CHAPTER 28: The Breaking Point

 POV: Avalon Pierce

The deposition room feels different when you are the one under interrogation.

Avalon had built conference rooms, sat through countless negotiations where millions hung on a single word. He had faced down investors, competitors, board members who wanted him gone but none of it prepared him for this.

The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, harsh and clinical, the beige walls pressed in, making the space feel smaller. Meanwhile, Sullivan sat across the table like a hunter who’d finally cornered a prey worth hunting.

Diana Chap was beside him, she was supportive even tho she is unable to protect him from what was coming.

The court reporter’s fingers hovered over the stenotype. Waiting.

“Please state your full name for the record.”

Avalon’s mouth was dry. “Avalon James Pierce.”

“Occupation?”

“CEO of Nexus and Chairman of Pierce Holdings.”

“Net worth?”

The question landed wrong, it sounded very personal, Avalon responded anyways....

“Approximately four billion dollars.”

Sullivan made a note, as he lets that number hang in the air.

“That’s considerable wealth. You’ve built that over how many years?”

“Ten.”

“Ten years …..The same ten years you were apart from Selene Castellano?”

This wasn’t a question, they both know that, it was a statement of observation designed to sting.

Avalon kept his face neutral. “Yes.”

“Would you say building that wealth was your priority during those years?”

“It was one priority among many.”

“I suppose it's the primary one tho..... You worked—what? eighty-hour every week?”

“Sometimes.”

“So you lived for your company, dated casually and you were known to be emotionally unavailable.”

Diana started to object, but Avalon cut her off.

“What’s your question?”

Sullivan smiled. “My question, Mr. Pierce, is whether a man who spent a decade building emotional walls is capable of genuine matrimonial intent. Or did you simply see your grandmother’s will as another business problem requiring a transactional solution?”

Gbam!!!!! There it was. The real attack.

This was about him and his ability to love.

“I am very capable of genuine feeling,” Avalon said carefully. “I built walls because I was hurt and I don’t think that makes me less human.”

“Doesn’t it? Let’s examine that. When was the last time you told someone you loved them before marrying Selene?”

Avalon’s jaw tightened. “I don’t see how—”Sullivan cuts in

“It is relevant to establishing whether you understand love as a concept versus as a contract term. So when was the last time?”

Silence.

Avalon thought back.**Ten years before Selene left.**

“Ten years ago,” he admitted.

“Ten years? and in those ten years, how many serious relationships did you have?”

“None.”

“ Casual dating only?”

“Yes.”

“Could that be because you were emotionally unavailable?"

“No, it was because I was focused on building my company.”

“Same thing, isn’t it?” Sullivan leaned forward slightly. “You prioritized wealth over connection. Success over vulnerability and now you expect us to believe that suddenly and very conveniently, you’re capable of genuine marriage?”

“It wasn’t sudden.”

“No? Still you married three weeks after learning about your grandmother’s will. That seems quite sudden.”

“The will required it.”

“Exactly. The will required it. Not your heart, not genuine feelings. It was a legal document requiring compliance.” Sullivan flipped through his notes. “Let’s discuss that compliance. You paid Selene Castellano two hundred and fifty thousand dollars three days before your wedding. Correct?”

“I didn't pay her, I simply helped with her sister’s medical expenses.”

“And that's before you both got married, she wasn’t even family yet. It was still while you were negotiating the terms of a contract marriage.”

“I was only helping someone in need.”

“Someone who happened to be the specific person you needed to marry to preserve eight hundred million dollars.”

Avalon felt heat rising in his chest. “Maya was dying and I had the means to help , that to me isn't transactional—that is basic human decency.”

“Is it? Or a strategic investment? Make it make sense, you pay a quarter million dollars, then you secure the marriage you need and preserve your inheritance. Isn't that an excellent return on investment?"

“That’s not—” 

“Isn’t it?” Sullivan’s voice remained calm and reasonable. Which somehow made it worse. “You’re a businessman, Mr. Pierce. One of the most successful of your generation. You understand leverage and incentives. You offered Selene exactly what she needed most at exactly the moment you needed something from her. That’s not decency, that’s pure negotiation if I must say.”

