After Seven Empty Chairs, I Took My Daughter and Left Chapter 24

After Seven Empty Chairs, I Took My Daughter and Left Chapter 24

When Noah returned to the Beacon Hill townhouse, the discomfort in his chest was like a soaked wool rug, heavy and suffocating.

He lay on the king-size bed, but even the expensive crystal chandelier above him couldn’t drive Ava’s image from his mind. The Ava he had seen by the Charles that evening was entirely different from the wife in his memory, the gentle, considerate woman who had always put her identity as Mrs. Whitaker first.

She had changed.

No. She hadn’t changed. She had become better. Ten thousand times better than when she had been beside him, a desperate, hollowed-out housewife. Standing next to that man, she was bright and dazzling, like a painting full of life that he had never seen before.

Noah turned over irritably and picked up his phone. On the screen were the dozen missed calls he had just made from Sloane’s phone, all to the same blocked number.

Ava.

The name hovered in his mind like a ghost.

Even when Sloane came out of the bathroom, fragrant and warm, sliding into bed and pressing her body against his, Noah’s mind was full of Ava and the man beside her.

Sloane was thinking about that man, too.

She clearly remembered the perfectly tailored custom suit, the innate sense of power revealed casually in every gesture. That was not the bearing of Wall Street upstarts who rose on numbers and luck. In fact… it was even superior to Noah beside her.

Why?

Why could a woman Sloane had completely defeated, a woman who had left in disgrace, turn around and find a partner even more top-tier than the man Sloane had finally stolen?

Two people shared the same bed, but their hearts carried entirely different jealousies and resentments. They perfunctorily responded to each other’s kisses and touches, yet neither noticed that the other’s mind had drifted just as far away.

In the apartment by the Charles River, however, the air was filled with an entirely opposite sweetness, so thick it seemed ready to bubble pink.

Ava was a little shy, not yet used to being cherished. But Elias was forceful. In a gentle, firm way, he dragged her little by little out of her shell of self-protection, giving her no chance to retreat.

Only after seeing Elias off and returning alone to the living room, her mind replaying his confession again and again, did a thought strike Ava like lightning.

She had never told Elias any legal details about her divorce. How did he know? He had even clearly referred to the outcome of her wager.

After countless suspicions and lies with Noah, Ava instinctively felt that any question should be communicated immediately rather than allowed to fester into poison in her heart.

Without hesitation, she picked up her phone and called Elias.

“Ava, what’s wrong?” On the other end, Elias’s voice carried obvious pleasure.

“I never told you the details of how I got the divorce judgment. How did you know?” Ava didn’t circle around the issue. She asked directly.

There was a second of silence on the other end. Elias, who had thought he had slipped past this, felt his heart drop. Then he said in an even softer voice, almost coaxing, “Ava, wait for me. I’m coming over right now.”

The wait wasn’t long. Ava didn’t even have time to tidy the coffee table, still messy with flowers and desserts Elias had brought earlier, before she heard the knock on the door.

She opened it, let Elias in, then crossed her arms and assumed a posture of waiting for an explanation.

Elias took a deep breath as if preparing to stand trial.

“I’m sorry, Ava,” he said without making any excuse. “The first day I saw you, seeing you alone with Lily, I was worried about you. So… I asked my private investigator to look into the situation a little, and then I saw that your marital status had changed to divorced.”

He carefully watched her expression, then moved closer like a large dog that had done something wrong, pitifully asking, “Don’t be angry, all right?”

Looking at him like this, the last bit of doubt in Ava’s heart disappeared. She hadn’t truly meant to blame him. It was just…

“I’m not angry. I just suddenly thought of it. You know I just came out of a terrible relationship, and you…”

“I know you just got divorced, and I’m taking advantage of you,” Elias immediately interrupted. He couldn’t bear to hear any self-deprecating words from her. He stepped forward and held her shoulders with both hands, forcing her to look at him.

“But I like you too much, Ava. I’ve liked you since the first time I saw you on the Harvard lawn.”

His voice was low and urgent, filled with an irresistible force.

“I know it sounds terrible, but you’re the only person I care about. You always have been.”

“You are the most important person in my life. No matter what kind of life you live, I will stay with you. Wherever you go, I will be by your side.”

His gaze was so burning it almost melted her. Every word branded itself onto her heart.

“Even if one day you say to me yourself, ‘Elias, I don’t love you anymore. I don’t want you,’” his thumb gently rubbed her cheek, his tone carrying a trace of obsessive madness, “that still won’t separate us.”

Once again, Ava was shaken by this confession, so full of Western romance and absolute possessiveness.

How could there be someone in the world who treated her with such sincere, overwhelming emotion?

Faced with such unreserved love, it would be difficult for anyone to remain calm. As for the small matter of him investigating her, what was that compared with the weight of this feeling?

She lowered the arms crossed over her chest, stepped forward, and hugged him gently but firmly.

That embrace said more than a thousand words.