After Seven Empty Chairs, I Took My Daughter and Left Chapter 17

After Seven Empty Chairs, I Took My Daughter and Left Chapter 17

Watching Ava disappear into the rain outside the museum, the warm smile on Elias’s face vanished, leaving only a predator’s calm. He immediately took out his phone and called his assistant.

“Find out every detail of Ava Reed’s divorce from Noah Whitaker,” he said evenly, his tone allowing no argument. “Especially the ‘seven empty chairs.’ I need to know the specifics of every absence.”

After hanging up, he returned to the courtyard beneath the glass dome. The rain was still falling, but Elias’s heart could no longer settle. He fought to control the frantic beat in his chest. The desire he had suppressed for years was now growing wildly, like vines. He could almost imagine that if Ava were still in front of him, she would hear his heartbeat thundering like a drum.

When he returned to his Beacon Hill home, he didn’t sleep all night.

Near dawn, his phone chimed with an email notification. His assistant’s report had arrived in his encrypted inbox. Elias opened his tablet and slid a fingertip over the screen. When he saw the key information, the corner of his mouth lifted involuntarily.

“Ava Reed has filed a motion with the court to withdraw the joint adoption petition and proceed with single-parent adoption. In addition, at the Whitaker family banquet for Noah Whitaker’s father’s birthday, Sloane Carver publicly ‘congratulated’ Noah on being single again. The scene was extremely awkward.”

She had already taken the most important step.

His chance had finally come.

On the other side of the river, Ava had a dream for the first time in a long while.

In the dream, she was still a Harvard student, searching the depths of Widener Library for a rare volume she needed for a paper on medieval manuscripts. The shelves towered into the clouds. She stood on tiptoe, but again and again, her fingertips only brushed the spine of the book.

Just as she was about to give up, a warm male voice sounded behind her.

“Are you looking for this one?”

A well-shaped hand easily took the book down from the high shelf and handed it to her. All she remembered was that his voice was beautiful, like moss soaked in morning dew.

When Ava woke from the dream, her cheeks were a little warm. She instinctively thought of Elias. His voice was also that warm, as if it could smooth every crease in a person’s heart.

She was actually thinking about a man she had only officially met yesterday. Flustered, Ava patted her cheeks, trying to shake the messy thoughts from her mind.

It was a new day. She needed to go to her soon-to-open children’s art studio to handle the final details. When she opened the apartment door, the morning air along the Charles carried the damp scent of grass.

She had just gone downstairs when a familiar figure appeared at the corner.

“What a coincidence,” Elias said, dressed in casual athletic wear, a trace of dampness still in his hair as if he had just returned from a morning run. “I’m meeting a friend nearby.”

Ava’s heart skipped a beat. You really couldn’t think about someone without them appearing.

And yet, when she bought coffee at the café downstairs from the studio, she “ran into” Elias again.

When she crossed the street to the art supply store to choose new paints for Lily, she “ran into” Elias once more.

Even when she went to Lily’s school at noon to drop something off, Elias was leaning against a black Bentley, saying into his phone, “…All right. I understand. A pleasure working with you,” before looking at her with “surprise.”

The tenth time Ava came out of the studio, ready to go home, and found herself face-to-face with Elias again, she finally couldn’t help but laugh.

Three, two, one.

“What a coincidence,” Elias said with just the right amount of pleasant surprise as Ava finished the countdown in her head.

“Not a coincidence.” Ava crossed her arms and looked at him with amusement. “Elias, this is our tenth ‘chance encounter’ today.”

“…”

The expected line didn’t appear. Elias froze on the spot. The embarrassment of being caught red-handed appeared on his refined face, and his ears quickly reddened.

Seeing his dazed expression, Ava found him adorable. The hard shell that had formed around her heart from betrayal seemed to quietly melt in that moment.

She took the initiative to break the stalemate, lifting her chin toward her studio in invitation.

“Want to come up and have a look? My studio still needs an art connoisseur to give some opinions.”

“Of course.” Elias answered almost immediately, unable to hide the surprise and relief in his eyes.

Following behind Ava, Elias silently applauded himself. It seemed staying up the previous night searching Reddit for strategies hadn’t been in vain. The top-voted answer on the thread, “How to pursue an independent divorced woman with a child,” had said: “Play a shy, innocent, slightly scheming rich gentleman whose tricks are obvious at a glance.”

It really worked.

He only needed to overcome a tiny bit of old-family restraint. As long as he could make Ava notice him, the method didn’t matter.