Chapter 8
The safehouse overlooked Lake Michigan.
Wind rattled the windows while Ava sat alone at the kitchen table staring at the microchip.
Roman stood across the room.
He hadn’t tried to touch her since the opera house.
That somehow hurt more.
Finally Ava spoke.
“You loved her.”
Roman closed his eyes briefly.
“Yes.”
“And she died because you betrayed Sokolov.”
Roman nodded once.
“I thought I could outmaneuver him.”
Ava laughed bitterly.
“And now people die around you because you always think you’re smarter than everyone else.”
Roman accepted the blow without reacting.
“That’s true.”
She hated that answer.
Hated the exhaustion in his face.
Hated that some reckless part of her still remembered his hands protecting her inside the burning garage.
“Why protect me?” she whispered.
Roman looked at her for a long moment.
“Because I failed her.”
Ava shook her head.
“No. That’s not the real reason.”
Silence.
Then Roman crossed the room slowly.
“When I saw you in the garage…”
His voice roughened unexpectedly.
“It felt like the dead had returned.”
Ava’s breath caught.
“You have her courage,” he said softly. “Her recklessness too.”
The air between them changed.
Dangerously.
Roman stopped inches away.
“But you are nothing like her.”
Ava looked up at him.
“Then what am I like?”
His eyes moved across her face slowly.
“You run toward explosions.”
Despite everything, she laughed.
Roman’s expression softened for the first time all night.
Then the lights went out.
Every instinct in Roman sharpened instantly.
“Down.”
The windows exploded inward.
Snipers.
Roman tackled Ava behind the kitchen island as bullets shredded the walls.
Luca shouted from another room.
More gunfire.
Roman pulled Ava toward a hidden stairwell.
“Move!”
They raced downward as alarms screamed overhead.
The underground garage beneath the safehouse was already under attack.
Bodies littered the concrete.
Sokolov stood near the exit surrounded by armed men.
“Well,” the old man sighed. “Here we are again.”
Roman pushed Ava behind him.
“Run when I tell you.”
“No.”
Roman looked furious.
“Ava—”
“I’m done running from truths people hide from me.”
Sokolov smiled.
“She really is Elena’s daughter.”
Then he raised his gun.
Roman moved first.
The next seconds became chaos.
Gunfire.
Screaming.
Concrete dust.
Blood.
Roman fought like a man who had already accepted death.
Ava saw him take a bullet to the shoulder and keep moving.
Saw him shield her again.
Saw him become a storm.
Then Sokolov aimed directly at Ava.
Roman turned.
The shot hit him in the chest.
Everything stopped.
Roman staggered.
May you like
Ava screamed.
And Roman Vale—feared by half the city—collapsed at her feet.
