Chapter 6: The Ghosts of the Past
The night after the gala was one of those quiet moments that Maddox had come to dread. It was late, the city skyline visible through the floor-to-ceiling windows of his penthouse, the lights of Manhattan twinkling like a thousand tiny stars. Inside, the room felt colder than the harsh winter wind outside. There was a chill that had settled in the air, a discomfort that Maddox couldn’t quite shake.
He hadn’t expected the evening to unfold like it had. Victor’s sudden appearance had thrown him off guard. And then, there was Cambria standing so still, so calm, as though she had been the one pulling all the strings all along.
She had walked into his life again as if nothing had changed. As if the years between them had never existed. And for a moment, Maddox had almost believed it. That was until she spoke.
Her words, the ones she had left hanging in the air, challenging him, questioning him, kept playing over and over in his mind.
"You’ve been too focused on me," she had said, her voice laced with something that almost sounded like pity. "On your pride, on the past. And now it’s falling apart. You’ve ignored everything else."
The harsh truth in those words cut deeper than any blow he had received in the last three years. But Maddox wasn’t sure what hurt more, the fact that she was right or the fact that he still cared.
He stood now in his private office, his gaze fixed on the glass of whiskey in his hand, the amber liquid swirling in the glass as if trying to tempt him into surrendering to the bitterness of the moment.
His mind wandered back to the early days before everything fell apart. To the nights spent in his family’s mansion, when Cambria had been his everything. The way her laugh filled the halls, the way she looked at him like he was the only man in the world. Those were the memories he tried so hard to suppress, but they had a way of creeping back in when he least expected it.
The soft knock at the door pulled him from his thoughts.