Page 33 of The Vows He Buried
You have 24 hours to comply. If I do not receive confirmation from your lawyers that these terms have been met, this videowill be sent to every major news outlet, every gossip blog, and every board member of BlakeCore. The world will see the truth about the broken, pathetic marriage you’re fighting for. They will see Maddox choosing me.
Your move.
I read the letter twice, a cold, clinical calm settling over me. The threats were laughably amateurish, the demands of a greedy child who had stumbled upon a loaded gun and thought it made her a queen. She didn't understand. She was threatening to burn down a house I had already evacuated.
My feelings for Maddox were a wasteland. The video held no emotional power over me. But I knew the damage it could do. Not to my heart, but to my strategy. In the hands of a skilled PR team, Evelyn could spin this. She could paint me as the scorned, vengeful wife, my legal actions not a pursuit of justice but a reaction to infidelity. It could muddy the waters, create a narrative of a messy, emotional love triangle that would distract from the cold, hard facts of their criminal behavior.
Sienna thought she was holding a bomb. She was, but she had no idea the blast radius would consume her first.
I did not plug the USB drive into my computer. I had no interest in watching the sordid details of Maddox’s pathetic surrender. I treated it as I would any other piece of evidence: with caution and professional distance.
I picked up my phone and made two calls.
The first was to Rowan, my cybersecurity expert. “Rowan, I’m sending a package to you via secure courier. It contains a USB drive. I need you to do a full forensic analysis. I want to knoweverything. What’s on it, its origin, any metadata you can pull. I also need you to trace the source of the delivery service that dropped it off. It was an anonymous city messenger, but they must have an electronic trail. I want to know who paid for it.”
“Consider it done, Savannah,” Rowan’s voice was crisp and efficient. “Give me three hours.”
The second call was to Harper. I read her the letter verbatim.
“That absolute bitch,” Harper breathed, her voice a low hiss of fury. “She’s actually proud of it. She thinks this is her checkmate.”
“It’s a desperate move, Harper,” I said calmly. “And a stupid one. She’s just handed us a gift.”
“What do you want to do? We can get an injunction, try to block the release…”
“No,” I said firmly. “We don’t play defense. We don’t react. We attack. She wants to play this game? Fine. Let’s play.”
I laid out my plan. Harper was silent for a moment when I finished, a stunned admiration in her silence. “Vannah… that’s not just brilliant. It’s brutal. I love it.”
“They drew the battle lines, Harper. I’m just choosing the weapons.”
Two hours later, Rowan called back. His efficiency was terrifying.
“Okay, got it,” he said, the sound of furious typing in the background. “The drive contains a single video file, 47 minutes long. High-definition, infrared. It’s exactly what the letterdescribed. The interesting part is the metadata. The file was created on a device registered to Sienna Ward. No surprises there. But it was copied onto this drive from a desktop computer hardwired into the Vale Global guest network. The IP address is firewalled, but I got around it. The computer is in Sienna’s suite at the mansion.”
“She did it from inside their own house,” I murmured. The arrogance was breathtaking.
“That’s not all,” Rowan continued. “The delivery service. The payment was made in cash, but the order was placed online from a burner email account. I traced the IP address from which the account was created. It pings back to the same Vale Global guest network.”
“She’s left a trail of digital breadcrumbs a child could follow,” I said, a slow, cold smile spreading across my face. “Thank you, Rowan. Send the full forensic report to my legal team.”
Now I had everything I needed. The motive, the means, the undeniable proof of extortion originating from within the Vale empire.
I sat down at my laptop and opened a new email. The recipient was a private, encrypted address for a law firm I didn’t recognize. It was a contact Lucian had provided to me after the funeral, with a simple instruction:When they cross the final line, send your evidence here. They will know what to do.
I attached Rowan’s forensic report. I attached the video files from Deedee’s hidden cameras. I attached the bank statements proving the payment to Dr. Finch. And finally, I attached the massive file of financial crimes Lucian himself had given me. Itwas the complete, damning portfolio of the Vale family’s sins, from the personal to the corporate to the criminally depraved.
The subject line was simple:The Red Line.
The body of the email was even simpler.
They crossed it.
Savannah Blake.
I hit send. There was no turning back. I had just launched the missile.
Then, I opened another email, this one addressed to Sienna Ward’s personal account, an address Harper had easily acquired. I didn’t copy her lawyers. I didn’t copy Maddox. This message was for her, and her alone.
