A Legacy of Broken Vows

Chapter 1

Jocelyn

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” I say. The words feel like sandpaper in my throat. “Could you repeat that?”

Mr. Davies, my late grandfather’s lawyer, doesn’t even have the decency to look uncomfortable. He adjusts his gold-rimmed glasses, his gaze as flat and sterile as the mahogany desk between us. He looks like a man who delivers bad news for a living and sleeps soundly at night.

“Certainly, Ms. Foster,” he says, his voice a dry rustle of paper. “The marriage certificate you provided, the one registered eight years ago under your name and Mr. Zayn Maddox’s, is a forgery.”

Ms. Foster. Not Mrs. Maddox. The change is a surgical cut, precise and deep. My fingers tighten on the leather straps of my purse. Inside, tucked into a velvet pouch, is the ultrasound photo. Two tiny, flickering heartbeats. A secret I was going to share with my husband tonight, over champagne and the city lights from our penthouse balcony.

“That’s not possible,” I whisper. “We were married at the botanical conservatory. My grandfather walked me down the aisle. We had over a hundred guests.”

“You had a lovely party, Ms. Foster,” he replies, his tone infuriatingly placid. “A very convincing and, I’m sure, expensive performance. You did not, however, have a legally binding wedding.”

My breath hitches. The memory flashes, vivid and painful. Zayn, standing under an arch of white roses, his dark eyes fixed on me. The way his thumb traced my knuckles as he slid the ring onto my finger. The weight of it, solid and real. It feels heavy on my hand right now.

“The officiant, the license we signed…”

“The officiant was an actor, hired for the occasion. The license was never filed. The document submitted to my office for your grandfather’s records was a fabrication. A high quality one, I’ll admit. But a fabrication nonetheless.” He slides a sheet of paper across the desk. It’s a report from a document examiner. Words like ‘inconsistent ink saturation’ and ‘forged signature block’ swim before my eyes.

“Why?” The question is barely a puff of air. “Why would he do that?”

Mr. Davies clears his throat, a small, bird-like sound. “That is a question for Mr. Maddox. However, my due diligence in executing your grandfather’s will has uncovered a potential… impediment.”

He doesn’t look at me as he says it. He pulls another file from his briefcase, this one a different color. Manila, not grey. He opens it with the same dispassionate care.

“It appears the reason Mr. Maddox could not legally marry you,” he continues, “is because he was already married.”

The air in the room turns to glass, sharp and fragile. I feel like if I move, it will shatter and slice me to ribbons. My own heartbeat is a frantic drum against my ribs.

“What did you just say?”

“Zayn Maddox was wed ten years ago in a civil ceremony in Lake Como, Italy.” He pushes another document toward me. This one is a photocopy, slightly grainy, but the names are perfectly clear. Zayn Alistair Maddox. Whitney Isabelle Kuznetsov.

Whitney. The name is a ghost story Zayn told me once, long ago. His first love, the one who broke his heart when her family moved back to Russia. ‘Ancient history,’ he’d called her, with a wave of his hand and a kiss to my forehead that was meant to erase her completely. It seems she was never history at all. She was the truth. And I was the lie.

“The marriage was never legally dissolved,” Mr. Davies states, as if reporting the weather. “Mr. Maddox and Ms. Kuznetsov are, in the eyes of the law, still husband and wife.”

Eight years. Eight years of waking up next to him, of cooking him breakfast, of holding him when the nightmares of his business came for him in the dark. Eight years of building a life I thought was ours. A lie. A performance. My entire adult life has been a sham.

I feel a wave of nausea so intense I have to grip the arms of my chair. My other hand goes instinctively to my stomach, a flat, protective gesture over the life I’m carrying. Their lives.

“So the inheritance…” My voice cracks. My grandfather’s fortune. We’d talked about it, Zayn and I. The charitable foundation we would start, the good we would do. Another fantasy.

“This is where the situation becomes… unique,” Mr. Davies says, finally looking at me. There’s a flicker of something in his eyes. Pity? Or perhaps just professional interest. “Your grandfather’s will is quite specific. His estate, valued at approximately three hundred and forty-seven million dollars, was to be placed in a trust for the benefit of you and your legal spouse, to be managed jointly.”

He pauses, letting the words hang in the silent, air-conditioned room.

“However, in the event that you were unmarried at the time of his passing, the will stipulates that the entirety of the estate, liquid assets, properties, and controlling shares in all Foster Legacy Group holdings, pass directly to you. Solely. Unconditionally.”

I stare at him. The number is astronomical, meaningless. It’s confetti in a hurricane. What good is a mountain of gold when the ground beneath your feet has vanished?

