Chapter 6
Her Ruin, His Salvation
POV: Ayla
Dominic's whisper — Get ready — still buzzed in my ears. The taste of him was warm against my lips. For a second I let myself breathe. Then the message on my phone crawled back into view: Tonight. Roof. Alone. No name. No number.
"You got that?" I asked.
He didn't look surprised. He looked tired in a new way, like a man who had matched every move and still lost sleep over the ones he could not control. "They want you on the roof," he said. "They want us to come up on their stage."
We didn't wait. We moved through the penthouse in silence, the rugs swallowing our steps. I felt the city slip away behind the windows—sharp lights reduced to a thin line. The black folder sat on the desk like a promise. I wanted to take it with me. Dominic didn't reach for it.
The service elevator smelled of oil and old metal. Dominic punched the button for the roof and the doors shut. The lights hummed, then went out. The world turned soft and black.
For a moment I thought someone had simply cut power. Then the elevator stopped between floors. The little emergency light blinked and died. My stomach dropped into the soles of my feet.
"Backup's down," Dominic said. His voice was calm, but I heard the edges. He reached into his coat and found a tiny device. A blue glow breathed into the dark. He pressed it to his ear.
On the steel wall, a message appeared as if someone had typed it on the skin of the building: GOOD NIGHT, AYLA.
My name felt like a hand around my throat.
A voice answered Dominic's device through a hiss of static. Clear, bored, cruelly polite: "Bring her to the roof if you want to keep what you have. Don't, and the world sees everything. Your choice."
"They're inside the system," Dominic said. "They cut the cameras and the lights. They know the building. They know us."
Someone laughed far above us, soft and close. A person called my name. It sounded like a dare.
The elevator doors slid open a crack. A thin light from the stairwell cut a silver line across the dark. Shadows moved. Shoes whispered against concrete. For a terrifying moment I thought about standing there and arguing with whatever game they were playing. Then Dominic shoved me behind him and pushed out.
We took the stairs two at a time. The stairwell smelled like dust and old secrets. Every landing had a camera, but every camera was a black hole. Our phones screamed against our chests—messages, tags, a hundred strangers thinking they owned a piece of me. One pushed a photo of that night at my door into my face. My cheeks burned.
At the final door the metal was cold beneath my palm. Dominic hacked the lock with a tool I didn't know he kept. The door gave and the wind on the roof hit like a slap—the city opened under a hard sky. The roof had been turned into a stage: lights set on poles, a tripod with a camera, and someone standing in the center with their back to us.
They'd expected me. Of course they had.
"Come on," the voice called from the dark. It wasn't Maya. It was flat, practiced. "Don't make us wait."
Dominic moved toward the center slowly, like a man walking into a room with a gun at his back. "We don't have to play by your rules," he said, which sounded like a lie.
The figure turned. A hood shadowed their face. They held something in one hand—my black folder. My heart dropped so fast I thought I would hear it against the concrete.
"That's mine," I said before I could stop myself.
They smiled. I saw teeth, and the way the smile cut at the eyes. "Everything that matters to you," the person said, "matters to us now."
Dominic stepped in front of me. "Who are you?" he demanded. His voice had ice in it.
The person pulled back the hood just enough for the moon to catch the corner of their cheek. I didn't see a stranger; I saw Dominic's reaction—a flinch so quick I almost missed it. For a second his jaw softened and his eyes went somewhere far away.
"Hello, Dominic," the person said. Their voice held a name Dominic didn't want to hear. He went very still, like someone who had touched a burned thing and suddenly remembered the heat.
I watched Dominic for an answer. He gave none.
The figure flipped the folder open and the photos inside flashed in the quick stage lights. There were pictures I'd never seen, angles I didn't like, small notes in someone else's hand. The folder had been taken from our study while we were rushing out. That meant more than break-in—it meant they had access.
"That's not just about Ayla," the intruder said. "It's about Crane, too."
My stomach twisted. The hunt had always felt personal—Maya, Ryan, hurt people caught in a cruel game. But this sounded larger. Dominic's eyes searched the rooftop, then dropped to the city. In one small motion he pulled me close.
"If this is about him," I said, meaning Dominic, meaning the company, meaning whatever the trouble in his eyes pointed to, "why use me?"
The person shrugged. "Because she is prettier to watch confess."
A laugh bubbled up from somewhere near the edge of the roof. Not Maya's, not mine. A new shadow stepped forward into the light—someone I had known, someone I'd believed harmless. My breath stopped.
Dominic's hand tightened on my wrist until I felt the quick of a bruise. He whispered into my ear, low, fierce: "This is bigger than revenge. It's tied to my past."
"Then tell me whose past," I said. My voice sounded small.
He didn't answer. The lights clicked and a camera lens whirred. The figure in front of us tapped the folder and a single photograph slipped free. It landed at my feet like a dare.
I bent to pick it up. The picture showed me. Not the pictures from the folder—them—but a different angle. Me and Dominic, just before the kiss in the study. Eyes closed. His hand at my face. The photo looked private, intimate, and dangerous in a way that made my stomach drop.
The person laughed softly. "Perfect," they said. "Now everyone will want to know who he is saving—and what she's willing to trade."
Behind that laugh, I heard something I did not expect: another voice, small and urgent, calling my name from the stairwell. Familiar. Close. It sounded like someone who had been with me when I needed them most.
My head snapped toward the stairwell. A shape moved in the shadows, coming closer.
Dominic lowered his voice. "Whatever they want," he said, "we don't give them what they want."
The figure on the roof smiled like they'd already won. The camera whirred again. The lights clicked brighter, catching the photo in my hand. The wind pushed hard and the city's noise fell away.
Then the shape in the stairwell stepped into the light.
It was someone I had never expected to see there.