Chapter Two – Blood & Lies

The next gunshot is so close that it punches through the leather seat inches from Ava’s head.

She flinches. Damian doesn’t.

“On your knees!” someone bellows across the room. “Hands where I can see them!”

The emergency lights strobe red, turning the underground auction into a jagged slideshow—shadows lunging, glittering gowns smearing across black marble, and men in suits with guns instead of champagne.

Damian’s fingers tighten on her jaw for a fraction of a second, like he’s checking she’s still there, still breathing.

Then, his hand drops to her wrist.

“Up,” he says. “Now.”

“Are you insane?” The words slice out sharper than she intends.

“Frequently.”

He hauls her up with him, keeping her tucked against his side. To anyone watching, she’s just a shaken lover being dragged to the exit. To her, he feels like a moving wall of steel and control.

“Head down,” he murmurs. “Stay on my left.”

“Why—”

“Because my right is where the gun is,” he answers, already steering her into the aisle.

Her heart slams against her ribs.

At the base of their section stands a man in a cheap suit with dead eyes and a gun sweeping the crowd. Two more guards hover by the main exits. One of The Axiom’s original door staff lies facedown near the doors, blood pooling under his cheek.

The gunman spots them.

“Hey!” he snaps. “You two—stop.”

Damian doesn’t stop.

He doesn’t even speed up.

Ava feels the subtle shift of his body, the way the loose, bored posture disappears. The hand on her shoulder tightens, just shy of painful.

“Keep walking,” he murmurs. “Smile if you can manage it.”

Her lips bare in something that isn’t quite humorous.

The gunman’s shoes slap against the marble as he comes closer. “I said stop—”

Damian finally turns his head, regarding him with a flick of cool disdain.

“If you’re here for the Moretti girl,” he says, voice carrying without shouting, “wasting time on random couples is a poor strategy.”

The man hesitates.

Recognition flickers when he really *sees* who he’s talking to.

“Kade,” he breathes.

The room shifts around them—a current of attention. Some eyes are calculating. Some hungry. Half the people here would happily carve Damian up and sell the parts.

“Unless,” Damian adds lazily, “you’re planning to shoot everyone tonight. In which case, by all means, start with the councilman in row B. He’s overdue.”

A strangled sound comes from the front rows.

The gunman’s grip tightens on his weapon, then loosens again. Orders war with survival instinct in his eyes.

“We’re looking for the Moretti girl,” he repeats. “She’s here. Crest on the wrist. Dark hair. Boss wants her alive.”

Cass’s voice sputters weakly back to life in Ava’s ear, full of static. “Ava—signal—jammed—get—out—listen to—”

Ava keeps her head angled down, hair veiling most of her features, the mask hiding the rest. Damian’s thumb presses once into the top of her arm. Stay still.

He shifts just enough to bring more of his body between her and the barrel of the gun.

“And what exactly,” Damian asks, almost amused, “do you think Moretti will do to the men who drag his daughter out of here bleeding?”

The gunman swallows.

“We’re not afraid of—”

“You should be,” Damian cuts in, calm as ice. “I don’t know him personally, but I know what *I’d* do if someone touched something that belonged to me.”

Belonged.

The word hits harder than the gunshots—sharp, invasive. Something low in her stomach tightens before she can crush it.

The gunman’s gaze flicks from Damian to Ava, then back.

Behind them, the auctioneer is shouting for calm. People are sobbing, screaming, and shoving for exits. The room is a pressure cooker.

“If you’re smart,” Damian continues, voice gliding over the noise, “you’ll double-check your information before you start dragging random women around. Otherwise you’re about to have Kade and Moretti problems at the same time. That’s bad for business.”

The man’s jaw clenches.

“Look at her,” Damian says. “Designer dress. No guards. Sitting in C-seventeen. Do you think Vince Moretti lets his daughter walk into hell alone as a casual bidder?”

The lie is clean. Effortless.

For a second, Ava almost believes it, too.

The gunman falters.

“Get out,” he snaps finally, jerking his chin toward a side corridor. “We’re locking this place down. Now.”

Damian doesn’t argue.

He just steers Ava toward the door, pace unhurried, like he’s acquiescing out of irritation, not fear. As they pass the gunman, Damian’s free hand brushes the small of her back, guiding her.

“Don’t run,” he murmurs. “Prey runs.”

They reach the door. The guard wrenches it open, glaring at them on their way out.

“Go.”

They step into a narrow side corridor, dimly lit by flickering strips. The door slams behind them, muffling the chaos to a dull, ugly roar.

Ava exhales in a hard rush.

Damian doesn’t slow.

