Till Death, A Bloody Vow

Till Death, A Bloody Vow

Gavin

5.0
Comment(s)
4.1K
View
12
Chapters

My husband Adam and I built our empire on a vow made in blood: "Till death do us part." For fifteen years, that promise was our foundation. Then I found the photos of his mistress. He refused a divorce, trapping me with our vow while she called to announce her pregnancy. He chose her, even hitting me to protect her. At their wedding, I played a recording of him calling me "damaged goods" and "barren." "What use is a wife who can't give you an heir?" he'd asked her. But his mistress had sent me a little wedding gift: a file detailing the kidnapping I'd suffered years ago. It wasn't a random attack. Adam had planned it. He orchestrated it to break me, and in the process, he caused the miscarriage of our only child. The final report in the file was his own medical records. I wasn't the one who was barren. He was. And her baby wasn't his.

Chapter 1 No.1

My husband Adam and I built our empire on a vow made in the quiet dark: "Till death do us part." For fifteen years, that promise was our foundation. Then I found the photos of his mistress.

He refused a divorce, trapping me with our vow while she called to announce her pregnancy. He chose her, even raising his voice to me to protect her.

At their wedding, I played a recording of him calling me "a closed Chapter" and "a disappointment."

"What use is a wife who can't give you a family?" he'd asked her.

But his mistress had sent me a little wedding gift: a file detailing the emotional aftermath of a high-stakes corporate crisis I'd navigated years ago. It wasn't a random attack. It was a situation Adam's ambition had drawn me into. His focus was elsewhere, and in the fallout, his perceived absence felt like a betrayal that coincided with the loss of our only child.

The final report in the file was his own medical records.

I wasn't the one who was infertile. He was. And her baby wasn't his.

Chapter 1

Cassie Taylor POV:

The first time Adam Carson acted for me, he was seventeen.

The memory isn't hazy or dreamlike; it's sharp, etched into my mind with the chilling clarity of a diamond cutting glass. I remember not the event itself, but the deafening silence that followed, a sudden vacuum that seemed to absorb all the air from that cramped trailer. I remember the sharp, cold scent of rain on hot asphalt that hung in the air, a strange perfume of finality.

But most of all, I remember Adam's eyes when he was led away. They weren't the eyes of a terrified boy. They were calm, almost serene. As they escorted him out, he looked over his shoulder at me, standing frozen in the doorway of that trailer park hell.

A slow, knowing smile spread across his lips.

"You're free now, Cassie," he'd whispered, the words carrying across the sirens' wail. "You're finally free."

He was gone for two years, shouldering the weight of a difficult choice that wasn't his to bear alone. Two years where I visited him every week, our hands pressed against a thick partition, our futures planned in hushed tones over a monitored line. The day he returned, he looked older, harder, but that smile was the same. He had no family left, and neither did I. We only had each other.

We took a bus to New York with less than five hundred dollars between us and a single, shared dream. We worked from nothing. He was the charismatic face, the ruthless shark who could smell opportunity from a mile away. I was the strategist behind him, the one who saw every angle, every weakness, every move our opponents would make before they even considered it.

Together, we built Carson Taylor Industries from the ground up, a corporate empire forged in the ashes of that difficult night. Our bond wasn't just love; it was a pact sealed in trauma. On our wedding day, standing in a sterile courthouse because we couldn't afford anything else, we didn't exchange traditional vows.

He took my hands, his gaze as intense as it was the day he saved me. "This bond we have," he said, his voice a low current of possession. "It doesn't break, Cassie. It can't be dissolved."

I had repeated it back, understanding the weight of the unspoken. "It can only be severed."

For fifteen years, that vow was our foundation. It was the bedrock of our empire, the unspoken threat that hung in the air of every boardroom and every whispered late-night conversation. He was mine, and I was his. It was that simple.

Until it wasn't.

I found the pictures on a hidden drive in his office safe. Not just a few illicit photos. Hundreds. A meticulously curated collection spanning years. All of the same woman. A woman with a certain kind of confidence and a smile that seemed too bright for the world Adam and I inhabited. Avery Adkins.

When I confronted him, he didn't even have the decency to look guilty. He leaned back in his leather chair, the skyline of the city we conquered glittering behind him, and gave me a tired sigh.

"She's a diversion, Cassie. Young, infatuated. It means nothing."

"A diversion you've been documenting for three years?" My voice was dangerously low, a coiled snake ready to strike. The stack of printed photos sat between us on his mahogany desk, a monument to his betrayal.

"Don't be dramatic," he said, waving a dismissive hand.

A coldness seeped into my bones, a familiar chill that I hadn't felt since I was a teenager cowering in a trailer. I pushed a single sheet of paper across the desk. A divorce agreement. My lawyers had been thorough. I would get half of everything.

He didn't even look at it. He just looked at me, a flicker of something unreadable in his eyes. "No."

"Adam, this isn't a negotiation."

"I said no," he repeated, his voice dropping to that possessive growl I knew so well. "You seem to be forgetting our arrangement, sweetheart."

"That was a promise made by children who didn't know any better."

"It was a promise made by a boy who stepped into a shadow for you," he corrected, his jaw tight. "A promise you made to him in return." He stood up, towering over me, and repeated the words that had once been our comfort, now a cage. "This bond doesn't break, Cassie. It can only be severed. That was the deal."

