Chapter Four – Digital Ghosts[Part 1]

By morning, the kiss is everywhere she looks.

Not on the news. Not on gossip sites.

On every screen that matters.

Ava sits cross-legged on Cass’s secondhand couch in their tiny Queens apartment, city light slicing in through crooked blinds. The place smells like instant coffee, old takeout, and computer heat. Monitors line one wall in mismatched sizes, stacked on crates and thrift-store desks.

On all of them: black-and-white stills from the underground auction.

“It’s like watching a horror movie frame by frame,” Cass mutters, fingers flying over her keyboard. “Starring: my best friend’s worst life choices.”

Ava doesn’t argue.

She’s still in yesterday’s jeans and an oversized hoodie she grabbed from the floor when she snuck out of the penthouse at dawn. Hair in a messy knot. No makeup. She looks at how she feels—stripped down, raw.

“Go back,” she says quietly. “Fifteen seconds. Slow it down.”

Cass drags a timeline slider back and hits play.

Security feed four: wide angle of the auction floor. People in gowns and tuxes frozen in various stages of panic. Emergency lights strobing. The camera’s time stamp glitches, jumping in tiny jerks as the system tries to compensate for power loss.

Ava watches herself like a ghost—seat C17, half-obscured by shadows, Damian’s body pinning hers.

He bends. Kisses her. The strobes wash them in alternating light and darkness.

Her stomach knots.

“You sure you wanna keep watching this?” Cass asks. “’Cause I can hit delete and we can pretend last night was just a bad dream where you licked a Bond villain.”

Ava’s eyes stay glued to the nearest monitor. “Play it.”

Cass sighs and obeys.

On screen, the kiss breaks. Damian’s mouth leaves hers; his forehead touches hers for a heartbeat. Then he lifts his head, eyes already scanning the room as the flashlight beam passes over them.

The time stamp jitters.

“Freeze it there,” Ava says.

Cass hits a key. The image stops.

Two bodies in an intimate crime scene tableau. His hand on her jaw. Her fingers twisted in his jacket. Adrenaline still stamped across every line of their faces.

Ava swallows.

“That’s the frame he sent me,” she says.

Cass zooms in, the grain sharpening, then distorting.

“Yeah, I pulled this from the partial dump off their network before the system hard-locked,” Cass says. “He either grabbed it at the same time I did, or he has deeper access to their main server.”

“Probably both,” Ava says.

“Probably.”

Cass leans back in her chair, chewing on a thumbnail. “You sure you don’t wanna call the cops and, I don’t know, witness-protect your way into suburban Ohio?”

Ava lets out a short, humorless breath. “I’m not sure of anything except that if we involve the police, Vince will know I was there before the ink dries on the incident report.”

“And I’m guessing ‘hey, Dad, I tried to steal evidence of your crimes’ isn’t the bonding activity you’re going for,” Cass says.

“Not this week.”

Cass snorts softly, then taps a different key. A second video window opens.

“Okay, look. This is what I could salvage from the main auction node,” she says. “Watch the timeline.”

The view changes: now it’s a close-up of the auctioneer’s platform and the velvet tray holding Lot Seventeen.

Ava’s chest tightens.

The silver drive glints under the lights.

Numbers flash on the overlay as bids climb.

Eight million. Fifteen. Twenty-five.

Seat A05 wins. Damian.

“Now, this is the interesting part,” Cass says. “Watch the metadata bar on the right.”

Tiny strings of code flicker along the side of the screen as the recording jumps forward. For a few seconds, everything looks normal—chaos, power flicker, and security protocols trying to reroute.

Then, a thin red bar flashes across the bottom.

The footage stutters.

Half a second of pure static.

Then it resumes—from a slightly different angle, like someone nudged the camera in the dark.

“What was that?” Ava asks.

“That,” Cass says, zooming into the glitch, “is either a very dramatic sneeze from the guy in charge of their hardware room… or someone inserted a secondary access command into the recording stack.”

“In English.”

“In English: while everyone upstairs was screaming and kissing and shooting at each other,” Cass says, “someone down there used the blackout window to push something into—or pull something out of—the system.”

“Lot Seventeen,” Ava says.

Cass nods grimly. “Best guess? Yeah.”

Her fingers dance across the keyboard again. Another window appears—a file tree, partial and broken.

“This is what I got before their firewall woke up and tried to eat me,” Cass says. “Partial log of auctioned lots. You see how most of them have intact hash trails?” She points. “But Seventeen? Corrupted. Missing chunks. Checksums off.”

Ava frowns. “Meaning?”

“Meaning whatever’s on the physical drive Kade walked out with,” Cass says, “is not exactly what their original server had logged as Lot Seventeen. Some files are gone. Some are altered. Some names aren’t even in the index anymore, just empty ID tags.”

A shiver slides down Ava’s spine.

“So he doesn’t have everything,” she says.

“No,” Cass says. “No one does. Whoever did this wanted to make sure of that.”

Silence hangs between them for a few seconds.

“You sure Kade didn’t do it himself?” Ava asks.

