Chapter 3: Unspoken Vows
Maddox couldn’t escape her.
Even as the days stretched on, and the wedding became more of a public spectacle than either of them had anticipated, Cambria’s presence loomed over him like a shadow. She had a way of settling into spaces, taking them over, and transforming everything around her into something unrecognizable something that fit her carefully crafted design.
Her eyes followed him wherever he went. At every meeting, at every gala, every event that was now part of their forced union, he felt her gaze. It wasn’t one of affection or even interest. It was a reminder. A cold, unyielding reminder of his past mistakes. And yet, in the back of his mind, there was a part of him that still couldn’t shake the feeling that beneath the sharpness, there was a glimmer of something else something familiar. Something he had once loved.
But those days were gone. Or so he told himself.
It had been a week since the wedding, and Maddox had done his best to play the part. He had become an expert in pretending. To the media, the board, and even his family, he was the perfect husband: stoic, reserved, and focused on the future of Raye Media and his carefully built empire. But behind closed doors, the charade was harder to maintain. In private, when Cambria wasn’t playing the role of the perfect, detached wife, she became something else entirely something that made his chest ache with the intensity of their past.
But she didn’t show it. Not anymore.
At least, not to him.
The nights were the worst. They slept in separate rooms, but the tension between them was palpable. Even when he lay in the darkness, staring at the ceiling, he could feel her presence as a ghost in the house. When she was near, it was like the air thickened, weighed down by memories both good and bad.
But tonight, as he sat in his office after yet another long day of meetings, something felt different. He had received a call that had rattled him with an anonymous tip that one of his competitors, Victor Harrington, was making moves to undermine Raye Media. But the information wasn’t enough. Whoever was behind it was deliberately withholding critical details, which only increased his paranoia.