Page 16 of The Vows He Buried

The days following my father’s collapse bled into a grueling, monotonous routine.

My life became compartmentalized, each part of me allocated to a different battlefield.

By day, I was the co-CEO of BlakeCore, a creature of logic and steel.

Jasper and I moved as one, a united front against the circling sharks on our board, pushing forward with our father’s vision, our shared grief a silent, powerful bond between us.

By evening, I was the creative force behind Lynelle, my penthouse transformed into a whirlwind of sketches, fabrics, and strategy sessions with Harper, the brand rising from its ashes with a fierce, new identity.

And by night, I was just a daughter. I would drive to the hospital, the city lights a blur through the car window, and sit by my father’s bedside in the sterile, beeping silence of the ICU.

The storm of my initial grief had passed, leaving behind a heavy, constant ache in my chest. I would hold his still, warm hand and talk to him, my voice a low murmur against the hum of the machines.

I told him about my day, about the small victories at work, about the new designs taking shape.

I spoke to him as if he could hear me, willing him back with the sheer force of my narrative.

Lucian Thorne’s words from that first night at the hospital echoed in the quiet moments.

Don’t burn everything down, Savannah. Some things…

might still be worth saving. What did he mean?

My father? The company? Or something else entirely, something I couldn’t yet see?

The man was an enigma, a ghost who had appeared at my weakest moment and offered not a solution, but a riddle.

He hadn’t contacted me since. There were no more mysterious USB drives, no more cryptic phone calls.

But I felt his presence nonetheless, a silent, watchful intelligence at the periphery of my new life.

It was late, nearly ten o’clock on a cold Tuesday night. I had just returned from the hospital, the scent of antiseptic still clinging to my clothes. I was emotionally drained, physically exhausted, looking forward to nothing more than a glass of wine and the quiet solitude of my home.

The chime of the private elevator shattered the peace.

My body went rigid. A cold dread, sharp and familiar, snaked its way up my spine. It could only be one person. No one else would dare.

I didn’t move from my position by the window overlooking the glittering, indifferent city. I simply waited. The steel doors slid open with a soft, expensive hiss.

Maddox stepped out.

He was different from the last time he had stood in this space.

The desperate, rain-soaked man was gone.

Tonight, he was sober, composed, and dressed in a perfectly tailored gray suit that bespoke quiet power.

He was holding a slim, black leather briefcase.

He looked like the man I had married: the calm, controlled CEO, the master of his universe.

But his eyes gave him away. They were haunted, the cool gray depths shadowed with a desperation that his expensive suit couldn't hide.

He saw me by the window and stopped, his composure faltering for a fraction of a second.

“Savannah,” he said, his voice quiet, steady.

“You’re not welcome here, Maddox,” I said, my voice as cold and hard as the glass I was looking through.

“I know,” he said. “I won’t stay long. I just…

I needed to bring you these.” He walked to the large granite island that separated the kitchen from the living area and placed the briefcase on its surface.

He opened it, his movements precise. He wasn't here in a storm of emotion. This was a calculated visit. A mission.

He pulled out a stack of documents, bound in blue legal covers. “These are for you,” he said, sliding them across the island towards me.

I didn't move. “My lawyers handle all communications from you and your family.”

“This isn’t from my lawyers,” he said. “This is from me.” He looked at me, his gaze intense.

“It’s everything. The financial agreements we signed.

The ones that transferred your assets into the Vale trust. I’ve had them nullified.

This document legally returns everything to your sole control—the stock portfolio, the real estate holdings, everything.

It’s all yours again. As it should have been. ”

It was a grand gesture. A "peace offering.

" But I saw it for what it was: a desperate strategic move.

He was trying to get ahead of the massive fraud lawsuit that was coming his way, trying to show a court that he had made voluntary restitution.

It wasn't an act of conscience; it was an act of damage control.

“I don’t want them,” I said.

He looked stunned. “What? Savannah, this is what you wanted. Your freedom. Your assets.”

“What I want , Maddox, is for you to leave my home,” I said, finally turning to face him fully. “Any financial settlements will be handled by the proper legal channels, not by a back-door delivery designed to make you look magnanimous.”

My cold dismissal seemed to break through his carefully constructed composure. He raked a hand through his hair, a gesture of frustration I knew so well.

“This isn’t about the lawyers, Vannah,” he said, his voice taking on a raw, pleading edge. “This is about me trying to undo… some of the damage. I know I can’t fix it. But I have to try.”

