Chapter 94 WHAT KADE SAID

Chapter 94 WHAT KADE SAID


Ava's POV

I read the paper twice and then put it down on the table and sat back and looked at the ceiling.

Kade's plan was never to kill me.

It was to make Dominic believe I was dead, long enough for the bond's grief response to activate, and in a completed bond, a grief response didn't just hurt. It destroyed the surviving partner from the inside, permanently, irreversibly, and there was no coming back from it.

Every move Kade had made — Sera, Luca, the surveillance, the messages — none of it was designed to harm me. It was designed to create enough chaos and separation that staging my disappearance would be believable for the few hours he needed.

I sat there with that for a long moment and then I got up and went to find everyone.

They were all in the sitting room, Dominic on the phone, Elias with his laptop, my mother at the kitchen counter, Maya watching something with her headphones on, and I walked in and said, "I need everyone to stop what they're doing."

They stopped.

I told them everything Luca had given me and went through it clearly and the room got very quiet and stayed quiet and I watched everyone's faces process it and Dominic's face was the one I watched most carefully.

"He doesn't want you dead," Dominic said when I finished.

"He wants you destroyed," I said. "Through me. That's the difference."

Dominic looked at me and the thing on his face was controlled but underneath the control was something raw and I held his gaze and let him have a moment with it.

"Everything shifts," Elias said, already moving on his laptop. "The whole approach changes. We've been trying to find him to stop an attack, but if the plan requires Ava to disappear convincingly then we have a different kind of leverage."

"We make it impossible to stage," Adrian said. "Keep Ava visible, traceable, surrounded."

"He'll adapt," Dominic said.

"He'll have to adapt fast," Adrian said, "and Kade doesn't like fast, everything he's done has been patient and slow."

They talked strategy and I sat at the table and let them talk and my mother came and put tea in front of me and sat next to me and didn't say anything and I put my hand over hers on the table.

After a while the room split into conversations and I stayed at the table and turned everything over in my head and then I looked at Dominic across the room and he was already looking at me and I held his gaze and said, quietly enough that only he could hear, "I need to ask you something."

He came and sat across from me and waited.

I looked at him for a moment and then said, "did you know about my mother before you walked into that club. Before any of this started. Did you know she was marked, that the suppression had been done to her, did you know and choose to say nothing."

The room hadn't gone quiet because nobody else had heard me but I felt the air between us change and Dominic's face did something careful and I knew from that one thing, from the carefulness, what the answer was before he said a word.

"It's complicated," he said.

"That's not an answer," I said.

He looked at his hands on the table and then at me and said, "I knew about a suppression years ago. I didn't know the woman it was done to. I didn't connect it to you until after everything had already started, until you were already mine and I was already in it."

"And then you connected it," I said.

"Yes," he said.

"And said nothing," I said.

"I was afraid of what it would cost me," he said, and he said it straight, no deflection, just that, and I respected the honesty and also felt it land in my chest like something heavy.

I pushed my chair back and stood up and he stood too and said my name and I looked at him and said, "I need a minute," and walked to the elevator and pressed the button.

He didn't follow and that was also the right call.

The doors opened and I stepped in and Adrian was already in there, coming back from somewhere, and he looked at my face and said nothing and I stood beside him and the doors closed.

We stood in silence for two floors and then he said quietly, "how bad."

"He knew," I said. "Not everything. But enough."

Adrian was quiet for a moment and then said, "he was afraid of losing you."

"I know," I said. "That doesn't fix it."

"No," he said. "It doesn't."

The elevator stopped on Maya's floor and I stepped out and Adrian stepped out with me and I turned to look at him and he was watching my face and before I could say anything he stepped closer and his hand came up and cupped my face and I didn't step back and he kissed me, slow and certain, and I kissed him back and grabbed his shirt and for a moment everything else was somewhere else.

He pulled back and pressed his forehead to mine and said nothing and I said nothing and we stood there breathing for a second.

Then Maya's door opened and she looked at us both and said, very calmly, "I'm going to need one of you to explain what's happening and the other one to come inside and sit down."

I let go of Adrian's shirt and walked past Maya into her room and sat on the bed and pressed both hands flat on my knees and said, "I need somewhere he isn't for a while.”