Diana placed a warning hand on Avalon’s arm.

He forced himself to stay calm and breathe.

“I helped Maya because it was the right thing to do not just because it benefited me. She is the only living family of a girl I once loved. Even if Selene wasn't in the picture, I would have done the same."

“Okay..."let's assume it is true, it is also true that such act benefited you tremendously.”

“Both things can be true.”

Sullivan made a note. “Let’s talk about your relationship with Selene. You both were in a serious relationship in college, then she disappeared without explanation. How did that feel?”

The shift in tactics was deliberate. Avalon recognized it—soften them with personal questions, then strike.

“Devastating,” he said.

“You loved her.”

“Yes.”

“And when she left, that love just—what? Disappeared?”

“No. It turned into hurt, anger and eventually numbness.”

“Numbness? So for ten years, you felt nothing about Selene Castellano?”

“I felt plenty things but I had to just bury it.”

“Buried it under eighty-hours work weekly, casual relationships and emotional unavailability?"

“No, I buried it under survival.”

Sullivan paused, studied him.

“Survival. That’s interesting. Why did you need to survive? She left you, yes, but people get through breakups without becoming emotionally frozen for a decade.”

Avalon’s hands clenched under the table. “I thought she’d abandoned me without any reason. I thought maybe I’d done something wrong. I spent months trying to figure out what I missed, believe me, that kind of loss changes you.”

"So, it made you cold?

“It made me careful"  

“Same thing.” Sullivan flipped a page. “Let’s jump forward. Your grandmother dies and her will requires you to marry Selene specifically. What was your first thought?”

“That Nene had lost her mind.”

“Not ‘I still love Selene and want her back’?”

“No.”

“Not ‘this is my second chance’?”

“No. My first thought was that I was being manipulated.”

“By your grandmother?”

“By the situation.”

“But you complied anyway.”

“Yes, subconsciously I wanted to meet the woman who broke my heart without mercy which at the end of the day helped me learn  the truth, the truth about my mother’s interference the real reason why Selene left.”

Sullivan leaned back. “Ah yes. The pregnancy. Let’s discuss that. When did you learn Selene had been pregnant with your child?”

“Six weeks ago. At the board meeting.”

“That must have been very shocking for you.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“Catastrophical , even.?”

“Yes.”

“Angering?"

“Very.”

“And yet you stayed married to the woman who’d kept that secret for ten years?”

Avalon felt the trap closing but couldn’t see a way around it.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I understood—”

“You understood that leaving her would forfeit your inheritance. That Marcus would win and that  you’d lose everything your grandmother built.”

“No.” Avalon’s voice hardened. “I understood that she’d been manipulated by my mother. She was threatened which made her terrified. I understood that she made an irrational choice in an impossible situation.”

“How convenient that your understanding aligned perfectly with your financial interests?”

The accusation hung in the air.

Diana started to object, but Avalon spoke first.

“You think I stayed because of money? I am worth 4billion dollars”

“I think you’re a businessman who understands cost-benefit analysis. Staying married preserves your inheritance. Leaving would have cost you everything. The math is quite simple.”

“That math ignores that I am a human being processing grief, betrayal and loss.”

“Does it? Or does it simply acknowledge that humans—especially successful ones—are excellent at convincing themselves that self-interest is actually principle?”

Avalon felt his control starting to crack. The careful composure he’d maintained for the first hour was slipping.

“I didn’t stay because of the inheritance.”

“Then why?”

“Because—” He stopped. Searched for words that wouldn’t sound calculated. “Because walking away felt worse than trying to understand.”

“Trying to understand? Or trying to preserve eight hundred million dollars?”

“Both!” The word came out sharper than intended. “Yes, both. I’m not going to pretend the money doesn’t matter, but it’s not the only thing that matters.”

Sullivan made extensive notes.

“Let’s discuss your current relationship. You and Selene share a bedroom now?”

“Yes.”

“Was it from the initially stage?"

“No.”

“Why not?”

“We did that because we needed space to process ten years apart.”

“Or you both needed the appearance of marriage without the reality.”

