Chapter 11: Only The Beautiful Are Punished
Casey
The grip feels wrong. Like it hasn’t broken in. He tightens his hands around the club anyway, forcing himself to focus as the sun presses against the back of his neck. All around him, the muted cues of wealth—joyless laughter, the clink of flutes—drift across the manicured silence of the golf course. No one says anything, not directly, but he knows the signals: nods that don’t linger, eyes that slide past, conversations that fade when he gets close. He’s seen it before. He’s been on the other side. Now it’s his turn to be the outcast.
He swings. Clean. Straight down the fairway. Not bad for a man halfway out the door. Another shot. Another tight nod from someone who used to hang on his every word, now turning away before the ball even lands. He swings again. Nails it. Another par. Then a birdie at the final hole. The applause comes on cue. The charity golf crowd is polite, at least.
But the noise in his head is almost unbearable. Lili, Daphne, Raf—all screaming. And Alexander, laughing. Meanwhile, the pixelated photos on TMZ still haunt his sleep: Raf, wild-eyed mid-meltdown; him, caught in profile, his eyes betraying every shred of guilt and cowardice.
Back under the tent, bourbon dulls the edge. Barely. The golf club lingers like a ghost across his palms. Around him, voices flatten into background noise. A room already learning how to forget him.
Then—light flares. Sun on crystal. A sudden glint off a diamond stud. It startles him just enough to lift his head. She stands just inside the tent’s shadow. Still. Watching. She’s in her sixties, maybe older. Elegant the way a falcon is: upright, poised, coiled in stillness like she could strike or vanish without warning. Her ash-blonde hair is swept into a chignon, sleek and unmoving, as if daring the breeze to try.
She’s dressed in head-to-toe Chanel, of course: ivory bouclé jacket, matching skirt, vintage Hermès scarf knotted at her throat. A slim Cartier at her wrist—the kind you inherit. Just East Coast austerity with a whisper of Beverly Hills steel. She’s regal. Impenetrable. Like she’s survived the fall of empires.
He laughs to himself, quietly. There it is again. That thing he does. The myth-making. Like when he first saw Lili—at the Brooklyn Heights townhouse, dressed like she’d wandered out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. A fairy queen in a crowd of red Solo cups. Or Daphne, incandescent in the California heat, laughing too loud, eyes like a summer storm. A courtesan dragged through the gold-rush frontier, glittering in sequins. And now this woman, her hair like roses turned to ash. She could’ve been Roman nobility, a widow of Versailles, the last daughter of some vanished dynasty.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
She doesn’t mingle. Doesn’t wait. Just watches silently from behind oversized tortoiseshell shades. When her smile comes, it’s slight. Not warm. Not cruel. Just enough to say she’s seen everything she needs to, like she already knows exactly how Casey’s story ends.
He’s the one who looks away first. But when he glances back—she’s gone.
By the time he returns home, the sun hangs low, casting the building in sharp angles, every line etched in shadow. He passes under the archway, through the gate, and there it is. His old front door. It’s been two weeks since she kicked him out, but it still hits him. He can almost feel it—the rhythm of coming home: coat off, shoes under the bench, Lili’s voice drifting from the kitchen.
He forces himself forward, across the short stretch of courtyard to his new unit, only a dozen steps. He told himself it was luck when the place opened up—a quiet tenant no one knew well, some tech consultant with a family emergency, gone overnight. At first, Gareth wouldn’t even let him apply. Launched into a condescending monologue about boundaries and self-respect.
“Give Lili some goddamn space. Give yourself space. Why stay here if it only causes more pain?”
Casey listened just long enough to slide three times the finder’s fee across the desk. That shut him right up, the self-righteous douche. Even Gareth had a price.
And that’s how he’s still here. A new apartment. A new man, technically—marriage wrecked, reputation in tatters, career dangling by a thread. Maybe that’s why he startles when he hears his name just as he gets the key in the door.
He turns. She’s leaning against the stucco wall, swaying slightly, hair a mess of bleach and defiance.
“You can’t keep avoiding me,” Daphne slurs, too drunk to hide it.
“Yes, I can,” he says, turning the key.
“So you’re just like the rest?” She takes a wobbly step forward, eyes glassy, voice trembling with something too close to hope. “They all hate me.”
“You made that bed,” Casey murmurs. “We both did.”
“But we don’t have to pretend anymore. No secrets. No hiding. Just us.”
“You think there’s an us that survives this?” He almost laughs, but doesn’t bother. “I’m one headline away from losing everything. Have you seen TMZ?”
“You were fucking her the whole time. Weren’t you? That Rafaella bitch?”
“I wasn’t,” he snaps, but the guilt shows anyway.
“Cheater!” she shouts, mascara streaked beneath her eyes. “But unlike Lili, I’d still take you back.”
“You’re fucking delusional, Daphne. What are you so wounded over anyway? You hit rock bottom years ago. Don’t pretend like the fall was steep.”
She doesn’t wait. She slaps him. Hard.
“I deserved that,” Casey mutters, turning back to the door and shoving it open.
“You deserve worse,” she hisses just as it slams shut. “Maybe we both do.”