“Wait,” she says, fingers catching his sleeve. “Where are you—”

He turns and pins her to the wall in one motion, one arm braced beside her head, the other locking around her hip to keep her still.

“Next time,” he says, voice low and very close, “if a man with a gun tells you to stop, you stop. And you let the person who knows how to handle it handle it.”

Her eyes flash. “I was handling it until you interfered.”

“By painting a twenty-million-dollar target on yourself?” His mouth curves, humorless. “We have very different definitions of ‘handling.’”

She yanks her wrist free, the concrete cold at her back. “I had it under control.”

He laughs once, quiet and sharp. “You were one second away from outbidding me in a room full of people who’d gut you for that drive before you reached the door.”

“So why do you care?” she snaps. “You got it. Congratulations. Enjoy your new blackmail toy.”

His gaze sharpens. “Do you have any idea what’s actually on Lot Seventeen?”

“Enough to make men like you very rich,” she says.

“Enough to make men like your father very dead,” he corrects softly.

The words land like a blow.

Up close, his face is all hard lines and precision. No softness. No mercy. Just a man used to counting the cost of everything.

“Who sent you, Moretti?” he asks. “Because I know Vince, and he doesn’t risk the daughter he never acknowledges on his balance sheet.”

Her breath snags. “You don’t know anything about my family.”

“Don’t I?” His gaze drops deliberately to her wrist. Reflexively, she curls her hand in. Too late. “Your tattoo says otherwise.”

“What do you want?” she asks, forcing the words out tight.

“Oh, *now* you want to talk about wants?” he says, a sliver of amusement back in his voice. “You walk into an illegal auction for a drive you don’t understand, under a fake name, with a very real crest on your skin. The question is what *you* wanted, Ava.”

Her name in his mouth is a violation. Intimate and dangerous.

“I wanted information,” she says. “Same as you.”

“Wrong.” His eyes don’t leave hers. “I want control. You wanted a way out.”

Anger and something too close to truth twist together inside her.

A muffled shout rattles the door they came through. Closer now. A bang. Someone curses.

They don’t have time.

Ava shoves off the wall, her shoulder hitting his chest. He shifts half a step to the side, more instinct than permission.

“I’m leaving,” she says. “You got what you came for. We’re done.”

“You think you can walk out, and they just… forget you?” he asks mildly. “You heard them. They know Vince’s crest. They know you’re here. They don’t stop at the door, Ava.”

“I’ll manage,” she bites out.

His voice drops. “No. You won’t.”

He blocks her path down the corridor with his body.

“Get out of my way.”

“No.”

The word lands as solid as the wall behind her.

“Why?” she demands. “So you can call my father and tell him you saved his daughter, and he owes you? Is that what this is?”

Something ugly flickers across his face at Vince’s name. Not interest.

Contempt.

“My relationship with your father is not something I leverage with party favors,” he says. “If I wanted Vince to owe me, it wouldn’t be for walking his careless daughter to the car.”

Her cheeks burn. “Careless—”

“Reckless. Unprepared. Arrogant,” he counts off, unbothered. “Talented—but not enough to survive a room like that alone.”

White-hot anger flares. “You don’t get to call me—”

“Do you have a gun?” he cuts in.

“What?”

“A weapon,” he says. “Backup comms. Safe words with your people outside?”

Another distant shout. The dull thud of running feet.

Ava stills. “No.”

His mouth hardens. “Then you’re not in my league. Until we’re above ground, you don’t argue with me. You listen.”

She hates that every word is both insulting and accurate.

He glances down the corridor, mind already mapping exits and blind spots.

He should leave her. Strategy says cut the liability loose and walk away with the prize.

He doesn’t.

“Your friend in your ear is barely punching through the jamming,” he says. “And whoever’s running that room now knows there’s a Moretti on their guest list. They’re not going to shrug and send you a fruit basket.”

“Then why help me?” she asks. It slips out rawer than she wants. “You just said you want my father dead.”

“Hate is inefficient,” he says. “I prefer profit.”

“And I’m… what? A profit stream?”

His gaze flicks briefly to her mouth, then back. “Right now you’re a liability. I haven’t decided what to do with.”

The honesty is a slap. It’s also, somehow, a relief.

“Come on.” His hand clamps around her wrist again, less rough this time but just as unyielding. “Service exit. Side alley. Then you can go back to pretending you’re invisible.”

She digs her heels in. “Don’t call me that.”

“What would you prefer?” he asks. “Little spy? Little traitor?”

His lips twitch at her glare.

They move. One turn, then another, the corridor opening into a wider maintenance passage lined with pipes and humming panels. A red EXIT sign glows at the far end.

They’re ten steps from it when the back door bursts inward.

