison.”
Roman swallowed. His throat hurt. “It wasn’t poison. It was - ”
“It was control,” she interrupted, voice cracking on the edge of something raw. “You told me not to touch it, not to act, not to confront them. You acted like my hands were the danger.”
Roman’s silence was an admission he didn’t intend to make.
Ava’s eyes glistened with rain and rage. “I didn’t ask you to let them kill him. I asked you to protect people. You failed.”
The words hit like a bullet. Not because they were fair. Because they were true in the only way that mattered. He’d intercepted the first hit attempt - he’d saved the man from being shot in the yard - but he hadn’t saved him from dying in Roman’s arms after Roman chose secrecy over urgency.
Outside the room, a sound slammed through the building - boots on concrete, the heavy thud of multiple sets moving in sync. Someone was coming. Not the first syndicate wave. Not just the two shooters at the gate.
Ava heard it too. Her head jerked toward the door. “They’re already - ”
Roman grabbed her wrist. “Back. Now.”
Ava yanked her hand free, anger giving her strength. “You’re going to decide again?”
Roman’s gaze locked on hers, and the cold discipline he used to survive kept cracking around the edges. “If you walk out there with that folder on your body, they’ll turn your evidence into a detonator. They’ll burn your name into the next list and the next.”
Ava stared at him, breath ragged, and for a moment Roman saw the fear she kept buried under logic. Not fear of dying. Fear of being used - again. Fear that every attempt to do the right thing would be the mechanism that kills the people she cares about.
“I’m not a tool,” she whispered.
Roman’s voice came out lower. “I know.”
But the lie in that - his failure - hung between them like smoke.
The door burst inward with a violent slam, hinges screaming. Dark shapes filled the threshold, weapons up, faces hard under hoods slick with rain. The leader’s voice cut through the buzzing lights like it had been waiting for this exact second.
“Give us the folder, Ava Collins,” the man said. “Roman’s already paid for his secrecy.”
Ava’s breath caught. Her gaze flicked to Roman’s gun, then to his face, searching for something she couldn’t find - an explanation that didn’t sound like another lock.
Roman moved first, shoving Ava behind him, body shielding her like muscle memory. Gun raised, he aimed at the leader’s chest - ready to intercept. Ready to keep her alive even if it cost him whatever bond he’d been trying to earn.
“Don’t,” Ava said again, but this time it wasn’t a command. It was a plea.
Roman didn’t look back. He couldn’t. He could only feel her presence at his back - hot and furious and alive - and the knowledge that the next shot would decide whether she hated him for keeping secrets, or whether she survived long enough to understand why the secrets had been the last wall between her and a list meant to bleed.
The leader smiled faintly, like he could see the shift in Roman’s priorities.
Then the man lifted his phone and spoke into it, voice calm as a verdict. “Start the next target window.”
Roman heard the click of something being armed on the other side of the door - then a sharp, rising whine that didn’t belong in any training facility.
Ava’s eyes widened, and her voice shattered. “Roman - run!”
But Roman couldn’t run fast enough to stop the room from turning into a trap built for his choices.
The lights flared once, then cut out.
And in the darkness, Ava’s rage became something else entirely - something Roman could feel rushing toward him like a storm she’d finally decided to stop controlling.
END OF CURRENT OUTPUT READY FOR CONTINUE