Page 17 of The Vows He Buried
He stood there, naked and exposed in the ruins of his own making, the blinking red light a merciless, mocking eye.
A single, horrified whisper escaped his lips, lost in the cavernous silence of the room.
“What the hell did I do?”
Chapter 12: The File
The penthouse had become a sanctuary of controlled chaos. Sunlight streamed through the floor-to-ceiling windows, illuminating dust motes dancing in the air, each one a tiny world oblivious to the war I was orchestrating. My dining table was no longer a place for meals; it was a battlefield map, spread with the architecture of my revenge. Legal briefs lay next to fabric swatches, financial projections next to charcoal sketches. It was the headquarters of a woman rebuilding her soul and plotting the destruction of an empire, all at the same time.
Lucian Thorne’s visit had left an indelible mark on the atmosphere of the apartment. His cryptic words echoed in the silence, a dark and seductive melody.If you plan to bury them… don’t forget to leave one alive. To remember why.He hadn’t offered help or alliance, not explicitly. He had simply acknowledged the darkness in me, recognized it as a fellow predator would, and in doing so, had made me feel seen in a way no one else ever had. He hadn’t tried to save me from the fall; he had simply admired my intention to take my enemies down with me. The thought was as terrifying as it was exhilarating. His surveillance of the building, which should have felt like a violation, instead felt like a strange, invisible shield.
My focus, however, was on the tangible. The legal battle. The relaunch of Lynelle. I was on a secure call with Harper, discussing the final details of transferring the company’s ownership back into my name, when the concierge buzzed.
“Ms. Blake, a secure courier from the law firm of Jennings & Associates is here with a delivery for you.”
“Send him up,” I said, my voice calm. This was it. The official start.
The courier was a professional in a crisp uniform who had me sign a digital tablet before handing over a thick, leather-bound document portfolio. It was heavy in my hands, the weight of my future. The moment he was gone, I placed it on the table, the rich, dark leather a stark contrast to the colorful chaos of my sketches.
I unfastened the clasp. The portfolio contained two distinct sections.
The first was the legal analysis I had been waiting for. It was a fifty-page document, meticulously prepared by Mark Jennings and his team. It detailed, in cold, unforgiving legal language, the complete and utter fraud of my supposed marriage. It cited precedents, statutes, and the damning evidence of the forged notary stamp on the prenup’s intellectual property clause. The conclusion was unequivocal: the contract was void. The marriage, therefore, was a legal fiction. The document gave me more than grounds for an annulment; it gave me grounds for a civil fraud lawsuit that could strip the Vales of millions.
Reading it didn't bring me joy. It brought a cold, hard finality. It was the autopsy report of my three-year lie.
The second section was thinner, enclosed in a sealed manila envelope markedCONFIDENTIAL: EYES ONLY. My name was printed on the front. I slit it open with a letter opener, my hand steady.
Inside were photographs.
They were not the grainy, long-lens shots of a typical private investigator. These were high-resolution, taken with a professional-grade camera. Clinical. Undeniable. Harper must have hired the best.
The first photo was time-stamped at 6:15 AM, the morning after Maddox had appeared, soaked and broken, in my apartment. It was a shot of the hallway outside his master suite. The door was opening.
The second photo, taken seconds later, showed Sienna Ward slipping out of his room. She was wearing the same crimson silk robe she had worn in my memories of that night, her hair mussed, her face flushed with a triumphant, cat-like satisfaction.
The subsequent photos were a sequence: Sienna glancing down the empty hallway, a smug smile playing on her lips, before she disappeared into the guest wing.
I laid the photos out on the table, one by one. They were a neat, chronological narrative of betrayal. There was no ambiguity, no room for doubt or explanation. This was not a moment of weakness. This was a pattern of deception. This was the life they were living behind my back, in my home.
I stared at the image of Sienna’s triumphant smile, and I felt nothing. Not a single pang of jealousy or heartbreak. The love I’d had for Maddox was a distant, faded photograph from another lifetime. The friendship I’d had with Sienna had been a lie from the start. Seeing the proof didn’t hurt. It simply armed me. It was evidence. It was leverage. It was the nail in the coffin of their public image.
I felt a flicker of something akin to pity for Maddox. Not for losing me, but for being so utterly lost himself. He wasa man drowning, caught between his mother’s iron will and his mistress’s venomous ambition, too weak to save himself, too broken to fight for anything real. He was a king who had abdicated his own soul.
I was stacking the photos back into their envelope when a soft thud from the foyer startled me. Not the chime of the elevator, but a quiet, discreet sound. I walked out of the main living area. Lying on the marble floor, just inside my front door, was a single, sleek black envelope. It was made of thick, expensive cardstock, with no markings, no address, no stamp. Someone had slipped it under the door.
My first thought was of Lucian’s security team. Had one of them delivered this? Or was it something more sinister? A threat from the Vales?
My curiosity warred with my caution. I picked it up. It was thin, rigid. Inside, there was no letter. Just a slim, black USB drive, identical to the one Deedee had given me, but without a label. It was anonymous. Dangerous.
I hesitated for a long moment. This could be anything. A virus designed to wipe my data. A trap. But my gut told me this wasn't from the Vales. This was too elegant, too subtle for them. Their methods were blunt, like Evelyn’s insults or Maddox’s angry possessiveness. This was the move of a ghost. This was Lucian Thorne’s handiwork.
I walked back to my laptop, my heart beating a little faster. I plugged in the drive. For a moment, nothing happened. Then, a single, password-protected folder appeared on the screen. There was no prompt, no clue.
I thought back to Lucian’s visit, to his cryptic words.“I find I have an aversion to seeing beautiful things break.”It was a long shot, a wild guess based on nothing but intuition. I typed a single word into the password field:SAVANNAH.
The folder unlocked.
My breath caught. Inside were not videos or photos, but a meticulously organized collection of documents. Scanned ledgers. Encrypted email chains. Offshore bank statements. Internal audit reports. It was the secret heart of Vale Global, ripped out and laid bare.