Two men in dark clothes shove through, guns raised. One is bleeding from the temple. Both have the same dead-eyed look as the auction gunmen.

“Stop!” one barks. “Hands up!”

Damian doesn’t stop.

He shoves Ava sideways behind a stack of crates so hard her shoulder smacks the wood, then moves.

He’s fast.

He steps into the closer man’s space, slamming the barrel of the gun sideways with his forearm. The shot goes wild, smacking into concrete. Dust and chips spray the air.

The second man’s aim jerks toward Ava’s hiding place.

Damian swears, yanks the first man into the line of fire, and shoves Ava lower. The shot cracks past her ear, hot air kissing her cheek, then tears through a pipe behind her.

Water explodes from the rupture in a furious spray, soaking them in seconds.

Damian uses the chaos.

He drives his elbow into the first man’s throat, ducks under the flailing arm, and rips the gun from his hand in one smooth, terrifyingly practiced motion.

The second man lunges, boots skidding on the flooding floor.

Ava reacts before she can think.

She snatches the nearest object—a metal clipboard from a wall hook—and hurls it at his forearm with everything she has.

It connects with a sick crack.

He grunts, grip slipping. The shot goes into the ceiling instead of Damian’s chest.

Damian doesn’t hesitate.

Two shots, close and precise. One to the knee. One to the shoulder.

The man goes down screaming.

The first is on the floor, choking, clutching his throat.

Water pounds against Ava’s legs now, her dress plastered to her skin, hair dripping in her eyes.

Damian turns.

The polite, civilized mask is gone.

What’s left is cold, efficient violence.

He stills when he sees the clipboard at the downed man’s feet. His gaze lifts to her, lingering, recalculating.

“Nice throw,” he says.

Her fingers shake. She curls them into fists so he won’t see.

“What now?” she manages.

He jerks his chin toward the exit. “Now we leave before their friends come looking. And you forget my face.”

“Kind of hard after you’ve shoved your tongue down my throat,” she snaps before she can stop herself.

Heat flickers in his eyes. Quickly smothered.

“That,” he says evenly, stepping over the groaning man, “was for your own good. Don’t read into it.”

He reaches the door, checks the alley through the wired glass, and then cracks it open.

Wet night air rushes in. Rain. Overflowing dumpsters. A single flickering streetlight at the end of the lane.

He half-turns back to her.

“This is where we part ways,” he says. “Go home, Ms. Moretti. Stay home. Next time, no one will be motivated to keep you breathing.”

“What about you?” she asks, surprising herself.

“I have business,” he says simply. “And a drive to collect.”

Of course. Lot Seventeen.

“You’re really going to walk out with a list that can burn my family to the ground?” she asks.

“You walked in here trying to steal it first,” he points out. “Don’t get sentimental now.”

He opens the door wider.

“Wait,” she blurts.

He pauses.

A thousand questions jam behind her teeth. Why did you help me? What are you going to do to Vince? What are you going to do with *me*?

None of them are safe.

“If you go after Vince,” she says instead, voice low, “don’t pretend you’re any different from him.”

His jaw tightens.

“I don’t pretend anything, Ava,” he says. “That’s your family’s specialty.”

Then he steps back, leaving her framed in the doorway.

“Run along,” he adds. “Try not to die on the way home. I’d hate to see all that potential go to waste.”

She should walk away.

Instead, she throws one last shot over her shoulder.

“You’re wrong about one thing,” she says. “I’m not his princess.”

Their eyes lock, rain hissing in the alley behind her.

“You keep telling yourself that,” he replies. “Maybe one day it’ll be true.”

Then he pulls the door shut between them.

The lock clicks.

Ava stands alone in the alley, rain needling her skin, sirens faint somewhere distant.

“Ava—Ava, talk to me.” Cass’s voice slams back to life in her ear, frantic. “What happened? Are you out? Did you get the drive? Are you shot? Blink twice if you’re dying—”

“I’m fine,” Ava says, though she feels anything but. “I’m out.”

She peels the mask off, sucking in air that tastes like wet asphalt and garbage instead of panic and gunpowder. Her lips still tingle where Damian’s had been.

“Any trouble?” Cass presses.

Ava looks at the back door. At the building towering above it. At the city, that suddenly feels less like home and more like a hunting ground.

She thinks of a ruthless man with storm-grey eyes, a stolen kiss, and a drive capable of burning her bloodline to ash.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” she lies.

She turns her collar up against the rain and starts walking, heels clicking on slick pavement.

She doesn’t look back.

If she does, she’s not sure she’ll be able to leave.

Behind her, underground, a new enemy walks out with everything she wanted—

the drive that can destroy her father.

And something worse:

a reason to come looking for her again.