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Chapter 2

Author: Adam
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 different. You know how exhausted he is, I just wanted him to relax a little. It's all my fault, okay?" Lena clutched my arm, pleading. The rehearsed hurt on her face alone was enough to turn my stomach.

"Please don't fight because of me. I know I'm in the way everywhere I go. I never should have shown up in front of you." She dissolved into sad little sobs, and then her bare legs gave out and she actually sank to her knees in front of me. "Don't blame Dean. He's so tired, and he loves you, Ava."

If she hadn't been gripping me so hard it hurt, I might almost have bought the devout little performance.

I threw her hand off. She took the cue, stumbling back several steps, and, how convenient, fell right into Dean's arms.

Dean's face went cold. "Ava, what do you think you're doing?"

"It's my fault, Dean, just let me leave. I don't want to be misunderstood, I don't want the two of you fighting over me." Lena cried harder, as if she'd suffered some enormous wrong.

"Apologize." Dean's voice dropped, and the whole room felt the weight of it. "Ava."

Lena curled boneless against him, sniffling, but her eyes met mine in open challenge.

"Apologize?" I stepped toward him, holding his gaze. "For what, exactly? For coming back to my own home? For finding the code changed, the place redone, a portrait of you and another woman on my wall?"

Dean faltered, as if only now noticing the portrait of him and Lena on the wall. He let go of her and reached up, stiff, to loosen his tie.

"Ava, it's not what you think." He pressed his brow. "Lena thought our engagement photos were beautiful, she wanted one of her own, so she had Reed paint it. You know she doesn't even have a boyfriend, so I—"

"So you became her boyfriend?" I bit my lip, fighting down the anger climbing in me.

"Don't be ridiculous." Dean's voice cracked out hard. "Lena's like a sister to me. It's one portrait. Can't a brother and sister—"

"Brother and sister? In a bridal veil?" I laughed, the kind of laugh that only comes when you're past fury.

"It's not like that, Ava. I just envied you so much, having a fiance like Dean, and I have nothing. He only wanted to give me one small thing I wished for." Lena's eyes glistened, all frightened, wounded innocence.

I couldn't hold back. I raised my hand and slapped her hard across the face. “Don’t think I’m blind to your filthy schemes!”

Without a thought, pure reflex, Dean pulled Lena behind him and shoved me, hard.

The way you'd handle an enemy.

I slammed into a standing lamp, then into the lounge chair behind it, and the pain shot through me.

Dean's arm twitched. Regret flickered across his face. He came to steady me, his voice gentling. "All right, Ava. Let Lena stay one more night, tomorrow I'll arrange somewhere and move her out. Don't be angry. You're my fiancee. Don't lower yourself."

I pushed myself up. The pain in my back brought a cold sweat to my forehead.

None of it was as cold as the disappointment sitting in my chest.

"Don't bother, Dean." My face had gone pale. I stepped back. "If you're going to play favorites this openly, then I'm out."

His face went iron-gray. He spoke through his teeth, the threat plain. "Don't push me, Ava."

I shrugged. "Too late. You already pushed me."

I turned and left, and every step hurt down to the bone.

This love had gotten cheap. I didn't want it anymore.
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  • The Seventh Casing   Chapter 12

    The years passed in a blink.Three years on, the world's top design competition opened, and I entered under my own name, Ava, with an entirely new couture collection, and took the international gold in one stroke, reaching the summit of global design.The small designer who'd once hidden behind Dean, edges filed down, had long since broken free of everything love had bound her with, standing now at the top of the world, living as something truly dazzling, beyond anyone's reach.The ceremony was held in a glittering international capital, red carpet underfoot, celebrities everywhere, the spotlights flashing for me through the whole night.Afterward I rode alone through the city's old quarter on my way to the airport. Passing a dim, noisy intersection, gaudy neon, a messy crush of people, traffic everywhere, I caught sight, by chance, of a figure both familiar and strange.It was Lena.She was in a cheap, revealing dress, her makeup patchy and worn, her hair a dry, tangled yellow, hunche

  • The Seventh Casing   Chapter 11

    Dean went back to Westport alone, travel-worn, the regret bone-deep.Once there, he let go of most of his inner circle, shed half the power of the Don's seat, and never again looked like the decisive, high-spirited man he'd been.He bought back the apartment I'd put up for sale.With his own hands he painted the walls back to the greige I loved, cleared out every cheap toy and bit of clutter piece by piece, tracked down the antique paintings and treasured objects I'd gathered across countries, and carefully restored every detail I'd designed with such care.He threw out every trace of Lena, burned the gaudy portrait of the two of them, emptied the place of everything that wasn't me.But the cleaner and more ordered the home got, the more empty and cold it felt.In all that space, there was no more Ava, warm with love, always waiting for him.Every bit of warmth and hope, he'd destroyed with his own hands, past any restoring.After that, Dean became another man entirely.He stopped work

  • The Seventh Casing   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,

  • The Seventh Casing   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

  • The Seventh Casing   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,

  • The Seventh Casing   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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