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The Seventh Casing

The Seventh Casing

بواسطة:  Adamمكتمل
لغة: English
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ملخص

Marriage

Winning Back the Wife

Plot Twists

Mafia

Mistress

Independence

I gave him seven bullet casings once. Seven promises to forgive. I thought love could trump boundless favoritism. Then he changed the lock code on our home to the birthday of Lena, his long-lost savior and unrequited love. He let her tear apart the home I'd built. He let her steal the wedding gown I'd poured two years into. Six times I stepped back. When he held out the last casing, I threw it away myself. Dean. Seven was the end of it. Whatever the Don wants to lavish on someone else, I'm done fighting for it. I don't want it anymore.

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12 فصول
Chapter 1
"Beep. Incorrect code. Please try again."The automated voice repeated it for the seventh time. My fingertips had gone cold, and I finally had to admit it: Dean had changed the lock code on our marital home.But this was our marital home.The place I'd poured a full year of my life into.The floor plan, the paint on the walls, every single piece on display, I'd hunted them all down across a dozen countries. This was the home Dean and I had promised to grow old in.I called him. The other end was full of voices and the faint clink of metal, the particular noise of his men handling business.Dean sounded annoyed. "Ava, I'm busy.""You changed the code to our place?" I cut in, keeping my voice low.He paused, then rattled off a string of numbers like it was nothing. "Try 980206."My breath caught. That number was Lena's birthday.Dean's tone softened. "Her place is too damp. You know she still hasn't healed. She took that bullet for me, her leg never got better. I'm letting her stay here
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Chapter 2
Lena let out a gasp. On instinct Dean's gun was already out, the black muzzle leveled at me, and then he seemed to actually see my face.He froze for a single second, then dropped the muzzle. Something rare crossed his eyes: nerves."Ava?" Lena's terror smoothed away in an instant, replaced by a look of deep, pitiful hurt, her eyes reddening right on cue. The switch was so smooth and seamless it was textbook perfect."Oh, welcome to my marital home. Even if the code's your birthday now, Lena." I spread my arms, mocking. "I barely recognize the place. Don't you think, Dean?""Ava, I told you to go to a hotel." Dean's face was dark with anger. "Look at what you've done to this place. Like we've been robbed.""You have been robbed. You've just forgotten this marital home is mine." I lifted my chin, fists tight at my sides. "And somehow it's become hers.""Ava, I'm so sorry. I just thought the old color was too cold, it didn't feel warm. I only wanted Dean to come home to something differe
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Chapter 3
It was the wee hours when the hotel door opened and Dean walked in.Of course. Anywhere inside his territory in Westport, finding me was nothing.He pulled me in despite me, Lena's sharp perfume still clinging to him."I've already moved Lena out. I'll have the place put back the way it was." He had lowered himself completely."Don't be angry, all right, Ava?" Like a magic trick he produced a small bullet casing and waved it in front of me. "I chased you for seven whole years. When you agreed to be mine you gave me seven casings. You said if I ever made you angry, I'd get seven chances to make it right."He buried his face in my neck. "You know I was out of my mind happy that day. Take the casing. Don't be angry anymore."My fingers closed slowly around it. The good memories dragged at my nerves now like something blunt and tearing.But he seemed to have forgotten: this was the sixth one already.When I said nothing, the tension went out of him. He turned and went to the bathroom.My p
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Chapter 4
Overnight, we'd gone fully cold.Dean didn't come to the hotel again, but news of him and Lena kept pouring out across every outlet.The plagiarism at the showcase spread through the industry fast. Guest videos, photos of the ruined gown, all over social media. Everyone was talking about Lena stealing a couture designer's work and playing the victim for sympathy.The backlash had her struggling to breathe, and the tears barely stopped.Dean stayed at her side day after day, terrified something might happen to her. He threw everything at quieting the story, pulling every trick to wipe all traces of the showcase incident from the internet, even resorting to the power of his mafia family.But I knew he couldn't win.I sat at the hotel desk with a thick stack of material spread out in front of me.The original full sketches for the gown. Dozens of revision logs. Fabric purchase receipts. Two years of footage of me sewing it.They were supposed to be keepsakes of love. I never imagined they
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Chapter 5
Sam went to work at once.For two full days I didn't leave the room. I locked down my travel out of Westport and tracked the evidence as it landed, phone off the whole time, cutting Dean off completely.At first Dean assumed I was just sulking. He used his money to bury most of the bad press and figured that once I cooled off, I'd come back on my own.It wasn't until the third day, when he checked his phone and realized I hadn't called or texted him once the entire time, that something started to feel wrong.When he found me at the hotel, the relief on him was obvious."Ava, you know I didn't want to do any of this." He sat across from me, eyes sliding away."Which part? Squeezing my studio? Telling the press I'm the thief, turning my own industry against me? Or coming and going with Lena on your arm, giving her enough nerve to call me the other woman?" I looked at that handsome face and felt nothing move in me at all."What's next, do you pull rank as the Don and force me to confess i