He took a step closer, his eyes searching my face. “I know what you think of me. And you’re right. I was a coward. I was weak. I let my mother… I let her dictate our lives. I stood by while she hurt you, and I did nothing.”

He paused, his throat working. “I told myself I was protecting you. That my world, the Vale world, was a brutal, ugly place, and that by keeping you in that… gilded cage… I was shielding you from the worst of it. I told myself that your strength, your fire, would get you hurt in that world. So I tried to dim it. To control it.” He let out a harsh, self-deprecating laugh.

“What a fool I was. Your fire was the only real thing in that entire godforsaken house. And I tried to put it out.”

His confession, which might have once moved me, now sounded like a pathetic, self-serving monologue. He wasn't trying to understand my pain. He was trying to explain away his own guilt.

“You didn’t just try to put it out, Maddox,” I said, my voice a low, chilling whisper. “You stood by and watched while your mother paid a doctor to poison me and kill our child.”

The words hit him like a physical blow. The color drained from his face. “I didn’t know,” he choked out. “I swear to you, Vannah, I didn’t know about that. Not until it was too late. I thought… I just thought it was a miscarriage.”

“Did you?” I asked, my voice devoid of emotion. “Or was it just easier to believe that? Was it easier than confronting your own mother and the monster she is?”

He had no answer. He just stared at me, his guilt a palpable presence in the room.

“And what about Sienna?” I pressed, my voice like a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting away his defenses. “Was that my fault, too? Was your affair with my best friend, in my own home, another way of ‘protecting’ me?”

He flinched, shame and self-loathing warring in his eyes.

“I can’t explain that,” he whispered. “I don’t remember all of it.

I think… I think she drugged me. But it doesn’t matter.

I was there. I betrayed you. It is the single greatest regret of my life, and I will carry that shame until the day I die. ”

He looked so broken, so utterly defeated. The man who had once ruled my world was now a ruin. But I felt no pity. His regret was a currency he was trying to use to buy my forgiveness, and I was no longer selling it.

“You didn’t fight for me, Maddox,” I said, the words a simple, devastating truth.

“Not once. Not when your mother took my company. Not when she insulted me. Not when she isolated me from my own family. And not when I lost our baby. You stood by in silence. And now you think these words, this briefcase full of papers, can fix what your silence broke?”

I walked towards him, stopping on the other side of the island, the polished granite a cold, hard border between our two worlds.

He looked up at me, his eyes stripped bare, his last defenses crumbling. He was desperate. He reached for his last resort, the one question he believed still held power over me.

“Do you still love me?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper, a raw, naked plea.

It was the question I had been waiting for.

It was the final test. For three years, the answer to that question had been my secret shame, a painful, stubborn ember I couldn’t extinguish.

But sitting by my father’s bedside, watching the man I truly loved fight for his life, had finally burned away the last vestiges of the girl who had loved Maddox Vale.

I looked at him, at the handsome face I had once adored, at the gray eyes I had once gotten lost in. And I felt… nothing. No anger. No pain. Just a vast, quiet emptiness. The space where my love for him used to be.

I leaned forward slightly, my voice dropping to a whisper, a final, intimate confidence between two strangers who had once shared a life.

“I used to,” I said softly. The admission was a ghost on my lips. “That’s what makes this so easy now.”

The hope in his eyes died. It didn’t just flicker; it was extinguished, instantly and completely, leaving behind a black, hollow void of utter despair. He understood. Hate is a fire, a connection. Indifference is the end of the universe.

He visibly crumpled, his shoulders slumping, his head bowing in defeat. He had lost. Not just the company, not just the legal battle, but the last, lingering ghost of what we had been.

“Please leave,” I said, my voice still quiet, but now laced with the cold finality of a judge’s sentence.

He didn't argue. He didn't plead. He simply nodded, a broken, jerky movement. He turned away from the island, leaving the briefcase, his failed peace offering, behind. He walked to the elevator, his steps heavy, the confident stride of the CEO replaced by the shuffle of a defeated man.

I watched him go. I watched as the steel doors slid shut, sealing him out of my home, out of my life, forever.

I stood alone in the silence of my penthouse, the city lights twinkling like a thousand distant, unfeeling stars. I didn't feel triumphant. I didn't feel sad. I felt… clean. The last ghost had been exorcised. The last chain had been broken.

I walked over to the island and looked down at the briefcase. With a decisive, final gesture, I pushed it off the edge. It hit the polished concrete floor with a loud, definitive thud, the sound of a closing door on a chapter of my life I would never reopen.