Chapter 21 The Kiss That Feels Like a Trap #2
Roman shifted, stepping toward the front of the storefront to get a better line of sight.
His mind raced through contingencies: escape route, tunnel access, the scrubbed safe-house map he’d memorized.
But this wasn’t the safe house. This was a storefront hideout - a place he’d thought was quiet, temporary, disposable.
Temporary made it easier to bait.
Ava’s voice rose, urgent now. “Roman - behind you!”
Roman turned a fraction too late. A fourth figure emerged from a side corridor, not part of the initial entry. His hand flicked, and a thin cable snapped out - snaring Roman’s forearm with practiced precision.
Roman’s gun jerked. The cable yanked him sideways, dragging him into the shelf cluster. Bottles shattered with a wet, slicing sound, glass raining down like cruel rain.
Pain flared in Roman’s shoulder, sharp and immediate, and his discipline turned feral. He shoved against the cable, driving his heel into concrete, forcing his body to refuse the pull.
Ava moved - he heard her feet scuff, heard the tearing scrape of cloth as she tried to reach him.
The masked intruders didn’t stop her.
They guided her.
One stepped into her path, blocking her with a slow, deliberate motion, like they wanted her to see Roman struggle. Like they wanted Ava to watch him lose without being able to fix it.
Roman’s breath came hard. The cable bit into his skin, leaving a sting that spread. He fought for leverage, eyes locked on the folder area behind the shelf.
“Give it back,” Ava demanded, voice breaking on the last word.
The masked speaker tilted his head toward Roman, as if he could see through the chaos. “You both want the same thing. The truth. The evidence. So listen to me, Roman. You let her walk with us - she lives. You keep fighting - she watches.”
Roman froze on the edge of a decision. He hated this. He hated how the threat was tailored to Ava. How it didn’t need to threaten her body directly. It threatened her mind, her need to act, her belief that she could win by force of will.
Ava’s face turned toward Roman, and in her eyes he saw it: she was already imagining the broadcast, already calculating which parts of her evidence would be used, already trying to find a legal angle in the middle of violence.
Her bravery wasn’t blind. It was brutal.
“Roman,” she said, and her voice was steady in a way that made his chest ache. “Don’t let them make you the villain in my story.”
Roman’s jaw clenched. “I won’t.”
Ava stepped out from behind the shelf with her hands up, palms open, showing she wasn’t reaching for her folder. She didn’t look at the gun. She looked at Roman like he was the only thing real in the world.
“I want to see what they do with it,” she said.
The masked speaker smiled under his mask. “That’s the spirit.”
Two of the intruders moved in unison toward Ava. One grabbed her upper arm - not hard, not enough to bruise, just enough to prove they could. Ava flinched anyway. Her eyes flashed, and for a heartbeat Roman felt the impulse to rip the grip apart.
But Ava didn’t scream. She didn’t thrash. Instead, she turned her head slightly, looking at Roman with a warning that felt like a plea.
Don’t.
Roman’s body wanted violence. His mind understood the psychology: if he made this moment a fight, they’d punish her for needing him. They’d turn his love into evidence of weakness.
Roman forced his hands to go still.
The intruders pulled Ava toward the storefront’s cracked front window.
Outside, a van door thudded shut with a sound too clean to be accidental.
Someone inside the van could be recording.
Broadcasting. It would be simple - feed the live signal to a screen somewhere nearby, let Ava’s evidence become a performance.
Roman’s throat tightened. He could taste metal where he’d bitten down too hard.
“Roman,” Ava said again, softer now, as if she could make him hear her through the noise. “If you fight this wrong, they’ll win. If you fight it right - ”
He didn’t let her finish. “I know.”
But he didn’t. Not fully. Because the traitor had timed romance - had used closeness like a fuse - so Roman would hesitate, so Ava would be captured in the exact moment his guard slipped.
They yanked Ava through the doorway.
Roman lunged forward, trying to follow, but the cable jerked him back, pinning his forearm to the shelf. His gun slipped from his grip and clattered across broken glass. The sound was small compared to the rage in his bones.
Ava’s eyes found his one last time through the widening gap. She looked furious, terrified, and - worst of all - accepting. Like she’d already decided what she could survive.
The masked intruder held up a small screen device and angled it toward Ava, then toward Roman, as if the camera needed both of them in frame.
A voice crackled from the device - familiar in cadence, not in identity, designed to sound calm. “Ava Collins. You’re going to watch your evidence become a weapon.”
Roman’s vision tunneled.
Ava’s face went pale, her lips parting on a breath she couldn’t control. On the screen, a live feed flickered - grainy at first, then clearing.
Roman saw a room he recognized only because he’d seen it once in a security walkthrough: sterile, bright, the kind of place where someone could keep a person docile and anonymous. A woman sat restrained in a chair, head tilted slightly as if she’d been moved recently.
It wasn’t Ava.
It was someone from Ava’s legal circle - someone Roman had learned to trust because Ava trusted her. The woman’s eyes were open, wide, and fixed on the camera.
Ava made a sound - half protest, half denial - like her body refused to accept what her mind already understood.
“That’s not - ” Ava started.
The speaker cut in, smooth. “It is. And now you know why the purge verification happened. Why your folder changed hands. Why your people keep vanishing.”
Roman’s stomach turned. This wasn’t just an ambush. It was a message written in psychological damage - using Ava’s belief in her own control against her.
Ava’s gaze snapped to Roman. “He’s doing it,” she whispered, voice shaking despite her attempt to hold it steady. “The traitor. He’s - ”
The intruder tightened his grip on her arm, steering her closer to the van. “Watch,” he said, and the single word felt like a command planted under Ava’s skin.
Roman strained against the cable, muscles screaming. His shoulder burned. Glass cut through fabric. He tried to stand, to move, to break the line between them.
Ava met his eyes again. Her expression didn’t plead for rescue. It demanded Roman witness - demanded he remember what the traitor was willing to do.
Roman’s breath came ragged. He couldn’t reach her. He couldn’t stop the feed. He could only watch her be positioned like a punishment.
The screen stayed on, bright and merciless.
Ava’s mouth trembled. “Roman,” she said, and this time it wasn’t anger. It was fear sharpened into focus. “Don’t let them make you choose who I am.”
Her voice cut off as the van door slammed.
In the sudden roar of the engine starting, Roman heard the masked speaker’s last words, delivered like a promise.
“Now you decide,” the voice said through the device. “Do you want the evidence - or do you want her to come back the same?”
Roman forced his eyes down to the broken glass where his gun lay inches away, and realized with sick clarity that his desire to hold Ava close - his weakness, his slip - had been the signal for a coordinated ambush.
And behind Roman’s ribs, the truth settled fully again: the traitor wasn’t just watching.
They were directing the broadcast through Ava’s pain - turning love into leverage - while Roman stood helpless, watching her disappear from the frame. END OF CURRENT OUTPUT READY FOR CONTINUE