Chapter Twenty

When the Trap Closes

(Aurora + Zane POV)

AURORA

The van smelled like oil, metal, and old fear.

I sat between two men who didn’t speak, their silence heavier than threats. My wrists weren’t bound, which told me everything I needed to know. They wanted me calm. Cooperative. Unbroken.

That meant I was more valuable intact.

The city disappeared behind us, swallowed by warehouses and abandoned rail lines. Streetlights thinned. Darkness thickened. My pulse slowed—not from peace, but from purpose.

I touched the cufflink in my pocket.

Zane had left it for me on purpose.

Which meant he knew I’d come.

Which meant this was never just their trap.

The van jerked to a stop.

“Out,” one man said.

I stepped into cold air and concrete silence. The warehouse loomed like a carcass picked clean by time—windows boarded, steel doors scarred by rust and violence. Somewhere inside, Zane was breathing. Hurting. Waiting.

They led me through a side entrance and down a corridor lit by flickering bulbs. My heels echoed, steady, deliberate. Fear tried to rise.

I crushed it.

We reached a metal door. One guard knocked once. Twice.

“Bring her in,” a voice said from the other side.

The door opened.

And there he was.

ZANE

Aurora.

The moment I saw her, the room tilted.

She stood framed in the doorway like a living wound—bruised, blood at her hairline, eyes blazing with a fury that made my chest ache. She shouldn’t have been here. I’d planned for everything except this.

Except her choosing me.

“Zane,” she said.

My name on her lips was a knife. I strained against the restraints, chains biting into my wrists. “You shouldn’t have come.”

Her gaze flicked over me—blood, bruises, the chair, the chains—and something inside her snapped.

“They hurt you,” she said softly.

The man behind her laughed. “Careful. She bites.”

The boss stepped forward at last.

He was older than I expected. Gray at the temples. Expensive suit. Calm eyes that measured everything and missed nothing. He looked at Aurora the way men look at leverage.

“So this is her,” he said. “The asset.”

“She’s not an asset,” I growled.

Aurora turned her head slightly. “He talks too much.”

The boss smiled. “You’re sharper than you look.”

“People underestimate me,” she replied. “They don’t live long enough to do it twice.”

My heart pounded. God help me, she was magnificent.

The boss circled her slowly. “You walked into this knowing we’d take you.”

“Yes,” Aurora said. “Because you wouldn’t kill him while I was still useful.”

The man stopped. Studied her. “Smart.”

She met his gaze unflinching. “Let him go.”

The boss chuckled. “That’s not how this works.”

Aurora reached into her pocket.

Every muscle in my body went tight.

She pulled out the cufflink.

“You’re looking for leverage,” she said. “You think Zane is it. But you’re wrong.”

The boss’s smile faded.

“You want what he built,” she continued. “The network. The money. The secrets. You took the flash drive—but you didn’t get the failsafe.”

The air changed.

“What failsafe?” the boss asked.

Aurora smiled then. Cold. Controlled. Deadly. “The one that triggers if either of us disappears.”

My breath caught.

She glanced at me—just once. A look heavy with things we’d never said aloud.

“I uploaded everything,” she said. “Timed release. Names. Accounts. Faces. If either of us dies… it all goes public.”

Silence slammed into the room.

The boss’s eyes hardened. “You’re bluffing.”

“Check your phone,” she said.

One of the guards did.

His face drained of color. “Sir—news alert—data leak—multiple agencies—”

Chaos erupted.

The boss swore. “Shut it down!”

“You can’t,” Aurora said calmly. “You already lost.”

I stared at her.

She’d walked into hell not to save me—but to burn it.

The boss turned to me, fury blazing. “You planned this.”

“No,” I said quietly. “She did.”

Aurora moved fast.

She grabbed the guard nearest her, slammed his wrist into the metal table, tore the gun free, and fired.

The sound was deafening.

Chains fell.

Someone screamed.

I surged forward, pain screaming through my body, ripping the restraints loose as another shot rang out. I tackled the boss as alarms blared, the room dissolving into chaos.

“Aurora!” I shouted.

“I’m here!” she yelled back.

We moved like we’d done this before—instinct, proximity, trust forged in fire. I dragged her behind a steel pillar as bullets tore through the space where we’d been standing seconds earlier.

Her breath was wild. Mine matched it.

“You shouldn’t have come,” I said again.

She looked at me, eyes fierce, alive, burning. “You don’t get to decide that.”

The exit lights flickered.

“Move!” she shouted.

We ran.

Out into the night.

Into cold air and sirens and shattered plans.

We didn’t stop until the warehouse was a dying echo behind us.

When we finally did, we stood in the dark—breathing hard, bloodied, alive.

I reached for her without thinking.

She didn’t pull away.

But she didn’t soften either.

“This changes nothing,” she said.

“It changes everything,” I replied.

Her jaw tightened. “You lied to me.”

“Yes.”

“You used me.”

“Yes.”

“You almost destroyed me.”

I swallowed. “I know.”

Silence stretched between us—heavy, fragile, dangerous.

Finally, she stepped back.

“This isn’t over,” she said. “For them. Or for us.”

I nodded. “I wouldn’t insult you by pretending it was.”

She turned away—but not before slipping the cufflink back into my hand.

“You don’t get to disappear again,” she said. “Not without me.”

Then she walked into the night.

And for the first time in my life, I didn’t know whether losing control terrified me—

Or whether it felt like freedom.

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