CHAPTER 4
1544 Words
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*Chapter 4 - The Studio*
The studio smelled like dust and vinyl and something else. Old coffee. Rain.
Damian locked the door behind us. Three locks. A chair under the knob. Then he just stood there, listening.
For sirens. For footsteps. For anything.
Nothing.
Only the rain hitting the boarded windows and the faint hum of a fridge somewhere in the back.
“We’re safe,” he said finally. But he didn’t sound convinced.
I looked around. The place was small. One big room with a mattress on the floor, a hot plate, a stack of milk crates full of records. Posters on the walls. Band names I recognized. Band names I didn’t.
In the corner, a turntable. Covered in a sheet.
“This was your mom’s?” I asked quietly.
Damian nodded. He shrugged off his wet jacket and tossed it over a chair. Underneath, his shirt was soaked through. He looked 19 again. Not the billionaire. Not the criminal. Just a guy.
“She ran this place for 12 years,” he said. “Vinyl & Soul. Best record shop in the district. Before VexCorp bought the block and tore it down for condos.”
“They tore it down?”
“Most of it.” He gestured to the window. “This building was grandfathered in. She refused to sell. Said the music lived here.”
I walked to the turntable and pulled the sheet off. An old Technics. Same model I learned on.
“You DJ’d here?” I asked.
Damian gave a small, tired smile. “Every Friday. From 14 to 18. Before I had to go to board meetings and pretend I cared about quarterly earnings.”
I turned. “Why didn’t you just leave? You’re his son. You could’ve taken the money and run.”
Damian went to the hot plate and filled a kettle. His back was to me. “Because of this.” He tapped his chest, right over the pocket with the USB. “Because if I ran, he’d win. And people like you would keep disappearing.”
The kettle clicked on. The sound was too loud in the quiet.
I sat on the edge of the mattress. It dipped. “So what now? We sit here and wait for them to find us?”
“No.” Damian turned. “Now we figure out what’s on that drive. All of it. And we decide who to give it to.”
“Give it to who? The cops are on his payroll. The news is owned by him.”
“There’s one journalist,” Damian said. “Mara Ellis. Independent. She’s been trying to take him down for 5 years.”
I frowned. “Mara Ellis? The one who got fired from the Times?”
“The same.” He pulled the USB out of his pocket. It didn’t pulse anymore. It just sat there, silver and innocent and deadly. “She’s the only one I trust.”
“Trust,” I repeated. “That’s a big word right now.”
Damian met my eyes. “I know.”
We stared at each other. The rain got louder.
The kettle screamed.
Damian moved first. He poured two mugs of tea. No bags. Just hot water and something from a jar. Looked like honey.
He handed me one. Our fingers brushed. His were cold.
“Drink,” he said. “You’re shaking.”
I was. I hadn’t noticed.
We didn’t sit together. I stayed on the mattress. He sat on the floor, back against the wall, knees up. Like we were 10 feet apart but also in the same room.
For a while we just drank.
Then Damian set his mug down.
“Ask me,” he said.
“What?”
“Anything. You’ve been holding it in since the alley.”
I laughed, but it wasned funny. “Where do I start? Are you actually the bad guy? Did you use me? Do you even care that my name is on a kill list?”
Damian flinched. “Yes.”
“Which one?”
“All of them.” He looked down at his hands. “I’m not the bad guy. Not completely. But I’m not good either. I grew up in that house. I took his money. I went to his dinners. I shook hands with his monsters.”
“And now?”
“And now I want to burn it down.” His voice was low. “And you got caught in the middle.”
I hugged the mug. “You could’ve told me at the club. Before all this.”
“I tried.” He met my eyes. “You were DJing. You looked... free. I didn’t want to ruin that.”
I snorted. “Well, you did.”
“I know.”
Silence again. But different. Softer.
I set my tea down. “Can I see it? The whole drive.”
Damian hesitated. Then nodded. He pulled out the air-gapped reader and his burner. Plugged the USB in.
Files scrolled. Names I didn’t know. Dates. Amounts with too many zeros.
Then he stopped on a video.
He didn’t click it.
“What is it?” I asked.
Damian’s throat moved. “My dad. Meeting with the Vant. Six months ago.”
“Have you watched it?”
“Once.” He looked sick. “It’s enough.”
“Play it.”
“Ava—”
“Play it.”
He did.
The video was grainy. Security footage. A basement. A long table.
Damian’s father sat at the head. Older. Colder. The same jawline.
Three men in suits stood across from him. The Vant.
“We have a leak,” Vex Sr. said. His voice was clear. “My son.”
One of the Vant nodded. “And the girl?”
“What girl?”
“The DJ. She has the drive.”
Vex Sr. smiled. It was awful. “Then contain her. Same as him.”
The video ended.
My blood was ice.
Damian closed the laptop. Hard. “I’m sorry.”
“For what? For your dad being a monster?”
“For not getting to you sooner.”
I stood up. I couldn’t sit anymore. I paced the small room. Past the records. Past the posters. My hands were shaking again.
“He wants me dead,” I said. “Because I picked up a USB.”
“Because you could talk,” Damian corrected. “You’re a witness. And witnesses are problems.”
I stopped in front of the window. Pushed the board aside an inch. Outside, the street was empty.
“What if we just gave it to them?” I whispered. “What if I give them the drive and they let me go?”
Behind me, Damian stood too.
“They won’t,” he said quietly. “Once you’ve seen it, you’re a liability. And my father doesn’t leave liabilities.”
I turned. “Then what do we do?”
Damian was close now. Not touching. But close. Close enough I could smell the rain on him and the tea on his breath.
“We go to Mara,” he said. “Tomorrow morning. We give her everything. We go public. And we pray that’s enough to keep us alive.”
“And if it’s not?”
“Then we run.” He said it like it was simple. “Together.”
The word hung between us. Together.
I looked up at him. Really looked. His eyes were dark in the dim light. Tired. But there was something else there too. Something that made my chest tight.
“Damian,” I started.
He stepped closer. One step.
“Ava,” he said back. My name. Just my name.
For a second I thought he was going to kiss me. I wanted him to. Stupid. Dangerous. But I wanted it.
Then his phone buzzed.
Not the burner. His real phone. The one he’d kept off all night.
He pulled it out. One new voicemail. From a number he didn’t have saved.
He put it on speaker.
A woman’s voice. Cold. Familiar.
`Damian. If you’re listening to this, you’ve made your choice. Come home. Or we’ll bring her to you. In pieces.`
Click.
The room went silent.
Damian’s face went blank. The Damian from the club. The one who didn’t feel anything.
He looked at me. “They found my mom’s studio.”
“How?”
“Because they’re my father’s dogs. They know everything about me.” He pocketed the phone. “We have maybe an hour.”
My stomach dropped. “So we run again.”
Damian grabbed his jacket. Tossed me mine. “We run. But this time we don’t hide.”
“What do you mean?”
He picked up the USB. Held it up. The blue light caught in his eyes.
“We go to Mara. Tonight. And we finish this.”
I nodded. Even though I was terrified.
Damian opened the door. Peered out. Then looked back at me.
“Stay behind me,” he said.
And we slipped out into the dark, into the rain, with a bomb in our hands and a target on our backs.
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- Writer
