Episode 4
1802 Words
The flames turned the trees orange behind us as Roman gunned the engine, one hand on the wheel and the other tightly gripping the flash drive like it could detonate at any moment.
I didn’t say a word for the first twenty minutes.
Because what do you say after nearly being killed? After watching a place of safety reduced to ash?
After sleeping with your stepbrother, and realizing it changed everything?
He finally spoke. “You’re bleeding.”
I looked down. My bare shoulder was scraped from the window, blood dried and cracking along the edge of my collarbone. It looked like something out of a horror film.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
He took a sharp turn down a dirt road and slowed only when we reached a clearing with an abandoned church, half-collapsed and hidden beneath trees. It looked haunted. Or maybe it just felt that way because nothing in our world was clean anymore.
Roman pulled around to the back and parked.
“We’re switching cars,” he said.
I blinked. “To what? A hearse?”
But he was already pulling a tarp off a second vehicle—an old SUV, dusty but fully fueled, judging by the gas cans lined against the back wall.
“How long have you had this?” I asked.
“Long enough.”
Of course. Roman had escape routes buried in every corner of his life. While I had one plan for my future—finish school, join a firm, prove I was nothing like the people who raised me—he had contingency plans that involved burned cabins, burner phones, and backup vehicles hidden behind forgotten churches.
“I don’t even know who you really are,” I said, watching him move like a machine.
He stopped. “Yes, you do.”
He turned to face me.
“You know me better than anyone ever has. That’s why this terrifies you.”
I swallowed hard.
Because he was right.
I hated how true that felt.
—---------------------—-----------------------------
The SUV smelled like old leather and secrets. Roman drove with one hand, eyes flicking between the rearview mirror and the road. I wrapped my arms around myself, cold despite the heat in the air.
“Where are we going?” I finally asked.
“Delaney. She used to be my informant. She owes me.”
“Does she still trust you?”
“No. But she owes me.”
“And you trust her?”
He gave me a glance that made my stomach twist. “I don’t trust anyone, Aurelia. Not anymore.”
—---------------------—-----------------------------
Delaney lived in a warehouse that doubled as an underground MMA gym and a backroom tech haven. When she saw Roman walk in with me behind him, she dropped the wrench in her hand and narrowed her eyes.
“Seriously? You show up here—with her?”
Roman’s voice was flat. “We need your help.”
She looked me over like I was a bomb strapped to his chest. “You realize the last time you brought a woman here, she ended up leaking intel to your father.”
Roman’s jaw twitched. “This isn’t like that.”
“Sure it’s not.”
“I wouldn’t be here if it was.”
That was when Delaney noticed the blood on my shoulder and the tension in Roman’s voice.
“Fine,” she muttered. “One night. Then you disappear.”
She led us to a side room with a steel table and a sofa that had seen better days.
Roman sat me down and reached for the first aid kit. His hands were steady, even as he cleaned the wound on my shoulder. Mine shook just watching him.
“You do this a lot?” I asked quietly.
“Too much.”
“It hurts less if you tell me something,” I said.
He glanced up. “Like what?”
“Like why I haven’t run from you yet.”
His eyes darkened. “Because deep down, you don’t want to.”
My breath caught. “It’s not that simple.”
“It never is.”
He finished wrapping my shoulder, but his hand stayed there. Just resting. Like he couldn’t make himself pull away.
“You still want to run?” he asked.
I met his gaze. “No.”
It came out like a confession.
A promise.
He leaned in, his forehead touching mine. “Then don’t.”
I didn’t.
—---------------------—-----------------------------
We stayed in the safe room that night. The door had three locks. The windows were covered. The silence was a new kind of loud.
Roman didn’t sleep. He sat at the desk with his laptop, scanning through the files on the flash drive. I watched him from the couch, curled in a blanket that smelled like dust and sweat.
“How bad is it?” I asked.
He sighed. “Worse than we thought. Offshore accounts. False identities. Bribes to government officials. Your mother was the last one keeping him in check.”
“She was going to leak it?”
“She already started. The files she left behind—they’re fragments. But enough to blow this wide open if we can piece it together.”
“And if we can’t?”
He met my eyes. “Then he wins.”
I stood and walked over to him.
“I don’t want him to win.”
