Chapter 27 Ava’s Courtroom Choice in Firelight #2
Ava went still. The dust around her seemed louder. “You’ve been afraid of my evidence becoming your execution,” she whispered.
Roman nodded once. He hated that she’d named it. Hated that she’d seen through him when he’d tried to hide behind discipline.
Ava’s shoulders rose on a breath, then fell. “Then let me do it right.”
The vulnerability in her voice wasn’t soft. It was a knife-edge of trust. She was offering him something he couldn’t protect with force.
Roman took the ledger folder from his forearm and held it out to her - careful, deliberate. “If this is your choice,” he said, “it’s also my responsibility.”
Ava reached for the folder with both hands, her private seal imprinting her palms. The stamp caught the firelight, a crisp red-black that looked like fresh ink on skin. For a second, she just held it, eyes unfocused as if she could hear the future trying to warn her.
Then she looked at Roman with a steadiness that made his throat burn. “I don’t want a rescuer,” she said. “I want a partner who doesn’t lie to himself about what he wants.”
Roman’s breath went rough. He wanted to tell her he wanted everything - her mouth on his, her hands on his scars, her courage anchored to his life. He wanted to tell her he wanted to be the kind of man who didn’t treat her agency like a threat.
Instead he said, “I want you alive.”
Ava’s smile flashed, quick and sharp. “Then cut the hinge sensor line.”
Roman’s eyes narrowed. “You said don’t cut the wrong line.”
“I didn’t say cut nothing,” she corrected, voice tightening around the instruction like it was the only thing keeping her from breaking. “Cut the hinge sensor line and disconnect the trigger from the erase device. The panel can still open, but it won’t arm the erase cycle.”
Roman reached down. His fingers found the seam and traced the uneven edge. The wire was warm, then suddenly colder as if it responded to his proximity. His training screamed at him to hesitate.
He didn’t hesitate.
He cut - one clean motion with the tool Ava had set beside him moments ago. The metal snipped with a sound too small for what it prevented. The chemical smell spiked, then dropped off like a held breath released.
The floor tremor eased for one dangerous second.
Ava slammed her hand over the ledger folder, anchoring it to her chest. “Now.”
Roman grabbed the panel edge and yanked. The hinge resisted, then gave with a groan. A thin compartment opened in the floor, revealing a small, black device with a blinking red light - its arming cycle interrupted but not fully dead.
Ava leaned in, her breath close to Roman’s. “Get it out.”
Roman’s instincts wanted to shoot it. He kept the gun angled down and reached instead for the device’s casing. It was heavier than it looked, built to survive impact - built to be carried into someone else’s story.
The firelight flickered. The compartment shuddered.
Ava’s fingers brushed Roman’s as she took the device from his hand. Her touch was steady, her eyes fierce. “This is their trigger,” she said. “If we take it, it can’t erase what I’m about to file.”
Roman heard the distant footsteps again, closer now, then the sound of a door being forced somewhere beyond the collapsing vault. A heavy metallic clang followed - someone trying to breach the room.
Roman’s internal leak - his traitor - had been manipulating timing all along. He could feel it in the way the device had tried to frame him, in the way the room had nearly killed Ava for the evidence.
Ava met his gaze, and her eyes asked a question without words: Can I trust you to choose me even when the world wants you to sacrifice me to fix your name?
Roman answered with action. He pulled her behind him, gun up now, barrel steady. “We’re leaving,” he said.
Ava didn’t move. She held the black device like a trophy and a threat, her face set. “Not yet.”
Roman’s head snapped toward her. “Ava - ”
She cut him off, voice low and lethal. “If they’re breaching the vault now, it’s because they expect you to stop me. Because they expect me to panic and hand over the ledger. I’m not surrendering evidence. I’m weaponizing it legally.”
He stared at her, at the device, at the ledger seal pressed to her chest. The internal conflict inside him screamed to pull her away, to keep his hands on her body until danger was gone.
But she wasn’t asking him to stop protecting her. She was asking him to trust her to protect what mattered.
Roman’s jaw tightened. “If you file with this evidence - if you use my history as legal weapon - ”
Ava’s eyes flashed. “You think I don’t know what I’m doing?”
