Page 2 of The Vows He Buried
My mind splintered, pulling me back through time, the present dissolving into the suffocating perfume of ten thousand white roses. Our wedding day. It wasn't a celebration; it was a merger. The union of BlakeCore’s innovative tech portfolio with Vale Global’s old-world financial empire. I remembered standing in a cathedral so vast it could have housed the heavens, yet I had never felt more claustrophobic. Maddox stood beside me at the altar, his profile as sharp and unyielding as the city skyline. He looked less like a groom and more like a man closing the most important deal of his life.
The vows felt hollow, words written by Evelyn’s PR team, full of legacy and dynasty and duty. My own whispered “I do” was lost in the cavernous space. The most binding promises weren’t exchanged at the altar; they were signed in Maddox’s father’sstudy an hour before the ceremony. I sat on a leather chair that swallowed me whole, a Montblanc pen feeling heavier than a scepter in my hand as I signed away my autonomy next to Maddox’s cool, efficient signature on the prenuptial agreement. It wasn’t a document; it was a leash.
“Just a formality, my dear,” Evelyn had cooed, her hand a cold weight on my shoulder. “To protect the family. You’re part of that family now.”
Being part of the Vale family meant being systematically dismantled. The first piece they took was my company.Lynelle. Named after my grandmother, it was my soul stitched into fabric. It was small, but it was mine. Two weeks after the honeymoon—a sterile, week-long trip to a private island where Maddox spent most of his time on conference calls—I was summoned to the study.
“Savannah,” Maddox began, avoiding my eyes, his focus on a crystal paperweight he turned over and over in his hands. “We need to talk about your… hobby.”
“It’s not a hobby, Maddox. It’s a business,” I said, my voice firmer than I felt.
Evelyn, seated behind the mahogany desk like a queen on her throne, offered a thin, pitying smile. “Of course, dear. But the wife of Vale Global’s CEO cannot be seen running a little dress shop. The optics are… unbecoming. It suggests you have a need, that Maddox isn’t providing for you adequately.”
“I don’tneedit for money,” I argued, my heart starting to pound. “I need it for me.”
“What youneed,” Evelyn cut in, her voice dropping the pretense of warmth, “is to understand your role. Your role is to support your husband. Your focus is this family. We can’t have your… creative pursuits becoming a distraction or, God forbid, a liability.”
They had a solution, of course. A tidy, corporate solution. I was to sign over controlling interest to a proxy. A CEO who would run it in name, while I could, as Evelyn put it, “advise from a distance.” They even had the perfect candidate: my best friend, Harper Lin. Harper, a brilliant business mind who had always championed my work, was horrified.
“I can’t do this, Vannah,” she’d whispered to me over the phone, her voice strained. “This is them erasing you.”
“Please, Harper,” I’d begged, tears streaming down my face in the silence of my new, cavernous bedroom. “If it’s you, at least I know it’s safe. At least I know you’ll protect it.” It was a choice between a friend holding my dream hostage or a stranger strangling it to death. I chose the friend. The papers were drawn up. I signed away my soul, and in return, I received a generous, insulting allowance paid into a trust. I was officially a kept woman.
With my purpose stripped away, Sienna began to fill the void. It was subtle at first. I was too exhausted from the effort of breathing in the Vale atmosphere to attend a charity luncheon. “Don’t worry, Vannah, I’ll go with Maddox,” Sienna would say, her eyes full of concern. “You rest. It’s important he’s not seen alone.” Soon, she was his regular plus-one. She knew the names of his business associates, laughed at their jokes, charmed their wives. She became the wife I was supposed to be, while I became a recluse in my own home.
She even moved in. After a minor fire in her apartment building—a fire I now suspected was no accident—Evelyn insisted she stay in the guest wing. “She’s your best friend! We can’t have her staying in a hotel,” she’d declared. Sienna was always there, a constant, smiling presence. A shadow that slowly eclipsed me. I’d see her and Maddox in the library, their heads bent together over a file, their laughter echoing in the hall. They looked like a team. A partnership. I was the outsider, looking in through the window of my own life.