He shredded the agreement with his bare hands, the sound of tearing paper filling the silent office. Then he walked out, leaving me with the confetti of our broken life.

My phone buzzed an hour later. An unknown number. I answered, a sick feeling already churning in my stomach.

A young, breathy voice on the other end. "Is this Mrs. Carson?"

"Who is this?" I asked, my tone flat.

"Oh, you can call me Avery," she chirped, as if we were old friends. "I just wanted to call and... well, to thank you. Adam talks about you all the time. He says you're strong, brilliant... but so, so cold."

I remained silent, my knuckles white as I gripped the phone.

"He told me you found the pictures," she continued, a fake sympathy lacing her tone. "He felt so bad. See, he's been obsessed with me for a while now. Isn't that romantic? He said he was just waiting for the right time."

My breath hitched.

"He's with me right now, you know," she whispered conspiratorially. "He's so sad you're upset. He really does care about you, in his own way. But he loves me."

A string of images flooded my phone. Avery and Adam. On a yacht, her head thrown back in laughter. In a Parisian apartment, him kissing her neck as she smiled at the camera. At a gala I was supposed to attend with him, him whispering in her ear in a secluded corner. In some photos, his wedding ring was on. In others, it was gone. He was careless. Or maybe he just didn't care.

The last photo made the air leave my lungs. It was a close-up of Avery's hand resting on her flat stomach. On her finger was a diamond ring that dwarfed the simple band Adam had given me.

The text that followed was a gut punch.

"He's giving me everything he could never give you. A real wedding. A family."

Another message.

"He's coming home to you tonight, Cassie. But soon, he'll be coming home to me. In our house."

I dropped the phone. A single, guttural scream tore from my throat, raw and animalistic. My gaze fell upon the chaos I had wrought-a landscape of scattered papers and overturned awards on the floor, a constellation of our broken history mirroring the ruin inside me.

I sank to my knees amidst the wreckage, the vow echoing in my head.

*It can only be severed.*

He had just declared a war he couldn't possibly win.

Continue Reading

Other books by Gavin

More
Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Contract With The Devil: Love In Shackles

Mafia

4.5

I watched my husband sign the papers that would end our marriage while he was busy texting the woman he actually loved. He didn't even glance at the header. He just scribbled the sharp, jagged signature that had signed death warrants for half of New York, tossed the file onto the passenger seat, and tapped his screen again. "Done," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. That was Dante Moretti. The Underboss. A man who could smell a lie from a mile away but couldn't see that his wife had just handed him an annulment decree disguised beneath a stack of mundane logistics reports. For three years, I scrubbed his blood out of his shirts. I saved his family's alliance when his ex, Sofia, ran off with a civilian. In return, he treated me like furniture. He left me in the rain to save Sofia from a broken nail. He left me alone on my birthday to drink champagne on a yacht with her. He even handed me a glass of whiskey—her favorite drink—forgetting that I despised the taste. I was merely a placeholder. A ghost in my own home. So, I stopped waiting. I burned our wedding portrait in the fireplace, left my platinum ring in the ashes, and boarded a one-way flight to San Francisco. I thought I was finally free. I thought I had escaped the cage. But I underestimated Dante. When he finally opened that file weeks later and realized he had signed away his wife without looking, the Reaper didn't accept defeat. He burned down the world to find me, obsessed with reclaiming the woman he had already thrown away.

You'll also like

THE SPITEFUL BRIDE: MARRY TO RIVAL'S SON

THE SPITEFUL BRIDE: MARRY TO RIVAL'S SON

Ray Nhedicta
4.5

"Let's get married," Mia declares, her voice trembling despite her defiant gaze into Stefan's guarded brown eyes. She needs this, even if he seems untouchable. Stefan raises a skeptical brow. "And why would I do that?" His voice was low, like a warning, and it made her shiver even though she tried not to show it. "We both have one thing in common," Mia continues, her gaze unwavering. "Shitty fathers. They want to take what's ours and give it to who they think deserves it." A pointed pause hangs in the air. "The only difference between us is that you're an illegitimate child, and I'm not." Stefan studies her, the heiress in her designer armor, the fire in her eyes that matches the burn of his own rage. "That's your solution? A wedding band as a weapon?" He said ignoring the part where she just referred to him as an illegitimate child. "The only weapon they won't see coming." She steps closer, close enough for him to catch the scent of her perfume, gunpowder and jasmine. "Our fathers stole our birthrights. The sole reason they betrayed us. We join forces, create our own empire that'll bring down theirs." A beat of silence. Then, Stefan's mouth curves into something sharp. "One condition," he murmurs, closing the distance. "No divorces. No surrenders. If we're doing this, it's for life" "Deal" Mia said without missing a beat. Her father wants to destroy her life. She wouldn't give him the pleasure, she would destroy her life as she seems fit. ................ Two shattered heirs. One deadly vow. A marriage built on revenge. Mia Meyers was born to rule her father's empire (so she thought), until he named his bastard son heir instead. Stefan Sterling knows the sting of betrayal too. His father discarded him like trash. Now the rivals' disgraced children have a poisonous proposal: Marry for vengeance. Crush their fathers' legacies. Never speak of divorce. Whoever cracks first loses everything. Can these two rivals, united by their vengeful hearts, pull off a marriage of convenience to reclaim what they believe is rightfully theirs? Or will their fathers' animosity, and their own complicated pasts tear their fragile alliance apart?

Chapters
Read Now
Download Book