Nathan's POV
Nathan Cross had infiltrated drug rings, arms cartels, and billion-dollar fraud operations. Reading people was second nature — he could tell when someone was hiding something by the way they blinked.
But Ava Queen wasn't like the others.
He leaned casually against the brick wall outside the campus café, pretending to scroll through his phone. She was seated at her usual spot, hunched over a sketchpad. Her shoulders curled inward, like she was trying to disappear, and she constantly glanced over her shoulder — like she expected the past to jump out and grab her.
She wasn't confident.
She wasn't reckless.
She wasn't Avery Queen.
At least, that's what Nathan kept telling himself.
The file said Avery Queen had left the country. Vanished after high school. Had a temper. Wild streak. Trouble magnet.
But this shy girl — this Ava — had a quiet voice and gentle hands that only seemed steady when holding a pencil.
Still, something didn't sit right.
Which is when Monica Queen appeared.
He recognized her from the dossier photos immediately: confident, glamorous, dangerous. The kind of woman who knew how to walk into a room and turn it into a stage. She approached Ava's table without hesitation, heels clicking like gunfire.
He straightened as Monica took a seat across from Ava and removed her sunglasses.
She didn't smile.
> "Still drawing cartoons, are we?" Monica asked, voice sharp but low.
Ava didn't look up. "They're not cartoons."
Monica rolled her eyes, but her fingers tapped twice — lightly — on the edge of Ava's sketchpad. A gesture Nathan wouldn't have noticed if he hadn't been watching so closely.
A warning? A comfort?
> "You shouldn't sit in the open like this," Monica added under her breath. "Someone might notice you."
Ava blinked. "What?"
Monica didn't explain. She took a long sip of her iced coffee instead, then stood abruptly. "Don't embarrass yourself. Or me."
Cold words. Measured steps. But as she turned away, Nathan caught it — a half-second glance back.
Not scorn. Not pity. Something else.
Something soft.
---
Ava's POV
She hated that her hands were still shaking.
Every time Monica appeared, it was like Ava became 14 again — trying to get her big sister to look at her without disgust. Trying to shrink beneath the weight of the Queen name.
She looked down at her sketch — a charcoal portrait of a faceless girl hiding behind her hair.
Fitting.
But Monica hadn't just come to insult her.
There had been… something in her tone.
A warning.
> "You shouldn't sit in the open…"
Ava hugged her sketchpad close to her chest, unsettled. Monica always acted cold, like being related to Ava was a nuisance. But sometimes — just sometimes — she showed cracks.
A hand on the shoulder. A tiny glance. A message buried in cruelty.
Ava never knew which Monica she was going to get.
She stood up and gathered her things, unaware of the dark eyes still watching her from across the quad.
---
Nathan — Still Watching
He was more confused than ever.
What kind of relationship was that?
Monica treated Ava like a stranger — a nuisance, even — yet something about the exchange didn't sit right. There was tension, yes. But also familiarity. Intimacy. Family?
Nathan narrowed his eyes.
Could Ava actually be Avery?
He pulled out his phone, flipping back to the old file photo. Frizzy hair. Acne. Big glasses. Oversized clothes. A girl who looked like she wanted to disappear.
But this girl — Ava — had undergone a transformation so total it bordered on impossible.
Still, his instincts screamed at him.
And instincts didn't lie.
He pocketed the phone and muttered under his breath.
> "Who the hell are you, Ava Queen?"
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