Page 5 of The Vows He Buried

Walking away from Maddox was like stepping out of a hurricane and into the eerie calm of its eye.

The ballroom was a vortex of whispers and stares, but a strange, cold serenity had settled over me.

I had detonated the bomb; now, I simply had to walk through the fallout.

My destination was the towering, seven-tiered anniversary cake, a monument to a lie I was about to shatter.

This was the second phase of my plan, a small, petty piece of chaos I had arranged with Deedee.

It was simple. A waiter, one of the temporary staff hired for the event and loyal to her, had been instructed.

When I stood beside the cake, he was to stumble, bumping into me just hard enough to send me off balance.

A minor, embarrassing incident, designed to test Maddox’s reflexes.

Who would he reach for? The wife he had just publicly brutalized with a kiss, or the mistress watching from the crowd?

I already knew the answer. I just wanted the world to see it.

I took my position, a lone soldier in emerald velvet beside the sugary white tower.

Across the small stage, Maddox was still frozen, a statue carved from fury and disbelief.

Evelyn was moving towards him, her movements sharp and predatory, no doubt to manage the disaster I had created.

Sienna had melted back into the crowd, her crimson dress a smear of color in the periphery.

I felt a strange sense of detachment, as if I were watching a play unfold from a great distance.

The air crackled with tension. I saw the waiter—a young man with nervous eyes—begin to move from the edge of the room, a tray of empty champagne flutes in his hands.

He was making his way towards me, his path deliberately clumsy. It was time.

But chaos, I was about to learn, is an unpredictable beast.

Just as my designated waiter began his approach, another server, moving quickly from the opposite direction to clear a path for Evelyn, swerved unexpectedly. He collided not with me, but with Sienna, who had just stepped forward, perhaps to try and smooth things over with Maddox herself.

A startled cry escaped her lips as a tray of fresh champagne flutes tipped precariously. The world seemed to move in slow motion.

Sienna stumbled, her arms flailing, her crimson-clad body lurching sideways—directly towards me and the cake.

Maddox moved.

It was pure instinct. A primal, thoughtless reaction that revealed everything.

He didn't hesitate. He didn't look at me.

His entire being, every ounce of his focus and energy, launched towards Sienna.

He crossed the stage in two long strides, his body a shield, his arms reaching for her.

He caught her, pulling her back from the brink, his hand splayed possessively on her arm as he steadied her against his chest.

In that same instant, the chain reaction reached me.

Sienna, in her stumble, bumped hard against my side.

The force, though not immense, was enough to break my stance.

My ankle twisted, a sharp, searing pain shooting up my leg.

I cried out, my arms windmilling as I was knocked off balance, my body tipping backwards.

Towards the cake.

I saw a blur of white frosting and intricate sugar flowers rushing up to meet me. I saw the flash of a dozen cameras, their lenses hungry for my humiliation. I saw Maddox, his back to me, his entire world focused on another woman. He had made his choice. He hadn't even seen me fall.

I closed my eyes, bracing for the impact, for the final, sticky indignity of it all.

It never came.

Instead of the soft collapse of cake and the cold floor, a hand clamped around my arm.

It wasn't a panicked grab; it was a firm, deliberate, and impossibly strong grip that halted my descent as if I weighed nothing.

An arm, solid as steel, wrapped around my waist, pulling me back from the edge with controlled, effortless strength.

I was hauled upright, held securely against a body that felt like it was carved from granite.

I opened my eyes, my heart hammering against my ribs, my breath caught in my throat. I was standing chest-to-chest with a man I had never seen before.

He was tall, his presence radiating a quiet, lethal intensity that seemed to bend the very air around him.

He was dressed in a suit so dark it seemed to absorb the light, tailored with a precision that spoke of immense wealth and an obsession with detail.

His face was a collection of sharp, beautiful angles—a strong jaw, high cheekbones, a straight, aristocratic nose.

His hair was black as a raven’s wing, and his eyes…

his eyes were the color of storm clouds, a deep, turbulent gray, flecked with silver.

They were ancient, intelligent, and unnervingly perceptive. They saw everything.

He wasn't looking at the chaos around us. He was looking only at me.

The ballroom was in an uproar. Guests were murmuring, pointing.

Sienna was clinging to Maddox, playing the part of the damsel in distress to perfection.

