Chapter six – The Moretti Princess[Part 2]
1564 Words
“I want honesty,” she says. “I want to know how many lives you buried under those buildings.”
The image of the old woman and the rubble burns hot behind her eyes.
Vince’s gaze goes flat. “You have no idea what it takes to build what I’ve built.”
“Maybe I don’t want what you built,” she says softly.
Silence.
Something ugly flares in his eyes. “Then you’re free to leave. Give me my name back and walk out that door.”
The words used to slice her open.
They still hurt.
Just differently now.
Leo steps more fully between them. “Sir, this isn’t—”
“Stay out of this,” Vince snaps. “This is family.”
Leo’s jaw flexes. He looks at Ava, an apology in his eyes. “He’s right,” he says quietly. “But so are you. Just… pick a better time to fight him.”
Ava swallows down the thousand truths she *can’t* say—about an underground auction, a drive that could ruin him, a man who hates Vince as fiercely as she sometimes does.
She can’t set that bomb off here. Not yet.
“I’m tired,” she says. “If you want to ground me, dock my allowance, disinherit me, whatever—send the memo like you do for everyone else. I’m going to bed.”
Vince’s nostrils flare. “This conversation isn’t—”
“It is for me,” she says and turns.
“Ava.” His voice cracks like a whip. “Don’t walk away from me.”
Every instinct tells her to stop.
She keeps moving.
Leo’s fingers close gently—but firmly—around her arm.
“Let me,” he says to Vince. “I’ll make sure she understands.”
For a moment, Vince looks like he’ll refuse.
Then he exhales sharply and reaches for his glass. “You have five minutes,” he says. “Then I want a report.”
He turns away, and the phone is already in his other hand. “Get me the commissioner. No, I don’t care what time it is.”
Luca turns the sports back on too loud. Alessandro mutters something about drama queens.
Leo steers Ava down the hall toward her suite.
He doesn’t speak until the door is shut and locked behind them.
The city noise, the TV, even Vince’s voice—everything dulls.
Her suite is the only room in the penthouse that feels like hers: floor-to-ceiling windows, bookshelves she filled herself, a king-sized bed with white linens, photos hidden in drawers where Vince won’t see them.
Leo drops his hand from her arm and looks at her, really looks.
“Now,” he says. “You want to tell me where you *really* were?”
She crosses to the dresser, avoiding the mirror. Pulls open the drawer with the makeup wipes more for something to do than because she cares about mascara.
“Out with Cass,” she says.
“Ava.”
His voice strips the lie bare.
“You hacked the building logs,” she says. “You know I didn’t check a driver or go through the lobby.”
He doesn’t deny it.
“And I know you weren’t at some bar in Brooklyn,” he says. “Because two of my men were there all night, and they’d have died before losing your trail.”
She slams the drawer shut a little too hard.
“Stop handling me like cargo, Leo,” she snaps.
He scrubs a hand over his face. “Stop making me watch you walk blindfolded into gunfire.”
The word hits sharp.
Her fingers still. “You heard something.”
“Everyone with a scanner heard something,” he says. “Shots downtown. Private club. Rumors about a situation below ground. Your phone off. Your tracker off. You come home like…” His gaze moves over her again. “This.”
She lifts a hand to her neck without thinking, fingers brushing the bruised skin. Leo’s eyes narrow, tracking the motion.
“Did someone hurt you?” he asks quietly.
For a flash, she sees Damian’s hand on her jaw, his body shielding hers, his mouth crushing down on hers as bullets flew.
“Not like that,” she says. “I’m fine.”
He doesn’t look convinced. “You smell like gunpowder and bleach.”
She lets out a short, humorless breath. “You have a very weird nose.”
“A useful one.”
He hesitates, then reaches up and brushes his thumb under her eye, wiping away a streak of smeared mascara. The touch is gentle. Familiar.
Too familiar.
“You can’t do this again,” he says. “Whatever you did tonight—if I hadn’t checked the scanners, if I hadn’t seen the pattern—”
“It didn’t go sideways,” she says. “I’m here.”
“But it could have.” His voice is rougher now. “You could be in a bag under a bridge right now, and your father wouldn’t even *know* he lost you. Because you didn’t give me a chance to do my job.”
The last word cracks.
Something in her chest gives a tiny fracture.
He catches himself, jaw tightening, hand dropping. The professional mask slides back on.
“If you hate being watched, fine,” he says. “Hate me later. But for the love of God, Ava, don’t shut me out while you’re walking into live fire.”
“I didn’t ask you to care,” she says, but there’s no heat in it.
“Doesn’t matter,” he says. “I do.”
Silence hums between them, full of too many unsaid things.
Leo looks away first.
“I’m writing the report as ‘you were with Cass,’” he says. “Don’t make me a liar twice.”
Relief and guilt knot together in her stomach. “Thank you,” she murmurs.
“Don’t thank me,” he replies. “Just stay alive long enough to hate me properly when this blows up.”
He turns toward the door, hand on the knob, then pauses.
“And Ava?” he asks without looking back.
“Yes?”
“If this is about Kade,” he says very quietly, “walk away now. While you still can.”
Her pulse stutters. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’ve seen his file,” Leo says. “Men like Kade don’t chase what you hide. They make you hand it to them—and thank them for it.”
He leaves before she can find an answer.
The door clicks shut.
Silence rushes back in.
For a minute, Ava just stands there.
Then she crosses to the bathroom and flicks on the light.
Her reflection stares back at her: damp hair, smeared makeup, and dark eyes a little too wide. A faint shadow of redness at her throat that makeup won’t quite cover.
She sets her hands on the marble sink until her knuckles blanch.
*You were reckless,* she tells herself. *You almost died. You let him kiss you. You let him see you. You let him walk out with the drive.*
Her reflection offers no argument.
She tears open a wipe and scrubs foundation, eyeliner, sweat, and someone else’s blood from her skin. No matter how hard she rubs, she can’t erase the phantom feel of his mouth or the heat that answers it low in her belly.
The way her name sounded in his voice.
A soft chime sounds from the bedroom.
She frowns, tosses the used wipe, and walks back out.
Her tablet glows on the nightstand.
New encrypted email. Not from Cass. Not from any of her usual contacts.
Sender: **unknown@encrypted.kd-node**
Her chest tightens.
She unlocks the tablet and opens it.
No greeting. No signature. Just a timestamp from thirty seconds ago, a single attached image, and one line of text.
She taps the image.
Grainy black-and-white from a high angle. The underground auction hall mid-chaos. Strobing lights frozen. Bodies ducking.
In the center, two figures are disturbingly sharp.
Damian Kade, pinning her to the seat. His mouth on hers. Her hands fisted in his shirt.
The exact second he kissed her to keep her alive.
Her skin goes cold.
Beneath the image, text ticks into focus.
> You shouldn’t have run.
It’s not a threat in all caps. Not a demand. No instructions.
Just a statement.
A fact.
He hadn’t just walked out with the drive that could burn her family.
He walked out with *this*.
Proof she was there. Proof of what he did. Proof of what she let him do.
Her breath catches.
Not from fear.
From a worse realization:
He knows exactly how close he got—and he isn’t done.
Outside the glass, Manhattan burns in lights, breathing like a living animal.
Somewhere out there, Damian Kade is watching the same city and sending her warnings from an encrypted node.
Or maybe not warnings.
Opening moves.
She sets the tablet down more gently than it deserves, as if dropping it might make everything crash faster.
She just doesn’t know yet whether she’s more afraid of what Damian Kade can do to her family—
Or what he’s already starting to turn her into.
- Writer
