Chapter 2

The next morning, the consequences of my call to Robert arrived on David' s doorstep.

A process server handed him the injunction and notice of lawsuit just as he was stepping out of his ridiculously expensive sports car.

My lawyer had a source who described the scene to me in vivid detail.

David had apparently laughed, torn the papers in half, and thrown them on the ground.

An hour later, his phone call came.

"Are you out of your mind?" he yelled, his voice cracking with rage.

"You froze the accounts? Ava, you have no idea the damage you' re doing!"

I was sitting in my car, parked across the street from the house.

My house.

Even from a distance, the changes were jarring.

The elegant gray exterior was now marred by cheap, fake stone cladding around the doorway.

It was a monstrosity.

"The only damage I see, David, is what you' ve done to my home," I said calmly.

"It' s my home!" he shot back.

"And my company! You' re going to regret this. I' ll countersue you into oblivion. I' ll prove you' re an unstable, hysterical widow who can' t accept her husband' s last wishes."

The threat hung in the air, ugly and pointless.

He was predictable.

I hung up without another word, my eyes fixed on the front door.

A few minutes later, it opened.

Chloe stepped out.

She was wearing a silk robe and sunglasses, holding a mug of coffee.

She sauntered down the driveway to get the morning paper, and her eyes landed on my car.

A slow, venomous smile spread across her face.

She walked right up to my window, leaning down so I was forced to look at her.

"Stalking us now, are we?" she said, taking a loud sip of her coffee.

"It' s a little pathetic, Ava."

I just looked at her.

She was young, barely twenty-four.

An intern I had taken under my wing, someone I had tried to mentor.

I remembered her being eager, a little too ambitious, but I had dismissed it as youthful energy.

I had been a fool.

"Like the new look?" she gestured back at the house with her mug.

"It needed some personality. It was so... sterile before. So you."

The insult was meant to hurt, to get a reaction.

I gave her nothing.

I just stared, my expression flat.

"David' s right, you know," she continued, emboldened by my silence.

"You should just move on. Find a nice little condo somewhere. This is our life now."

I finally spoke, my voice quiet but carrying the weight of a granite slab.

"You know, Chloe," I said, my eyes flicking from her face to the ugly stone cladding on the house.

"The thing about facades is that they look strong. But they' re just a thin layer attached to the real structure. They add weight, but no strength. In a seismic event, they' re the first thing to crack and fall away."

Her smile faltered.

She didn' t understand the architectural reference, but she understood the threat.

"What are you talking about?"

I turned the key in the ignition, the engine purring to life.

"I' m talking about how fragile things can be," I said, my gaze locking onto hers.

"Especially things built on a weak foundation."

I put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb, leaving her standing there in her silk robe, the confident smirk wiped clean from her face.

She had no idea.

Neither of them did.

They thought this was about lawyers and paperwork.

They were wrong.

This was about design.

And I was the architect.

I drove straight to my temporary office, a small, sterile space I' d rented after clearing out my things from the firm I' d shared with Mark and David.

On a large drafting table, I unrolled the original blueprints for the house.

My hands traced the familiar lines, the plans I knew better than my own reflection.

Mark had called them my love poems written in ink and paper.

Every detail was intentional, every material chosen for a reason.

And buried deep within the structural plans, in a detail so minor no building inspector would ever notice, was a secret.

A flaw.

A fail-safe I had designed into the house from the very beginning.

A little quirk of engineering that only I knew about.

It was my signature.

And it was about to become their nightmare.