“We needed time to build something real.”

“Real.” Sullivan repeated the word like it tasted wrong. “Define real marriage for me, Mr. Pierce.”

Avalon hesitated. “Real marriage means.....two people who have decided to commit to building a life together.”

“Are you committed to building a life with Selene?”

“Yes.”

“For how long? The required year? Or genuinely long-term?”

“I don’t know yet.”

The admission felt like bleeding from a stale wound.

Sullivan pounced. “You don’t know. So this could still end in divorce after the required year?"

“It could, or it could last decades. We’re figuring it out.”

“That’s not very committed.”

“That’s honest. We’re not pretending to have answers we don’t have.”

Sullivan flipped through his notes, clearly deciding on his next angle of attack.

“Your wife testified yesterday that she loves you, were you aware of that?”

“Yes. She told me at the press conference in front of everyone.”

“How did that make you feel?”

Avalon’s throat tightened. “Complicated.”

“Is that because you don’t love her back?”

“Because I’m not there yet.”

“Not there yet? After six weeks of marriage.”

“After six weeks of marriage following ten years of hurt. Yes. Not there yet.”

“Do you think you’ll ever get there?”

The question was asked casually but it landed like a punch.

“I don’t know,” Avalon said quietly.

“You don’t know. So you married a woman you’re not sure you’ll ever love, for an inheritance? That sounds like fraud, Mr. Pierce.”

“That sounds like honesty. I’m trying. We both are  trying. That’s more than most people do.”

“Trying isn’t succeeding.”

“No. But it’s real.”

Sullivan set down his pen. Steepled his fingers.

“Let me ask you something directly. If your grandmother’s will hadn’t required this marriage—if you’d simply run into Selene on the street—would you have pursued a relationship with her?”

Avalon opened his mouth. Closed it.

The truth was complicated.

“I don’t know,” he said finally.

“You don’t know? Yet you claimed she’s the love of your life—”

“I never claimed that.”

“—after marrying her, sharing a home with her, supposedly building a life with her. You don’t know if you’d have chosen her without financial incentive?"

“The financial incentive forced us to confront what we’d been avoiding for ten years. That doesn’t make the confrontation fake.”

“It makes the motivation suspicious.”

Diana cut in.“Asked and answered. Can we proceed Mr. Sullivan.”

Sullivan nodded. “Let’s discuss intimacy then. Are you and your wife physically intimate?”

Avalon felt his spine stiffen. “That’s private.”

“This is a deposition regarding the legitimacy of your marriage and physical intimacy is relevant.”

“My sex life is none of your business.”

“Your sex life is directly relevant to establishing whether this is a genuine marriage or a business arrangement with shared living quarters.”

Diana leaned in. “My client has acknowledged he shares a bedroom with his wife and that they’re building a marital relationship. The specifics of their intimate life are not necessary to establish legitimacy.”

Sullivan pressed. “I’m not asking for specifics. I’m asking if a physical relationship exists.”

Avalon’s jaw clenched so hard it hurt.

This was humiliating, invasive and designed to strip away every shred of privacy he’d tried to maintain.

“Yes,” he said finally. “We have a physical relationship.”

“When did that aspect of your relationship begin?”

“I’m not providing a timeline.”

“Mr. Pierce—”

“No.” Avalon leaned forward. “You want to know if we’re intimate? Yes. You want to know if it’s real? Yes. But I’m not giving you a play-by-play of my private moments with my wife so you can pick them apart and decide if they meet your definition of genuine. Some things remain private even in a deposition.”

Sullivan made a note. “Your defensiveness is noted.”

“My boundaries are noted,” Avalon corrected.

For a moment, something shifted in Sullivan’s expression. Not sympathy, maybe a recognition that he’d pushed as far as he could on this particular angle.

He moved on.

“Let’s talk about your mother. Catherine Pierce. You’ve cut her out of your life?”

“Yes.”

“Because of what she did to Selene?”

“No, because of what she did to both of us. She manipulated a an threatened a pregnant woman and that caused us a decade of unnecessary pain. That’s unforgivable.”

“Yet you forgave Selene for keeping that secret.”