Evelyn was trying to restore order, her face a mask of controlled rage.

But in the circle of this stranger’s arms, there was only a profound and unnerving silence.

His grip on my waist was a brand of heat through the velvet of my dress.

“Careful, Mrs. Vale,” he said again, his voice a low, dark timbre that vibrated through me. It was smooth, like aged whiskey, but with an edge of something dangerous. He didn’t release me. His hand remained firmly on my arm, the other securely at my waist. “Some falls are not accidents.”

His words hung in the air between us, heavy with unspoken meaning. He wasn't just talking about the stumble. He was talking about my marriage, my life, the entire gilded cage I was trapped in. He saw it. He saw me .

I finally found my voice. “Thank you,” I managed, the words feeling inadequate. I tried to pull back, to put some space between us, but his hold remained firm. He wasn't restraining me, but he wasn't letting me go either.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, his storm-gray eyes scanning my face, missing nothing.

“My ankle,” I admitted, the initial shock giving way to a dull, throbbing pain.

It was only then that Maddox seemed to register what had happened behind him.

He had just finished ensuring Sienna was perfectly fine, his hands still lingering on her arms. He turned, his face a mask of irritation, likely expecting to see me covered in cake.

Instead, he saw me in the arms of another man.

The irritation on his face morphed into a dark, thunderous fury. His eyes narrowed, the color of wet slate. He saw the stranger’s hands on me, saw our proximity, and his jaw clenched so hard a muscle jumped. It was the raw, possessive anger of a king who sees another man touching his property.

“Get your hands off my wife,” Maddox snarled, taking a step forward. His voice was a low growl that cut through the surrounding whispers, a clear threat.

My rescuer didn’t even flinch. He didn’t look at Maddox. His gaze remained locked on me, a faint, almost imperceptible smirk playing on his lips. It was a look of utter, dismissive arrogance. He was so confident in his own power that Maddox’s threat was less than meaningless to him.

“Your wife,” the stranger mused, his voice still a low murmur meant only for me, “seemed to be in need of assistance. Assistance you were otherwise occupied to provide.”

Every word was a perfectly aimed dart, striking Maddox’s pride with lethal precision.

Slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, the man released my waist and arm, though he kept a steadying hand on my elbow as I tested my weight on my injured ankle. I winced, the pain sharp and immediate.

“Allow me,” he said, before introducing himself to the room at large, his voice now carrying a clear, commanding tone that silenced the remaining whispers. “Lucian Thorne. A guest of your father-in-law’s.”

The name dropped into the room like a stone into a silent pool.

Lucian Thorne. The Thorne. The reclusive, enigmatic head of the Zion Group, a global conglomerate with tentacles in everything from private equity to cutting-edge technology.

He was a legend, a ghost in the financial world, rarely seen, immensely powerful, and rumored to be utterly ruthless.

He was not just a guest; he was a power player on a level that even Maddox had to respect.

Maddox froze. The name registered, and the possessive fury in his eyes was instantly tempered by a flicker of cautious calculation. He was no longer dealing with a random partygoer; he was dealing with an equal, or perhaps, a superior.

“Thorne,” Maddox acknowledged, his voice tight with restrained anger. “This is a private family matter.”

“It became my matter when your wife was falling,” Lucian replied smoothly, his gaze still on me. “I find I have an aversion to seeing beautiful things break.”

The compliment was delivered with such cool detachment it felt less like a flirtation and more like a statement of fact, as if he were admiring a piece of art. He then leaned in closer, his voice dropping back to that intimate, conspiratorial whisper that made the hairs on my arms stand up.

“I don’t catch people often, Mrs. Vale,” he murmured, his breath warm against my ear. “But you’re not like most people.”

It was a hook, a line cast into the turbulent waters of the evening, and I felt the tug of it deep in my soul. It was a recognition, a challenge, and a promise of something more.

He straightened up, gave a curt, dismissive nod to Maddox, and then, with one last, lingering look at me, he turned and melted back into the crowd as silently and mysteriously as he had appeared, leaving a trail of shockwaves in his wake.

I was left standing there, the throbbing in my ankle a dull echo of the racing of my heart, caught between the cold, furious glare of my husband and the ghost of a touch from a man who had seen the fall, and, for some reason, had decided to break it.

The game had just changed, and a new, unpredictable player had just taken the board.