Roman’s breath stuttered. His voice came out rougher than he meant. “I know you’re smart. I don’t know if you’ll survive the backlash.”
Ava stepped closer, forcing him to meet her.
She lifted the ledger folder just enough for him to see the stamped seal.
“They tried to make my evidence a death sentence,” she said.
“So I’m turning it into a sentence they can’t dodge.
Your shadow account. Your forged internal ledger.
Your name being used before you commanded. That’s not a stain anymore.”
Roman’s throat tightened. “What is it?”
Ava’s gaze held his, unwavering. “It’s proof of premeditated sabotage. Proof that someone inside your command has been feeding a syndicate your identity like a key.”
The realization hit like cold water. He’d known there was a leak, but he hadn’t wanted to believe it could be weaponized with his own history. He’d been trying to erase the risk by controlling the evidence.
Ava was doing the opposite. She was making the risk into a trap for them.
Roman’s shoulders loosened a fraction. The air felt less suffocating. He still hated the pressure, still hated the betrayal, but he could breathe inside the decision now because it had her consent woven into it.
A heavy impact rocked the vault door. Screws tore out with a shriek. A harsh voice barked from the other side - someone calling for the traitor to “confirm status.”
Roman’s gun rose higher.
Ava lifted her chin. “Let them come,” she said, and there was something feral in her calm.
Then she looked at Roman, and her expression softened by a thread. “You don’t get to save me by pretending I can’t choose.”
Roman stared at her, at the evidence, at the device in her grasp. The vow he’d tried to keep hidden finally found room in his chest.
“I won’t,” he said. “I’ll stay close enough that the world can’t pretend you’re alone.”
Ava’s breath shivered. She reached up and cupped his jaw - brief, daring, grounding him in the heat of her palm while the vault door screamed on its hinges. Roman didn’t kiss her yet. He didn’t steal the moment from the fight.
He only leaned into her touch like it was the last steady thing he’d ever have.
Ava’s eyes flicked to his gun, then back to his face. “When this is over,” she murmured, “tell me the truth you’ve been swallowing.”
Roman’s pulse kicked. He didn’t like promises. He liked outcomes. But the way she asked - like she was offering him a future he could build without hiding - made his discipline feel like a cage.
He nodded once. “When it’s over.”
The vault door burst inward with a spray of splinters and a rush of cooler air. Syndicate muscle spilled into the room, weapons up, eyes scanning for the folder.
Ava didn’t flinch. She stepped forward into the doorway’s light and held up the black device like a judge presenting evidence.
“Arrest him,” she said, voice slicing through the smoke and dust. “Not Roman.”
The men blinked - confused, then furious - because she’d taken their script and rewritten it in front of them.
Roman’s traitor was inside the pressure too. He could feel it. He could feel the trap tightening.
Ava’s gaze cut past the muscle, searching, and Roman understood what she’d done a heartbeat before the internal leak could react.
She’d weaponized the sabotage against the saboteur.
And behind Roman’s ribs, the truth settled fully again - this time, it wasn’t only that someone had watched. It was that Ava had found the courtroom in the firelight and made it theirs.
The man who stepped into the room last wore calm like armor, his expression too controlled to be muscle. He raised his hands slowly.
Roman recognized the posture from his own command briefs - an insider who knew how to look harmless while hiding a blade.
Ava’s smile didn’t reach her eyes. “You’re late,” she said.
The insider’s gaze snapped to the ledger folder - then to Ava’s face - then to Roman’s gun. His throat moved as if he’d tasted panic and hated it.
Roman tightened his grip and fired a single shot into the ceiling, not to kill, but to force the room into obedience. Dust rained harder. Everyone flinched.
Ava didn’t.
She leaned closer to Roman, voice so quiet it was only for him, and it carried the weight of the choice she’d made - saving both evidence and him without surrendering a single piece of herself.
“Now,” she breathed. “Choose how you want to be remembered.”
And the insider’s smile returned - thin, dangerous - just as he reached into his jacket for something that wasn’t a weapon.
It was a remote.