Cass shakes her head. “Timing doesn’t fit. His bid confirms at this time stamp.” She taps a line on the screen. “The system glitch hits… here. Almost ten seconds after he’s logged as the winner. The physical drive’s in motion by then, being escorted out. This looks like someone reaching into the *record* of Lot Seventeen, not the drive itself.”

“So there are at least three players,” Ava says slowly. “My father’s circle. Kade. And whoever’s behind the tampering.”

“Four, actually,” Cass says. “Don’t forget the suicidal heiress who thought it was a good idea to crash the party.”

Ava drags a hand down her face. “Please don’t call me that.”

“I’ll stop when you stop giving me aneurysms,” Cass says. “In the meantime, the facts: Kade has a version of the drive. Your father’s people probably have backups of their own deals. And someone else has already edited the master logs. That someone doesn’t want the full picture to exist anymore.”

“Or wants to control who sees it,” Ava says.

“Bingo.”

Cass swallows the last of her coffee and sets the mug down with a soft clink.

“I hate this,” she says. “I hate that you were in that room. I hate that Kade now has you on security footage. And I really, really hate that we’re about to have the conversation we’re about to have.”

Ava arches a brow. “Which is?”

Cass swivels her chair to face her fully.

“You can’t fix this from the outside anymore,” she says. “Not with half a dataset, a guilty conscience, and my charming personality. If you want to know what’s really on that drive—and what they took out—you need access to Kade’s systems. To *him*.”

Ava’s throat goes dry. “No.”

“Yes,” Cass insists. “You need his copy. You need to see what he sees. You need to know what names are on it and which ones are missing.”

“He wants the same thing,” Ava says. “Information. Leverage. Do you think he’s just going to let me plug a USB into his servers and poke around?”

“No,” Cass says. “I think he’s going to try to own you. Digitally, physically, legally, whatever works. And I think you’re the only person stupid enough to walk into his building knowing that and still try to flip the board.”

Ava stares at the frozen image of him kissing her.

“I’m not walking into his building,” she says. “Last night was—”

“Last night was the first move,” Cass cuts in. “He already found you once. He will again. Do you want to be reacting to his plays forever, or do you want a chance to see the whole game?”

A bitter laugh escapes Ava. “You make it sound so simple.”

“It’s not,” Cass says. “It’s suicide-adjacent. But staying out of it doesn’t make you safe, Ava. It just makes you blind. Vince, Kade, and whoever did this to Lot Seventeen—they’re going to redraw the city whether you watch or not.”

Ava presses her fingertips to her temples.

Her father’s voice: *You are here because I allow it.*

Damian’s: *You shouldn’t have run.*

“How?” she asks eventually. “Say I did walk into Kade’s tower. Say I got close enough to touch his systems. What, then? He built half the security architecture in this city. You told me once he eats hackers for breakfast.”

“He does,” Cass says. “Which is why you’re not going in as a hacker.”

Ava looks up sharply.

“Then what am I?” she asks.

Cass’s mouth twists. “You’re a Moretti.”

The word tastes like poison and power.

“Your family name opens doors. Mine never will,” Cass says. “You walk in there as a problem he can’t ignore. As leverage, he can’t pass up. You let him think he’s using you. Meanwhile, I’ll be in his digital walls, piggybacking on whatever access he gives you.”

“That’s not a plan,” Ava says. “That’s a suicide note with extra steps.”

Cass shrugs helplessly. “It’s the only angle we have. Unless you want to go back to being your father’s silent princess and hope no one ever says ‘auction’ in his presence.”

The thought makes her stomach turn.

More demolished buildings. More buried tenants. More nights staring at herself in the mirror and pretending she doesn’t see blood.

No.

She can’t go back.

“Even if I wanted to,” she says, “Kade’s already one move ahead. He contacted me last night.”

Cass’s eyes widen. “What?”

“He sent me the still from the auction feed,” Ava says. “With that line: ‘You shouldn’t have run.’”

Cass’s fingers curl hard around the arm of her chair. “And you didn’t think to lead with that?”

“I was busy trying not to think about his mouth on mine,” Ava snaps, then winces. “Sorry. That came out—”

“Accurate,” Cass says dryly. “Disturbing, but accurate.”

She blows out a breath. “Okay. So he has the drive, proof you were there, and your direct contact. That’s not a crush. That’s a containment protocol.”

“Meaning?” Ava asks.

“Meaning he’s not going to just let you fade into the background,” Cass says. “He’ll poke. He’ll prod. He’ll push until you respond. Might as well choose when and how instead of waiting for him to kick your door in.”

Ava looks back at the frozen kiss.

Her skin prickles.

“What if I can’t control it?” she asks quietly. “What if I walk in there and he decides I’m more useful broken?”

Cass is silent for a long moment.

Then she pushes away from the desk and crosses the room, dropping onto the couch beside Ava. Their shoulders bump.

“You might not be able to control *him*,” Cass says. “But you can control you. Your reasons. Your lines. You don’t go in there as Vince’s scared kid or as some idiot fangirl. You go in as the woman who was brave enough to walk into that auction alone.”

“I was stupid,” Ava says.