It was Monday and this time it was Marti bashing the hell out of frying pans.
"I thought I'd make you eggs before you go to work." She explained to Casey.
Her sister grinned knowingly. "And here was me thinking some guy had peed you off."
Marti shrugged and muttered something about big heads and small brains.
"You're in a better mood." She stated in an accusatory tone to Casey who was humming her arms deep in soap suds washing up the previous night's dishes.
"Hmm. I am. I've decided that I'm done with internet friendships. I'm sticking to the real sort of friend…and sister."
Marti grinned. "Glad to hear it. Do you want to do something tonight? Celebrate our new "fuck 'em" resolution?"
Casey laughed. "Sure. Shall we brave a club? If you don't mind going with an oldie."
"Oh god! Can I live it down?" Marti replied with a grin.
Casey chuckled. "There's one for the more discerning clientele opened up which seems popular with my colleagues. We could give that a go?"
"Okay. Do I need to wear my Tena pads and my girdle?"
Casey splashed Marti with the dirty washing up water. "I'm not that old, thank you very much!"
They launched into a drying cloth verses soap-suds battle which only finished when the doorbell rang.
"Can you get that?" Casey asked. "I'm elbow-deep in water."
Marti nodded, making her way to the front door and opening it; in front of her stood the building superintendent. He was holding a massive bouquet of white roses.
"Is Miss McDonald in?" He asked, surprised to see Marti.
"Sure. And you are?"
"The Super." The older guy said. "These came for her. I've signed for them and I thought I'd bring them straight up."
Marti glanced at the flowers and chuckled to herself. He might well be ignoring her message, but at least he listened to the bit about the flowers.
"Sis! It's for you!" She turned back and hollered. A short time later, Casey appeared wiping her hands.
"Who is it? Oh! Nigel!" She exclaimed.
"These came for you." He said quickly before she got the wrong idea. Nigel was lonely and somewhat enamoured of Casey, but he wasn't a freak. He knew he stood no chance and he was embarrassed that he had to deliver what was obviously a very personal gift from another man.
"For me?" Casey asked in surprise, taking them from Nigel. He nodded and turning left quickly.
Marti scoffed.
"Creep!" She said under her breath as Casey closed the front door.
"Marti! I'm sure Nigel is just being helpful." She reassured her sister who snorted again.
"I didn't mean him! I meant your lame-ass secret admirer."
Casey blushed. "He's not my secret admirer. He's just a friend. I've no idea where he got my address from."
"But he is a lame-ass. And I thought you said you had had enough of internet friendships?"
Casey blushed. "The flowers are beautiful, Marti." She protested. Marti laughed.
"I know. And if they were addressed to me I think I might rethink my position too. What does the card say?"
The card was in a tiny envelope which Casey removed from its placeholder and opened.
"It says, "I'm very sorry."" She quoted and smiled.
"So it would appear. That won't have been a cheap arrangement."
"White roses mean pure love, don't they? Purity and unity." Casey was positively glowing and Marti was cursing Derek for not just picking some nice yellow ones instead.
Casey laid the arrangement on the living room table and picked up her laptop.
"I need to say thank you." She said by way of explanation.
Marti watched her, slightly concerned at the cause of the spark which she now saw in her "sister". The spark was caused by Marti's own brother's attention. Marti's concern wasn't that she didn't think that Casey and Derek should be together. She had contemplated that often as a child when the adult taboos didn't matter to her and she was convinced she herself would marry her own father! When she had grown and Derek was dead, Marti had realised that actually there had been nothing legally standing between her two siblings being together. She had often wondered what might have happened if Derek hadn't died.
No, Marti's issues with Casey's excitement over Derek's attention were that Casey didn't know it was Derek, Marti still did not know why her brother was alive, and the fact that he hadn't replied to her message gave her a sense of foreboding.
Casey looked up from her laptop with a frown on her face.
"That's odd." She commented, breaking into Marti's thoughts.
"What is?"
"Mikey's name has disappeared from all his Facebook entries. It just says A Facebook user beside his words."
Marti moved quickly across the room as Casey searched the application for "Mikey Essen". It came back with no exact matches.
