Chapter 3
Roman’s expression changed instantly.
Calculation.
Luca nodded slowly. “Congratulations, sweetheart. You’re bait.”
Three black vans suddenly roared into the tunnel behind Luca.
Roman moved instantly.
“DOWN!”
Gunfire exploded.
Ava screamed as Roman slammed her behind the SUV just as bullets shredded the windshield above them.
The tunnel became chaos.
Muzzle flashes.
Concrete dust.
Screaming tires.
Roman fired with terrifying precision, every shot controlled and lethal. Two attackers dropped before Ava even fully processed what was happening.
Roman’s men returned fire from both sides of the convoy.
Luca vanished behind his Escalade.
Ava pressed against the concrete barrier, heart slamming wildly against her ribs.
Roman crouched beside her.
“You hit?”
“No.”
Blood streaked down the side of his neck.
“You are.”
“Not mine.”
That somehow scared her more.
Another burst of gunfire erupted.
Roman grabbed her face suddenly.
“Ava.”
She looked at him.
Everything else disappeared for one impossible second.
“If I tell you to run,” he said quietly, “you do not stop. You do not look back. You understand me?”
Fear crashed through her.
“Roman—”
“Ava.”
The way he said her name nearly broke something inside her.
She nodded once.
A black van door suddenly slid open.
A man stepped out holding a rifle—
—and froze.
His eyes locked directly onto Ava.
Not Roman.
Her.
The man slowly lowered the weapon.
Confusion crossed his face.
Then horror.
“Oh my God,” he whispered.
Roman saw it too.
The shooter stared at Ava like he had seen a ghost.
Then the man shouted one sentence that made the entire tunnel stop breathing.
“She’s alive.”
Roman’s face went white.
Actually white.
The shooter backed away slowly, still staring at Ava in disbelief.
“That’s impossible,” he muttered. “She died in Prague.”
Ava’s mind blanked.
Prague?
Roman grabbed the man before he could escape.
“What did you just say?”
The shooter looked at Ava with pure terror now.
“She has her mother’s eyes.”
Roman went completely still.
Ava felt the world tilt sideways beneath her feet.
Mother.
Not father.
Mother.
The shooter swallowed hard.
“The Odessa girl,” he whispered. “Her daughter survived.”
Roman’s grip tightened violently.
Ava looked at him.
And for the first time since the garage explosion, Roman Vale looked afraid.
Not for himself.
For her.
“Ava,” he said carefully, “what was your mother’s real name?”
Ava opened her mouth.
Then froze.
Because suddenly she remembered something she had not thought about in twenty years.
A lullaby.
A foreign language.
A woman crying.
And a passport hidden beneath floorboards when she was six years old.
Not Hart.
The name on the passport had not been Hart.
It had been Volkov.
Roman saw the answer appear on her face.
And whispered one devastating word.
“No.”
Gunfire erupted again.
But Ava barely heard it.
Because the truth hit harder than any explosion.
She had not been investigating Roman Vale by accident.
Someone had spent months leading her toward him.
May you like
And somehow…
her entire life had started with the same organization that now wanted them both dead.