He looked up, his expression unreadable.
“You’re strong,” he said. “But this will break you if you let it.”
I touched his face. “Then don’t let me break.”
And then I kissed him.
This time, it wasn’t desperation. It wasn’t grief. It was something deeper—need layered with defiance, heat laced with something terrifyingly close to care.
He pulled me onto his lap, his hands on my waist, my legs straddling him as I threaded my fingers through his hair. His mouth trailed down my throat, and I gasped when his teeth grazed my skin.
“I don’t care if it’s wrong,” I whispered.
His voice was gravel. “It doesn’t feel wrong.”
Clothes disappeared.
Breath tangled.
The desk creaked beneath us.
I’d never felt more alive. More unraveled.
He took me like I was the only thing he had left.
Maybe I was.
—---------------------—-----------------------------
When I woke up, Roman was gone.
The laptop still glowed with static files.
I sat up, pulling on the nearest shirt—his—and stepped into the hallway. A faint light poured from the gym side of the warehouse.
I followed it.
Roman was on the mats, sparring with one of Delaney’s fighters. Sweat soaked his shirt. His punches were sharp, brutal. Like he wasn’t training—he was punishing something.
Or someone.
“Let me guess,” I said from the edge of the mat. “This is how you deal with emotions.”
He paused mid-hit, looked over his shoulder. “This is how I survive.”
Delaney stood nearby, arms crossed. “You sure you’re not just trying to bleed it out of yourself?”
Roman ignored her and wiped his face with a towel.
“You’re up early,” he said to me.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“You should’ve stayed in the safe room.”
“I didn’t want to be alone.”
The words hung there like something sacred and broken.
Delaney gave me a strange look. “You’re really in this, huh?”
I nodded. “All the way.”
Roman threw the towel over his shoulder and walked toward me.
“I got something,” he said. “From the files.”
He led me back to the desk and pulled up an image. A map. Coordinates.
“Hidden site,” he said. “One of the shell companies. I think that’s where he’s storing physical documents.”
“What’s there?”
“Evidence. Probably security. Maybe worse.”
“And you want to go?”
He looked at me. “I have to.”
I stepped closer. “Then I’m coming with you.”
Roman opened his mouth to argue. Closed it again.
“You’re not afraid anymore,” he said.
I shook my head. “I am. But I’d rather be afraid with you than safe without you.”
Something shifted in his expression. Like I’d passed a test neither of us knew we were taking.
Delaney handed him a burner phone. “You’ll have one shot. Make it count.”
—---------------------—-----------------------------
By noon, we were on the road again.
Roman drove with that same quiet intensity. But there was something different now. A softness beneath the steel. A tension neither of us could name.
As we approached the location, he slowed the car and pulled onto an abandoned service road.
“This is it,” he said.
The building was nondescript—gray, boxy, industrial. A single entrance. A keypad at the side door.
Roman took out a device, pressed it against the panel.
The light turned green.
We slipped inside.
It smelled like dust and secrets.
We moved down the hallway, past rooms full of filing cabinets and locked doors. Finally, we found it—a steel door with a biometric scanner.
Roman turned to me.
“I need your help.”
“What do I do?”
He handed me a USB. “Insert this when I say.”
He placed his palm against the scanner.
The door clicked.
We stepped inside.
Rows of locked drawers lined the walls.
Roman moved fast, unlocking the central drawer.
Inside were folders. Paper. A stack of passports. And a black book.
He opened it. His face went pale.
“What is it?” I asked.
He turned the book toward me.
My mother’s name.
My name.
And beside them… Roman’s name.
Under the column marked: “Liabilities.”
The alarm went off.
Sirens. Lights.
“Run!” he yelled.
We bolted out the door, alarms blaring behind us. Roman dragged me through the service hall as red lights blinked like blood in the air.
I didn’t ask questions.
I just ran.
When we got to the car, someone was already waiting.
A man.
Gun raised.
And Roman stepped in front of me.
“Put the drive down,” the man said.
Roman didn’t move.
“Or she dies.”
—---------------------—-----------------------------
Roman turned, looking at me one last time—and whispered, “Trust me.”
Then he stepped forward, raising his hands—and let the man take him.
I screamed his name.
But it was too late.
They had him.
And I had the drive.
- Writer
