Page 28 of The Vows He Buried

The first year in Florence passed like a dream painted in watercolor.

Life settled into a rhythm of creativity and quiet joy, a gentle melody that soothed the scarred corners of my soul.

The Heirloom Reclaimed atelier flourished, becoming a beacon of artistry and empowerment.

My name, once a whisper in gossip columns, was now spoken with respect in the hallowed halls of haute couture.

I had found my voice, my purpose, and a profound, quiet peace in the life I was building, stitch by stitch.

The past was a distant country, its borders sealed. I rarely thought of the Vales. They were characters in a story whose final chapter had been written. My present was full, my future a bright, open horizon. I had everything I had ever fought for.

It was on a crisp autumn afternoon, the second anniversary of my father’s death, that the last ghost of that distant country came knocking.

A secure package arrived from Jasper. It wasn’t unusual; we were in constant contact, sharing business strategies and family news.

But this one felt different. It was heavier, more personal.

Inside, amongst some of our father’s personal effects that the estate lawyers had finally released, was a thick, sealed manila envelope.

My name was written on the front in my father’s familiar, strong handwriting.

My heart gave a small, painful lurch. Seeing his script was like hearing his voice after a long silence.

My fingers trembled as I opened it. Inside was not a letter from him, but another, smaller envelope, made of heavy, gray stationery. The handwriting on this one was elegant, masculine, and achingly familiar.

Maddox.

Tucked alongside it was a short, folded note from my father. I unfolded it, my breath catching in my throat.

My Dearest Vannah,

If you are reading this, it means I am gone, and the time for secrets is over.

The enclosed letter was given to me by Maddox nearly three years ago, shortly after you…

lost the baby. He was a broken man. He made me promise to give it to you, and only you, when I felt you were ready to hear the full truth.

He said you deserved to know what was in his heart, even if he was too much of a coward to tell you himself.

For a long time, I debated whether to honor his request. My every instinct was to burn this letter, to protect you from any more of his poison.

But I decided that was not my choice to make.

You are not a child to be protected from the dark, my love.

You are a woman of immense strength. I trust you.

I trust you to know what to do with this.

Whatever you decide, know that I am, and always will be, immensely proud of you.

All my love, Dad

Tears welled in my eyes as I read my father’s words. His unwavering faith in me was a posthumous gift, a final blessing. He had trusted me with the truth, even when it was painful. I owed it to him, and to myself, to be strong enough to face it.

I looked at the gray envelope in my hand.

It felt heavy, not with paper, but with the weight of unspoken words, of secrets and regret.

A part of me wanted to follow my father’s first instinct—to burn it, to leave the past buried.

But I knew I couldn’t. To be truly free, I had to know the whole story, even the ugliest chapters.

I took a deep breath, sat down in my favorite armchair by the window overlooking the Arno, and broke the seal.

The letter was long, the handwriting a desperate, almost illegible scrawl in some places, as if the words had been torn from him.

Savannah,

If you are reading this, it means your father has kept his promise, and I am either dead or have finally found the courage to disappear from your life completely.

I am writing this because I am a coward.

I cannot say these words to your face. I cannot bear to see the look in your eyes when you hear them.

But you deserve the truth. The whole, ugly, unforgivable truth.

I failed you. From the very beginning.

I knew our world would be cruel to you. I knew my mother would see your light as a threat.

And instead of standing beside you and fighting for you, I tried to change you.

I tried to make you smaller, quieter, safer.

I thought I was protecting you, but I was just a zookeeper, polishing the bars of your cage.

It was the first, and perhaps greatest, of my sins against you.

But it was not the worst.

The night you lost our baby… our child… I was not as ignorant as I pretended to be.

I knew something was wrong. I had seen the way my mother looked at you, the way Sienna hovered.

I had seen the bottle of “vitamins” on your nightstand and felt a deep, cold dread in the pit of my stomach.

I suspected. I didn’t want to believe it, but a part of me knew.