The deepest cut, the one that bled in secret for two years, came that spring. I had been feeling off for weeks. A strange, bone-deep weariness, a faint nausea in the mornings. Then, my period was late. A fragile, terrifying hope began to bloom in the barren landscape of my heart. A baby. A piece of me, a piece of Maddox, that would be real. Something that couldn’t be controlled by Evelyn or shared with Sienna. A secret, sacred anchor to a man I still desperately wanted to love.
I didn’t tell Maddox. I wanted to be sure. But the one person I confided in, in a moment of weakness, was Evelyn. I thought, naively, that this could be the bridge between us. The promise of a grandchild, an heir to the Vale dynasty.
Her reaction was unnervingly calm. “A baby,” she’d said, her eyes unreadable. “Well. We must be certain. Health is paramount. I have a doctor, the best. Dr. Finch. He’s been the family’s physician for decades. He’s discreet.”
The visit was a blur of cold instruments and colder smiles. Dr. Finch’s office was all chrome and leather, overlooking Central Park. He confirmed it. Six weeks. A strong heartbeat. He printed a small, grainy photo of a tiny flicker of life. I clutched it in my hand like a holy relic.
“You’re anemic, of course. And your stress levels are high,” Dr. Finch said, peering at me over his glasses. Evelyn nodded grimly. “I’m prescribing a course of potent prenatal vitamins. Custom-formulated. They will ensure the… pregnancy is viable.”
Evelyn took charge of the prescription. A bottle of large, chalky pills appeared on my bedside table that night. “One, every morning,” she instructed, her gaze unwavering. “Do not forget.”
I was a good wife. A good daughter-in-law. I obeyed. I took the vitamins. A week later, the cramping started. I dismissed it as my body adjusting. Then came the blood. I called Maddox, who was in Tokyo closing a deal. He was distracted, told me to call the doctor and that he’d be home in three days. I called Dr. Finch. His nurse told me it was likely “implantation bleeding” and not to worry.
The next night, I woke up in agony, the sheets soaked in red. The pain was a living thing, tearing me apart from the inside out. By the time the household staff found me, it was over. The flicker of life was gone.
Dr. Finch called it a “spontaneous abortion.” A common tragedy. He was so sorry for my loss. Evelyn was a pillar of cold sympathy, patting my hand and telling me it was for the best, that my body was clearly not ready. When Maddox came home, he held me while I cried, but his embrace was awkward, his words hollow. He was grieving the loss of an heir, a concept. I was grieving the loss of my child. We were grieving in different languages.
I returned to the present, standing before a locked door at the far end of the west wing. My old art studio. They’d let me keep it, a token gesture, though I hadn’t touched a sketchbook in years. Iunlocked the door. The air inside was stale, smelling of dust and dried paint. This was my vault. My tomb.
I knelt and pulled up a loose floorboard beneath a heavy easel. From the dark space, I retrieved a simple manila envelope, given to me a year ago by Deedee, my maid. Deedee, a quiet woman with kind, sad eyes, had been with the family for thirty years. She saw everything.
She had found the original bottle of “vitamins” in Evelyn’s trash, along with the pharmacy’s information leaflet. She had found the original, unsanitized report from Dr. Finch’s office that detailed the prescription: not vitamins, but a powerful abortifacient. And she had found the ultrasound photo, which I had thrown away in a fit of grief, and saved it. She gave it all to me without a word, her loyalty a silent, steady beacon in my suffocating world.
My hands trembled as I opened the envelope. I ignored the damning paperwork. My eyes went straight to the small, thermal-paper photograph. A grainy, black-and-white image of a tiny, pulsing light. A promise. A life.
I sank to the dusty floor, the magnificent gown pooling around me like a shroud. The cold fury in my gut twisted with a grief so profound it stole the air from my lungs. This wasn’t a miscarriage. This wasn’t a tragedy. This was an execution.
They didn’t just take my company. They didn’t just take my husband. They took my child. My baby.
I held the picture to my chest, the sharp edges digging into my palm. The silence of the room was absolute, a vacuum waiting for a scream. But I didn’t scream. The sound that escapedmy lips was a whisper, ragged and broken, but laced with the unbreakable strength of a mother’s vow.
