Page 39 of The Vows He Buried
The silence that followed the implosion of the Vale empire was a strange, unfamiliar country. For months, my life had been a relentless battle, each day a new front, each victory a stepping stone to the next conflict. Now, the war was over. The enemy was vanquished. And I was left standing in the quiet aftermath, the architect of a destruction so complete it was difficult to comprehend.
Florence, with its timeless beauty and golden light, was the perfect place for this new silence. The success of the Heirloom Reclaimed launch had been explosive, far exceeding even Harper’s most optimistic projections. The fashion world hadn’t just seen a collection; they had embraced a narrative. I was no longer just Savannah Blake, the designer. I was a symbol of resilience, a story of reclamation, and my brand was its testament. Orders poured in, the press was laudatory, and my future, once a terrifying, blank page, was now a canvas filled with limitless, vibrant possibility.
And yet.
In the quiet moments, when the last of my team had left the atelier for the night and the palazzo was silent save for the distant sounds of the city, a new kind of uncertainty would creep in. The fight had given me purpose. The rage had been my fuel. Now that the fight was won, who was I? I had defined myself for so long in opposition to the Vales, as the wife, then the victim, then the avenger. Now, I was just… Savannah. And I was only just beginning to learn what that meant.
Lucian Thorne was a part of that uncertainty. He had been my silent, powerful benefactor, the ghost in the machine of my revenge. His strategic alliance had been the decisive factor in my war. But the war was over, and he was still here.
He had not returned to New York. He remained in Florence, occupying a suite in a hotel that overlooked the Arno, a quiet, watchful presence at the edge of my new life. He made no demands on my time. He did not presume a relationship beyond the one we had forged in the crucible of our shared goal. But he was there. We would have dinner once or twice a week in small, quiet trattorias, our conversations weaving from art and politics to the intricacies of global finance. He was the most intelligent, perceptive, and brutally honest person I had ever met. He saw the world with a clarity that was both thrilling and terrifying. And he sawmewith that same clarity.
Tonight, we were walking along the banks of the Arno, the setting sun painting the sky in fiery strokes of orange and violet. The Ponte Vecchio was a glittering silhouette against the twilight, the water below a river of liquid gold. A soft breeze carried the scent of old stone and roasting chestnuts. It was a scene of such profound, romantic beauty it almost hurt to look at.
“You’re quiet tonight,” Lucian observed, his voice a low rumble beside me. He wasn’t looking at the sunset. He was looking at me.
“Just thinking,” I said, offering a small smile. “It’s all been so… fast. The launch, the press. It doesn’t feel entirely real yet.”
“It’s real,” he said simply. “You built it. You earned it.”
We stopped, leaning against the ancient stone parapet, watching the last of the day’s light fade from the sky. The silence that fell between us was comfortable, familiar, but tonight it felt charged with a new kind of energy, a tension that had been building for weeks.
“I have a confession to make, Savannah,” he said, his voice dropping slightly, drawing me from my reverie.
I turned to look at him. His face was cast in shadow, his sharp, handsome features softened by the twilight. His storm-gray eyes, however, were clear, intense, and fixed on mine.
“A confession?” I asked, a flicker of apprehension stirring within me. “That sounds ominous.”
“Perhaps,” he said, a faint, wry smile touching his lips. “But I believe in… transparency. Especially now.” He paused, choosing his words with the same precision he applied to a billion-dollar acquisition. “When I first became aware of you, it was not out of any noble intention.”
He began to walk slowly along the riverbank, and I fell into step beside him.
“I had been watching the Vales for years,” he explained, his hands in the pockets of his impeccably tailored coat. “Maddox was a predictable, if uninspired, competitor. But Evelyn… Evelyn was different. She was reckless, arrogant, and her greed was making Vale Global vulnerable. I was in the process of orchestrating a long-term strategy to acquire their media division. It was a complex, delicate game.”
He glanced at me, his expression unreadable. “And then you appeared. The beautiful, broken wife. The crack in their perfectfaçade. At first, I saw you as nothing more than a potential asset. A point of leverage. A pawn in my game against them.”
His honesty was a physical blow. I had suspected as much, of course. A man like Lucian Thorne did not act out of altruism. But hearing him say it so plainly, so devoid of apology, was still a shock.
“I began to investigate you,” he continued, his voice a low, even murmur. “Not just your life with the Vales, but your life before. I learned about your talent, about Lynelle, the company you had built and been forced to give up. I saw the potential. The story. A brilliant designer, suppressed and cast aside by a corporate dynasty, who could be resurrected to become a powerful symbol, a rival brand that could damage the Vale image from a new, unexpected direction.”
He stopped, turning to face me fully under the soft glow of a gas lamp. “My initial plan was to fund you anonymously. To use you as a weapon against them without you ever knowing my hand was involved. I thought you were just a potential investment.”
He held my gaze, and I saw a flicker of something new in his eyes, a shift in the cool, calculating depths.
“But then,” he said, his voice softening almost imperceptibly, “I watched you. I was at the anniversary party. I saw you descend that staircase, not as a victim, but as a queen taking back her throne. I saw the fire in your eyes when you confronted Maddox. And in that moment, my assessment began to change. You were not a pawn. You were a player.”
He looked away, out at the dark water of the Arno. “And then I continued to watch. I saw you stand up to your board. I saw you grieve for your father with a strength that was breathtaking.I saw you walk into that gala in a dress that was a declaration of war and bring two of the most powerful men in New York to their knees without saying a word.”
He turned back to me, his eyes burning with an intensity that made my heart skip a beat.
“I watched you rise, Savannah. And something shifted. My interest ceased to be professional. It ceased to be strategic.” He took a step closer, the space between us shrinking, charged with a sudden, electric intimacy. “It became… personal.”
I was speechless, my mind reeling. This was the one variable I had not accounted for. I had understood our relationship as an alliance, a mutually beneficial partnership. I had not allowed myself to consider that for him, it might be something more.
The thought was terrifying.
I was drawn to him, more than I wanted to admit. I was drawn to his power, his intelligence, his dangerous honesty. But I was also afraid. The last time I had given my heart to a powerful man, he had crushed it in his fist. I had just spent months fighting to reclaim myself, to build a life that was solely my own. The idea of letting someone else into that fragile, new world, especially a man as powerful and overwhelming as Lucian, felt like a threat to the very freedom I had just won. I was terrified of disappearing again, of my own light being eclipsed by his.
He must have seen the fear, the conflict, in my eyes. He saw me take a small, involuntary step back.