“I’m working on forgiving Selene. There’s a difference between forgiveness and reconciliation.”

“Are you ”working" on it? Or just saying you are because it serves your purposes?”

Avalon felt something snap inside. He was done being polite,done being careful.

“You know what, Sullivan? You can question my motives all you want. You can make this sound as calculated and mercenary as you need it to sound for Marcus’s case. But at the end of the day, I’m the one living this. I’m the one who goes home to Selene every night. I’m the one who sits in therapy trying to work through a decade of hurt. I’m the one choosing—every single day—to try to make this work instead of taking the easy way out.”

“The easy way out being?”

“Walking away. Divorcing her. Letting Marcus have it all. That would be easier than what I’m doing but here I am, I am not doing easy, I am doing real. Messy, complicated, and uncertainty.”

Sullivan’s expression didn’t change. “That’s very passionate, Mr. Pierce. Let’s take a fifteen-minute break.”

Avalon practically fled to the bathroom.

His hands shook as he splashed cold water on his face. The fluorescent lights made him look sallow, exhausted and broken.

He knew he'd lost his composure, showed too much and Sullivan would use that against him.

Diana found him there.

“You need to pull it together,” she said quietly.

“I know.”

“That outburst—it could go either way which makes you look genuine or makes you look defensive.”

“Which do you think?”

“I think you need to finish this without falling apart.” She handed him a paper towel. “He’s trying to break you. Don’t let him.”

“I feel broken.”

“Then feel it after. Right now, hold on.”

Avalon dried his face and looked at himself in the mirror. This was costing him everything.

His control. His privacy. His carefully maintained walls.

“I can’t do this much longer,” he admitted.

“You can. Remember Selene did yesterday, Margaret did earlier also because, this is what it takes to fight for something real.”

“What if it’s not enough?”

Diana met his eyes in the mirror. “Then we find another way….Avalon—you’re doing better than you think. That passion? That anger? It reads as genuine.”

They returned to the deposition room.

Sullivan was waiting.

“Ready to continue?”

Avalon nodded.

“Let’s discuss your grandmother’s motivations. Why do you think she structured her will this way?” And just like that, the interrogation continued.

Another hour of question,some clinical, some personal but all designed to find the cracks.

When Sullivan finally said “We’ll reconvene tomorrow for the remainder,” Avalon felt relief and dread in equal measure.

Tomorrow? More of this tomorrow?

He wasn’t sure he had it in him.

Diana walked him to the elevator.

“You did well especially after the break, you held it together.”

“Barely.”

“Barely is enough.” She paused. “Tomorrow will be harder. He’ll push on the ‘learning to love’ angle, checking whether you’re capable of it. So, you need to be ready.”

“How do I prepare for that?”

“By deciding what’s true and sticking to it. Are you learning to love her?”

“Yes.”

“Then say that and mean it. Let everything else fall into background noise.”

The elevator arrived. Avalon stepped in.

“Selene’s waiting at my office. Same place.”

He found her by the window.

She turned, saw his face, crossed to him and hug him without a word.

He held her tighter than necessary she was the only solid thing in a world that had turned liquid.

“That bad?” she whispered.

“Worse.”

“What did he ask?”

“Everything. About the money, about my capacity to love, about whether I’m just performing. He tried to make it sound like I bought you.”

“What did you say?”

“That it’s complicated. That both things can be true—helping you and benefiting myself. That I’m trying.”

She pulled back to see his face. “Are you okay?”

“No.”

The honesty surprised them both.

“I feel exposed. Like every wall I’ve built for ten years got torn down in three hours.”

“Good,” she said.

“Good?”

“Good, because those walls were keeping you safe but also keeping you alone, so, if breaking them is what needs to happen, it is good.”

Avalon pulled her close again. “We go back tomorrow and he is going to push harder on whether I can love you or not.”

“Can you?”

“I’m trying, Selene. I swear I’m trying.”

“I know.”

They stood in Diana’s office as the afternoon light shifted through the windows.

"Tomorrow would be worse but for the rest of the day can we just....... " Selene interrupted.....

Let’s enjoy each other’s presence, we are all we've got.