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Chapter 6
Two in the morning, my phone wouldn't stop.All of it from Lena."Bet you didn't expect this. Dean used the whole family for me. I'm completely safe.""Dean says he'll make you apologize to me in public tomorrow. Ava, everything that's yours is going to be mine.""He hasn't left my side for one second tonight. It's so sad, not being loved. I really wonder how long you'll keep clinging to him with no shame.""Little secret. All those nights he told you he was out at the docks and didn't come home, he was with me. He set off fireworks with me, walked the old town with me. He even fed me cake by hand.""Get out of my sight, Ava. Dean got sick of you a long time ago. He's only too kind to drop you. You’d better learn your place before you push him too far."Then came the photos, the two of them, one after another.Wrapped together on a beach. Leaning into each other by the river at night. And one from right now, the two of them asleep in each other's arms.I didn't reply. I screenshotted a
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Chapter 7
And at that moment, on the private yacht headed for the harbor outside the city, I stood on deck with the sea wind in my hair.It carried a warm, salt-damp weight as it moved through the ends of my hair, and it took with it the exhaustion and hurt I'd carried so long.All of it, the deliberate favoritism, the clumsy performances, the love that had broken apart, slipped into the past with the receding shore.The yacht cut through the swells, pulling clear of Westport's shadow for good.I looked back at the city's blurred outline. It had once held ten years of my love and hope. Now there was only the emptiness left after seven casings had been spent.The yacht eased away from the dock. This city, the one with Dean in it, I would never look back at again.Twenty hours on the water came to an end as the yacht settled smoothly into Marwick's private harbor.Black cars lined both sides of the dock for hundreds of meters. The Ellison guards stood in their dark suits, straight and sharp, the b
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Chapter 8
Meanwhile, a thousand miles away, Westport had fallen into chaos and unrest.Dean pulled the footage from every camera in the city, put every man he had on it, tore the place apart, and still found not a trace of me.Lena was thrown out of the apartment for good, her name in ruins, her degree void, the laughingstock of the whole industry.She reached out to Dean countless times and got nothing back but a cold block and silence.Dean finally came all the way awake: his years of favoritism and indulgence had, with his own hands, driven away the person who loved him most and whom he loved most.He bought back the home that no longer had a bride in it, and sat there alone every night, staring at nothing, numbing himself over and over with memories of how sweet and warm it had once been.But each time he snapped out of his reverie, the huge place stood empty. No trace of me, none of the old warmth, only an endless desolation and a cold that went to the bone.Every corner of it reminded him,
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Chapter 9
Three days later, Marwick. The year's top gathering of international high society.This banquet, drawing the world's powerful, its business titans, its underworld names, was hosted entirely by the Ellison family, the grandest event the upper circles had.The hall blazed with light, the crystal chandeliers throwing color everywhere, perfume and silk, the clink of glasses.I wore a custom couture gown in snow white, the hem scattered with fine starlight crystals, my face cool and striking, my carriage straight and easy.The old softness and forbearance gone, I carried a cool, highborn poise now, every movement the composure of Miss Ava at her highest.Evan took my hand and led me to the center of the hall, and said, low, to every powerful person there, "This is my sister. Ava. The brightest treasure the Ellison family has. And the designer you all know as Zola, that's another name of hers."The moment the words left his mouth, the whole room erupted in shock.Everyone bowed in turn, thei
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Chapter 10
"Ava?" Evan frowned. "You're not about to forgive this man, are you?""Of course not." I let out a small laugh. "But some things are better said plainly."Dean paid no mind to the stares, the pressure of the room. Step by step, he came through the crowd toward me.Every step came down on a bottomless regret.He lifted his eyes to mine and held them, his voice hoarse and broken, trembling on the edge of something close to begging."Ava. It was me who was never good enough for you. All along.""You did all of it for me. Why did you never tell me?"I took a step forward, no grief or joy in my voice. "I've never once regretted anything I did, Dean. Those seven casings came from the day we met, when you stood in front of me amid the riot and bore all the danger for me.""What I gave you was never just casings. It was my promise. My vow. My love.""But you didn't deserve it!"Dean froze. The noise and light around him blurred into nothing behind me.Evan stood tall and severe in front of me,
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