Married To The Devil Who Bought My Revenge

007: Learning to Be Dangerous

~Ava's POV~

"You already know most of this," Dominic said, watching my face as I read. "You just didn't know what you were looking at."

I looked up from the red folder. "That's either a compliment or an insult. I can't tell which."

"Neither." He leaned against the edge of the long table. "It's just true."

The war room was nothing like I expected. No dramatic lighting, no leather chairs that screamed power. Just a long table, four screens mounted on the walls, and a whiteboard covered in Dominic's handwriting. Equations, names, org charts, lines connecting things I was still trying to make sense of.

I looked back down at the folder. The real financial position of Hale Industries. Not the version they filed publicly. The actual one, with all the rot showing.

Supply chain gaps. Three board members quietly shop for exits. And a silent debt to a foreign investment group buried so deep I'd never seen it in five years of working inside that company.

But some of it I recognized. Because I was the one who'd buried it.

"The Meridian account," I said, stopping on one page. "I knew something was wrong with it. My father told me it was restructuring."

"It was laundering."

I closed the folder. The word landed flat and heavy, the way truth usually did.

"How long have you known?"

"Four years."

"Why didn't you move sooner?"

He was quiet for just a second. "Because four years ago, I didn't have you."

The room went completely silent.

I wasn't sure what to do with that, so I opened the folder again and kept reading. But my heart was doing something it had no business doing. Something warm and stupid that I couldn't afford.

*****

The lesson went on for two hours. Dominic walked me through how to read a company's real health versus the version it showed the world. He explained how a single rumor, delivered to the right person in exactly the right tone, could move a stock before the market even opened. He talked about the difference between destruction and dismantling.

"Destruction is loud," he said, writing something on the whiteboard. "It leaves evidence. It gives them something to point at." He turned around. "Dismantling is quiet. By the time anyone realizes what happened, there's nothing left to save."

"Like pulling threads," I said.

"Exactly like that."

This time, he was standing very close to me. Closer than he needed to be for a lesson. I could smell his Cologne, and I was very aware of every inch of space between us.

He reached past me to flip to the next page in the document, and his arm brushed mine.

Neither of us moved away.

"This one," he said, his voice lower now. "Look at the margin discrepancy."

I looked at the page. I also looked at his hand, still resting near mine on the table. "The supplier invoices don't match the delivery receipts."

"No. They haven't for eighteen months."

"I flagged this," I said, something cold moving through me. "Eighteen months ago, I flagged this exact discrepancy and my father told me I miscounted."

"You didn't miscount."

I turned my head to say something back and realized he was closer than I'd expected. Just a few inches. His eyes moved to my mouth for half a second, maybe less, and then came back up.

My brain went completely blank.

He didn't move back. Neither did I. We just stood there.

Then, very slowly, he lifted his hand and brushed a strand of hair away from my face. His fingers barely grazed my cheek, what was he doing? What were we both doing? I asked myself.

It was supposed to be something else and not this. and it was such a small thing, but it sent a current straight through me.

I kissed him. Without knowing when I did that.

It was soft, just a breath of contact, and for a second he kissed me back, his hand coming up to rest against my jaw, warm and certain.

Then I pulled back. Immediately I realized what I was doing.

He let me, and didn't argue or say anything.

We stood there, not quite looking at each other. My heart was going fast.

"I can't," I said finally. Not to him. More to myself. "I can't do that again and pretend it's nothing. Last time I did that, I woke up not knowing which parts were real."

He didn't argue. He didn't push. He just nodded once, like he understood, and stepped back to give me the space I needed.

"Okay," he said quietly.

That was it. Just okay.

I didn't know if that made it better or made it worse.

*****

We finished the session without bringing it up again. I caught an error in one of his timelines, a date he had marked wrong by three weeks, and pointed it out without thinking.

He didn't say anything. He just picked up my annotated copy and kept it.

By the time I got back to my room, I had a notepad and a clear head. Or a mostly clear head.

I sat on the edge of my bed and started writing. Everything I personally knew about my father's business that wasn't in Dominic's file. The informal meetings. The names I'd overheard. The accounts I'd been quietly steered away from.

I filled two pages before I stopped.

Then I looked at what I'd written and felt something settle in my chest. Something solid.

*He doesn't have all of it,* I thought, staring at the list. *He needs me. Not just for the contract. He actually needs me.*

And somehow, that felt like the most dangerous thing I'd learned all day.