CHAPTER 3 — The Name Behind the Trigger
CHAPTER 3 — The Name Behind the Trigger
Hours later, Ava was still in the same room.
She had been offered water. Food. A place to leave.
She had refused all of it.
Roman had made three more calls. Each one colder than the last.
Now he stood at the far wall, speaking quietly into a secured line.
Ava watched him.
There was something about Roman Vale that didn’t match the stories.
The media painted him as untouchable crime royalty. Prosecutors called him a ghost with money trails. Informants called him “the silence before consequences.”
But here—now—he looked like something else.
A man containing a storm rather than causing it.
He ended the call and turned back to her.
“They found the origin of the message,” he said.
Ava straightened. “And?”
Roman’s eyes didn’t soften. “It came from inside your newsroom.”
Her blood went cold.
“That’s not possible.”
“It is,” he corrected again. “Just inconvenient.”
Ava stepped back slightly. “You’re saying someone at the Ledger sent me to your garage knowing there’d be a bomb?”
“I’m saying,” Roman replied, “someone knew exactly how to move you without you noticing.”
Her hands clenched. “Why would anyone do that?”
Roman’s gaze held hers.
“That,” he said, “is what you were supposed to find out by getting close to me.”
A pause.
Then Ava whispered, “So I was bait.”
“You were leverage,” he corrected. “There’s a difference.”
Her voice sharpened. “To who?”
Roman walked closer now. Not threatening. Not gentle either.
Just close enough that she had to look up at him.
“To whoever wanted me to step into that car,” he said. “And for you to survive it.”
Ava swallowed. “Why would they care if I survived?”
Roman didn’t answer immediately.
Then, finally:
“Because you’re not random.”
That hit harder than anything else.
Ava let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “I’m literally a reporter with student debt and a dying father. I’m very random.”
Roman’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“You were assigned to a story that didn’t exist until you were chosen to write it,” he said. “That is not random.”
Silence again.
He added, quieter: “Someone knew your name before I did.”
Ava felt the room tilt slightly.
“You said you knew my name in the garage.”
“I did.”
“So how—”
Roman stepped closer, stopping just before her space broke completely.
“Because I was given your file before you ever entered my world,” he said.
Ava’s breath caught.
“And in that file,” he continued, voice lower now, “there was one instruction.”
She didn’t want to ask.
She did anyway.
“What instruction?”
Roman held her gaze.
“Do not let her die before she meets me.”
The silence that followed was absolute.
Not even the building seemed to breathe.
Ava stared at him, something cold forming in her chest that had nothing to do with fear of him—and everything to do with what was outside him.
“So I wasn’t saving you,” she whispered.
Roman’s expression didn’t change.
“No,” he said. “You were being delivered to me.”
And for the first time since the explosion—
May you like
Ava realized the bomb in the car might not have been the beginning.
It might have been the warning.
