The clink of champagne glasses and murmurs of high society washed over Ava like fog as Damien guided her deeper into the gala. Their entrance had already turned heads. Now, every whisper was another thread in the web they were spinning.
She was supposed to feel victorious.
Instead, she felt hunted.
"You're quiet," Damien said, keeping his expression placid for the watching crowd. "Regretting your RSVP?"
"Just taking in the theatre," she replied, her smile sharp. "You do enjoy playing god."
"I enjoy winning."
She opened her mouth to retort, but a familiar voice cut through the din.
"Ava Hart. As I live and breathe."
She turned—and her spine locked.
Edward Marks.
He wore his charm like a perfectly knotted tie. Impeccable suit, smug grin, eyes that lingered too long. He kissed her hand like they were old friends. Like he hadn't tried to ruin her reputation two years ago with one perfectly timed leak.
"I didn't realize you two knew each other," Damien said smoothly, though Ava could feel the shift in him—like a wire pulled taut.
"Oh, Edward and I go way back," she said, voice velveted with poison. "He's the reason I no longer trust anyone with a press badge and a smile."
Edward chuckled. "You wound me. I'm just a man who appreciates a good headline. And right now, you two are the story of the hour."
Ava's fingers curled tighter around Damien's arm. She wanted to speak, to scorch the earth beneath Edward's shoes—but Damien beat her to it.
"If you're looking for headlines, Edward," he said, calm but lethal, "I suggest you find a story you can survive."
The silence that followed was surgical. Ava could feel the gala's attention shifting again.
Edward lifted his glass. "To happy endings then." He walked off with the swagger of a man who'd just dropped a grenade.
Ava exhaled slowly. "Is he always like that?"
Damien's jaw ticked. "Worse."
"You used to be friends," she said. "What happened?"
He didn't answer. Not with words.
Instead, he offered her another glass of champagne and said, "Dance with me."
---
On the dance floor, he held her with a tension that wasn't entirely professional.
"Edward is dangerous," Damien said finally, voice low. "He wants to break me. And he'll use you to do it."
Ava met his eyes. "Then let's give him a performance he'll choke on."
Their bodies moved in rhythm, but it was more than choreography. It was strategy. Seduction. Power masked as grace.
But somewhere between the third spin and his hand sliding against her bare back, Ava forgot they were pretending.
And from the edge of the ballroom, Edward watched. Smiling like he already knew what they were both too afraid to admit.
They were in deeper than they thought.
The waltz came to an end, but Damien didn't step away.
Not immediately.
Ava could feel his breath near her temple, steady but strained—like a man caught between instinct and reason. The orchestra shifted to a quieter melody, and at last, he released her, only to offer his arm again with that same calculated composure.
They returned to the edge of the ballroom, where a server appeared with crystal flutes and raised eyebrows.
"Miss Hart," said a familiar voice behind them.
Lena!
Her eyes swept over Damien, then zeroed in on Ava with a silent question: Are you okay?
Ava nodded subtly. "Lena Park—my business partner."
Damien extended a hand politely. "The voice of reason, I presume?"
Lena took it, coolly. "Only when she's listening."
Ava resisted the urge to sigh. "Excuse us," she said to Damien. "Just a moment."
Lena pulled her aside, her heels clicking sharply against the marble.
"You look incredible," Lena whispered. "But are you seriously playing this game? With him?"
Ava glanced back toward Damien. He was speaking to a group of investors now, smooth and impenetrable.
"It's not a game," Ava said quietly. "It's survival. And...strategy."
Lena's expression softened slightly. "And how long before the strategy starts feeling like something else?"
Before Ava could answer, a new presence slid in beside them—unwelcome and smug.
"Ladies," Edward Marks purred. "Forgive the interruption. I was hoping for a word with Miss Hart. Privately."
Lena narrowed her eyes. "She's not interested."
"I can speak for myself," Ava said coolly.
Edward led her away, down a side corridor lined with velvet drapes and candlelight. Too intimate. Too quiet.
"I'm flattered you remember me," Ava said. "Most cockroaches are forgettable."
Edward grinned. "Still the sharp tongue. Tell me—what's the price of your soul these days? Or did Damien promise you something shinier than absolution?"
She stepped closer, refusing to flinch. "Try me again when you're not hiding behind gossip and empty threats."
"Oh, Ava." His smile vanished. "You have no idea what you're caught in. He ruins everything he touches. Friends. Companies. Families. Don't pretend you're the exception."
A muscle jumped in her jaw. "And yet you still orbit him. Why?"
He leaned in. "Because one day, he'll slip. And I'll be there to watch him fall."
Ava left him standing in the shadows, the weight of his words clinging like smoke.
Back in the ballroom, Damien looked up the moment she returned. His eyes flicked behind her.
"He cornered you," he said.