The letter continued, a rambling, guilt-ridden confession. He described the night of the “miscarriage” in excruciating detail, not from my perspective, but from his.

That night, before the worst of it began, I overheard Sienna on the phone in the hallway. She was speaking in a hushed, urgent whisper. I heard her say Dr. Finch’s name. I heard her say, “It’s working faster than we thought.”

The world went silent. The air left my lungs.

In that moment, the suspicion became a certainty.

I confronted her. I backed her against a wall, and for the first time in my life, I think I truly terrified someone.

And she told me. She told me everything.

About the pills, about my mother’s plan to “solve the problem” of an heir you would have control over.

She laid it all out, her eyes glittering with a strange, triumphant cruelty.

And I had a choice, Savannah. In that one, terrible moment, the fate of our world rested on a single choice.

I could have dragged her into the library and called the police.

I could have exposed my mother for the monster she is.

I could have burned the Vale empire to the ground to protect you.

It’s what a real man, a man worthy of your love, would have done.

But I did not. I stood there, frozen in my own cowardice, and I let her go. I chose silence. I chose my mother. I chose my name, my legacy, my inheritance. I chose the cage over the woman I loved. I let them kill our child, and I stood by and did nothing.

I had to stop reading, a wave of nausea washing over me. The confirmation of his complicity, his active choice to remain silent, was a cold, hard stone in my stomach.

I forced myself to continue. The rest of the letter was a portrait of his own personal hell.

After that night, I couldn’t look at you.

Every time you cried, every time I saw the pain in your eyes, it was a mirror to my own unforgivable weakness.

My coldness, my distance… it wasn’t because I didn’t love you.

It was because I hated myself. I couldn’t bear to be near you because you were a constant, living reminder of the man I had failed to be.

I know there is no forgiveness for what I have done. I don’t ask for it. I don’t deserve it. I write this only so that you know the truth. You were not a victim of a tragic accident. You were a casualty of my cowardice.

He ended the letter with a line that was so full of self-loathing it was almost poetic.

There was never a name for the child we lost, but every night, I wake up with the ghost of it on my lips. And every morning, I have to face the man who let it die. I have to face myself.

Maddox

I folded the letter, my hands surprisingly steady.

The tears that streamed down my face were not tears of anger or renewed pain.

They were tears of a profound, quiet sadness.

A sadness for the child who never had a chance.

A sadness for the girl I had been, who had loved a man so broken.

And a sadness for him, for the pathetic, weak creature he had been, trapped in a cage of his own making.

The letter didn’t change anything, but it clarified everything.

It was the final piece of the puzzle, the confession that laid his soul bare.

It didn’t excuse him; it condemned him more completely than any court of law ever could.

But in its brutal honesty, it offered a strange, final kind of closure. The last “what if” had been answered.

I stood up and walked to the small, marble fireplace in my studio. I did not feel anger. I did not feel the need for a grand, symbolic gesture like the one I had performed with my vows. This was a quieter, more solemn ritual.

I held the letter in my hands for a long moment. This was a truth, a dark and ugly one, that had shaped my life. But it no longer had any power over me. It was a story from a dead world. And some stories are not meant to be retold.

I struck a match and touched the flame to the corner of the gray paper.

It caught, the fire consuming his desperate, looping script.

I watched as the words of his confession, his guilt, his cowardice, turned to black, curling ash.

It was a funeral pyre for a love that had died long ago, and for a truth that no longer needed to see the light of day.

I watched until the last ember faded, until all that remained was a pile of gray dust. I watched as a soft breeze from the open window stirred the ashes, carrying them up the chimney and out into the vast, open sky.

I thought of the man kneeling in the garden, of the ghost in the empty mansion. His punishment was not a prison cell. His punishment was his own memory, a life sentence he would serve every day for the rest of his life. That was enough.

I turned away from the fireplace, my heart feeling lighter than it had in years. The last ghost had been laid to rest.

“Some truths don’t deserve to be spoken,” I whispered to the empty room, to the memory of a love that was now, finally, just a story. “And some loves… are better left unsaid. ”