Her sister slid the laptop gently from Casey's fingers, turned it towards herself and started to type something into Google.
"Meaning of white roses." Casey repeated reading Marti's words from the screen.
The search brought back many results and Marti clicked on the first one.
Casey had been right. There was mention of Purity and True Love and Unity. But, Marti read the final lines with a sickening in her heart.
"They can symbolise new beginnings or be a sign of farewell."
Thirty three hours earlier.
"If you throw that cell phone and break it, you'll regret it." Jazz said from his seat, amusement written across his face.
"What?" Derek asked distractedly.
"I said…never mind." Jazz finished. "I'm off. See you in the morning?"
"Sure. You want me to pick you up?"
Jazz looked at Derek unsure if he was serious or paying attention.
"Really?" He asked. Derek nodded. Jazz nodded. "Fine. 7.30am?"
"Okay. I'll be there." Derek returned to his distracted state.
"I'll text you to remind you."
"No. I'll remember."
Derek opened the door to his apartment with his normal care and attention. He might have a lot on his mind at the moment, but he was an expert at pushing that to one side when it came to matters of his own personal safety – like checking to make sure no one had entered his apartment while he was at work.
He punched the code into the keypad beside the front door, twisted his high security metal key in the lock and turned the handle.
The apartment was its usual dark, quiet self.
Derek closed and locked the door behind him and then walked into the kitchen to place his bag of groceries on the countertop. He took a glass from a cupboard and a bottle of Scotch from the side and poured himself a decent measure. Only then did he relax and even then the anger remained.
Derek Venturi was pissed. He was so angry it was all he could do not to smash the glass in his hand against the wall. He wanted to take someone and wring his anger out of their necks…but that wasn't possible since the only person who he could really blame was himself.
He had believed them when they said it was for the best. He had let them persuade him that his family would be left alone and unharmed if he "died".
Instead, he had found out that his actions had harmed his family in a way that was almost worse than them being attacked. HE had caused them to act out of character. He had permanently changed their lives and he could not say that it was for the better: Marti was walking around looking like something out of "Hair" (he supposed he should be grateful that she was wearing clothes!) and Casey…God! He wasn't sure he expected her to be a virgin, but to hear how he was the reason why she gave it up so easily was more than he could bear.
He wondered what horrors he had perpetuated on the rest of the family…and his friends.
And then there was the argument; to read Casey's words so full of vitriol and curse. Derek wasn't a stranger to foul language, but to see Casey use words in print he just couldn't believe she would ever say in real life…
He leaned back against the kitchen counter and closed his eyes. Not only had he messed things up for her then, but he had upset her again now. Fuck!
He was a screw up!
Derek drained his glass, thumping it onto the countertop and glanced at the groceries. He couldn't be bothered to go to the effort of microwaving a ready meal, so he tossed the food into the fridge, flicked off the kitchen light and took himself to bed.
Jazz was chirpy the next morning as he climbed into the car. Derek was not.
"Late night sexting again?" Jazz guessed. Derek glared at him. The former held up his hands in defence. "Sorry. I'll just shut up."
Derek sighed. Jazz was a good friend and Derek didn't have many of those. At school he had been popular and enjoyed being around other people – part of the crowd. It had been the same at university, wherever Derek went people followed.
For the last seven years, however, he had been necessarily solitary. He didn't socialise much, didn't go clubbing at all. There had been the occasional casual girlfriend (who was never allowed to his apartment) but the only other person he had allowed to share any of his downtime was Jazz – and that was because the guy was as solitary as Derek – and he reminded him of the best bits of Sam and Ralph.
"No. I'm sorry." He apologised to his friend. "I've just got a lot on my mind."
"Girl trouble?" Jazz asked, breaking the unspoken rule yet again.
Derek smiled wryly. "It's complicated."
"Is it to do with the texts you received last night?" Jazz asked, bravely pushing Derek for more information.
"Yeah. I annoyed someone. I don't think she'll speak to me again." And that's probably the best thing for her. He added silently to himself.
"Flowers, dude. Send her some flowers. They always work. The bigger the bunch the better, ya know, like your dick."