"He tried," Ava replied. "I'm not a cornered thing, Damien."
"No," he said. "You're a weapon."
She didn't know whether to be proud or afraid of that.
Lena watched Ava for a long moment, her arms crossed, expression unreadable. "You're still shaking," she said finally, gently. "And you're lying to me."
"I'm not—"
"You are." Lena's voice was quiet but certain. "Maybe not with your words. But your face? Your eyes? I've known you since we were interns at PR Collective, Ava. I know when you're breaking."
Ava slumped against the edge of the table, one hand gripping her coffee mug like it could anchor her. "He's... he's not what I expected."
"Damien?"
A nod. A breath. "He's colder in public than in private. But when he looks at me—" Her voice faltered. "It's like he's trying to see the truth I'm not sure I even know."
"And do you like it?" Lena's voice was soft now, less interrogator, more sister.
Ava didn't answer. She stared out the window, where the first drops of rain tapped against the glass. "I think I like that he sees me. But I'm scared of what he'll find."
Lena stepped closer. "This deal—it's not just business anymore, is it?"
"No." The word came out brittle. "But it has to be."
The silence that followed was heavy. Lena sighed. "If you're falling for him—"
"I can't fall for him." Ava snapped her gaze back. "I don't even know if I trust him."
"Then you're in trouble."
Before Ava could respond, her phone buzzed sharply. A message from an unknown number.
I know what you're hiding.
Tell Damien the truth. Or I will. —C.B.
Her blood ran cold. She didn't need to guess who C.B. was.
Lena's eyes narrowed as she read over Ava's shoulder. "Cameron Blake?"
Ava nodded, her heart thudding like war drums. "He's digging. I think he already knows about my father."
"And if he connects the dots between your past and Damien's company…"
"They'll both walk away."
Lena took the phone from her hand and held it between them. "Then we make a plan. Right now."
(continued – flashback)
Ava hadn't thought about the hearing in years. Not in any vivid way. She had packed those days into a quiet corner of her mind, sealed under ambition and exhaustion, and moved forward.
But Cameron's message opened the vault.
Suddenly, she was seventeen again. The fluorescent lights of the Senate Ethics Committee room buzzing overhead. Reporters crowding the steps outside. Her father, Senator Jonathan Hart, sitting tall in a navy suit he wore like armor, face composed, voice sharp. Her mother absent. Her brother silent.
She remembered the way the cameras clicked, not stopping even when she blinked back tears. The way her father gripped the microphone and said—
> "My only mistake was trusting the wrong people. I will not resign."
But the emails said otherwise. Wire transfers. Offshore accounts. Contributions funneled through charities that didn't exist. And one name—hers—signed unknowingly on a document that would haunt her forever.
Her father hadn't just fallen. He'd imploded. And she, caught in the fallout, had learned early how quickly a name could turn into a weapon.
The scholarship vanished. The college interviews dried up. Overnight, she was no longer a senator's daughter, but the punchline to late-night jokes.
> The Hart of Corruption.
Daddy's Little Laundromat.
And through it all, she never forgot how cold the world had been. How fast people had turned.
That was when she learned to smile first. To spin chaos into charm. To tell the story before someone else did.
That was the day Ava Hart was born—and the girl beneath her was buried.
She remembered the day the FBI showed up at their front door.
Two men in dark suits. Calm. Polite. Deadly.
Her mother had dropped a glass in the kitchen. It shattered on the tiles, but no one moved to clean it up. Ava stood by the staircase, clutching the banister, watching her father nod as if this were a negotiation he could still control.
> "It's a misunderstanding," he said, not to the agents, but to her.
"It's nothing," he told the press.
"It's your fault," he hissed behind closed doors, when the cameras weren't rolling and the walls absorbed his bitterness.
Ava had signed a form. Routine paperwork for a scholarship fund her father had created in her name—at least, that's what she thought. But it turned out to be a shell corporation. Her signature made it look like she had helped him launder over two hundred thousand dollars.
She was seventeen.
No one wanted to hear she hadn't known.
They pulled her out of school "for safety," her mother said. But safety meant silence. It meant exile. It meant learning how fast your friends disappeared when your name became poison.
She stopped speaking to anyone outside the house. Even Lena, her only real friend at the time, had been pushed away—though Lena tried.
It was in that silence Ava discovered language again, in the margins of her notebooks. Metaphors. Images. Words she never spoke aloud.
Poetry saved her.
Not enough to fix what had been broken but enough to give the brokenness shape.
And when the trial ended in a plea deal—when her father went to prison and her mother moved to Florida to "start over"—Ava Hart stayed behind in Washington.
She learned PR in a one-bedroom apartment with nothing but a laptop, Lena, and a need to never be powerless again.
You can survive anything, she told herself.
If you control the story.