Derek rolled his eyes at his friend and let the subject drop.
They spent the morning chasing up a few leads on the expensive cars which had been connected to the guy they were investigating. They wanted to get as much information on his assets as possible. If they couldn't get him for the big dope stuff, then they would pull an Al Capone on him and get him on tax evasion or something. At this stage of the case, all information was useful information.
By mid-morning, Derek had become almost disconnected from the "Casey" issue, shoving it to the back of his mind with an idea of trying to get an address from somewhere so that he could send her some flowers.
The Casey he knew would like flowers – he actually didn't need Jazz to tell him that.
About eleven am, thoughts of his family came screeching back to the centre-stage when his phone buzzed and he opened the Facebook notification to find Marti's message.
"She didn't sleep last night. Flowers are the best way to apologise.
Flowers won't work on me though. I only accept explanations…in FULL."
Shit! It didn't take a genius to work out what his little sister meant.
She knew.
He considered what had given it away: the profile picture? His name?
And Derek wondered if Marti had told Casey. Was she now pissed about more than just his intolerance of her life-choices? Was she angry because he had ripped himself from their lives seven years ago – in the most brutal way possible?
Derek made his way to Spike's office and knocked at the door. A gruff "Come in" followed and Derek obeyed.
"S'up?" Spike asked looking up with relief from the badly-written report he was reviewing.
"I need a favour." Derek said fixing his boss' eyes with a pleading look. "I need an address."
"Oh?" Spike sat back, his hands tented in front of him.
Derek was cautious, remembering the bugging situation.
"I need to sever ties again." He said cryptically holding out his cell phone with Marti's message.
Spike read it and sat up suddenly.
"How the hell did…?"
Derek held up a hand. "I screwed up. I should never have…" He let his voice trail away, aware that he couldn't say Casey's name. "If it wasn't the one, I should have known the other would figure it out. I made some fucking stupid mistakes."
"Why do you need the address?"
"I need to end it once and for all." Derek said.
"End it?" Spike asked raising an eyebrow.
"A permanent goodbye."
About three hours before the flowers arrived at Casey's apartment the following morning, Derek turned into the underground basement of his office building. This time it was so early that even the security guard was surprised to see him. Derek wasn't sleeping very well.
Going into the office early didn't really solve anything that was going on in his mind. He knew he was currently breaking the hearts of the two most important women in his life, and he more than anyone wished it didn't have to be so.
His early arrival did mean that he avoided the traffic; the streets of Ottowa dead even on a weekday morning when the clock reads five am.
And it also gave him a chance to do something that he had neglected for several weeks.
Once his car was safely parked, Derek made for the elevator, but instead of going up he pushed the button for the lower floor and as the elevator car began to move, he slipped his gun from his holster and checked the chambers.
As a kid, Derek had found the idea of guns attractive. He had grown up on the usual diet of gangster movies and revolver-toting good guys. In his teens, the guns had looked almost sensual when he saw them lined up for sale.
He had never expected to be required to use one in anger. He was supposed to be a high-ranking ice hockey star by now, if weaponry entered his life he expected it to be as the hobby of his new millionaire lifestyle.
Instead the piece sitting under his left shoulder hung heavy on a daily basis.
Derek knew more than he had ever believed possible about guns. He knew how to strip and re-build more than thirty types of firearm, he knew the history of Smith-Wesson and Glock - he knew the "kill shots" on an opponent.
And yes, Derek Venturi had taken someone's life with the gun currently resting close to his heart.
None of this was something he was proud of, even if the "Kill" incident was completely above board, legal and had been fully investigated by the appropriate authorities. He still had nightmares about that day, though if he hadn't taken the shot – a textbook "kill" – then Derek Venturi would have died a second more permanent time.
It was this aspect of his life that he hated most…and this aspect of his life that he would fight tooth, nail and himself to keep Casey and Marti away from.
Brushing thoughts of Casey and his little sister from his mind, Derek entered the Firing Range and began his preparations for practice.
As per his own personal habit, the first shot he fired at the paper target was identical to the one that had given him the metal plate in his own head.