“So I…”

“You, Ms. Foster, are now one of the wealthiest women in this city. The inheritance is entirely yours. Mr. Maddox has no legal claim to any of it. Not a single dollar.”

The irony is a physical blow. The man I loved, the man I built a life with, the father of my unborn children, is a fraud. And his elaborate, cruel deception has just made me richer than I could ever imagine. My grandfather, even from the grave, was protecting me.

Mr. Davies starts talking again, his voice fading into a low hum. Words like ‘portfolios,’ ‘probate,’ and ‘transfer of assets’ float by. I don’t hear them. All I can hear is the frantic beating of my own heart, and a new sound rising beneath it. The primal scream of a mother protecting her young.

My children. Our children. But they’re not his to claim, are they? Not in any way that matters. They will be born into a lie, their father a ghost married to another woman. They will carry my name. Foster. Not Maddox. They will never be pawns in his dangerous world. He will never have a right to them.

The money. It was just noise a moment ago. Now, it’s a weapon. It’s a shield. It’s a getaway car fueled and waiting.

I can disappear. I can take my children and build a fortress around them where the name Zayn Maddox is never spoken. I can vanish so completely he’ll wonder if I was ever real.

The grief is still there, a gaping wound in my chest. But something else is crystallizing from the pain. Something hard and cold. Resolve.

“Mr. Davies,” I say, cutting through his monologue. My voice is different now. It doesn’t tremble. It doesn’t break. It’s as cold and clear as his.

He stops, surprised, and peers at me over his glasses.

“I want you to begin the process immediately,” I say. “Secure everything. Every account, every property, every stock. Transfer it all into new accounts under my name. My name only.”

“Of course, Ms. Foster. We can begin drawing up the paperwork…”

“Not paperwork,” I interrupt. “Action. I want you to freeze any joint credit lines, revoke any access Zayn Maddox has to any funds or properties connected to my grandfather’s estate. I want it done by the end of the day.”

His eyebrows lift. “That’s a very… aggressive timeline.”

“Is it?” I meet his gaze, and for the first time, he looks away. “You told me it’s all mine. I want to ensure it stays that way. I want him cut off completely. Can you do that, or do I need to find a lawyer who can?”

This is the dopamine tease. A hint of the woman my grandfather raised me to be, not the wife Zayn Maddox thought he could fool.

A slow smile touches the corner of Mr. Davies’s thin mouth. “I can assure you, Ms. Foster. I am precisely the lawyer for the job. It will be done.”

“Good.” I stand up, my movements steady and deliberate. I smooth down my dress, the motion calming. I am in control. For the first time all day, I am in control. I pick up my purse, the weight of my secret, my future, nestled inside.

I walk toward the door without a backward glance. My heels click against the marble floor, a steady, rhythmic beat. A war drum.

My marriage is a lie. My love was a lie. My life was a lie.

But my children are real. And so is my money.

He wanted a performance. I’ll give him one he’ll never forget.

Chapter 2

Jocelyn

The doorman, George, smiles at me as I step out of the cab. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Maddox.”

The name lands like a punch to the stomach. I force a smile that feels like cracking plaster. “George.”

I don’t remember the elevator ride up to the penthouse. It’s a silent, mirrored box, and I don’t look at my reflection. I don’t know who I would see.

The heavy oak door opens into silence. Our home. It’s never silent. There’s always music playing, or the low hum of the news, or the sound of Zayn on the phone in his study, his voice a low, commanding rumble. Today, there is nothing. The silence is a presence, heavy and suffocating.

I find him in the living room. He’s standing by the floor-to-ceiling windows, a glass of amber liquid in his hand, looking down at the city sprawled below us like a personal kingdom. He doesn’t turn when I enter. He knows I’m here.

“Did you have a good meeting?” he asks, his voice unnervingly calm. It’s the same voice he uses to close a deal, to sentence a man, to order dinner.

My purse slips from my fingers, hitting the Persian rug with a soft thud. The ultrasound picture is still inside. A secret that has spoiled.

“I know about the certificate, Zayn.”

He takes a slow sip of his drink. No reaction. Not a flinch, not a tightening of his shoulders. Nothing.

“I assumed Davies would be thorough,” he says to the glass.

“You assumed.” My voice is a raw whisper. I clear my throat, willing it to be stronger. “You lied to me for eight years. You put a ring on my finger in front of a hundred people and it was all a performance. A lie.”

He finally turns. His face is a mask of stone. The dark eyes that I have woken up to for nearly three thousand mornings are unreadable, shuttered. He looks at me, but he doesn’t see me.

“It wasn’t a lie,” he says, his tone flat. “It was a complication.”

“A complication?” I laugh, a sharp, ugly sound that echoes in the vast room. “Is that what you call your wife? A complication?”

I see the barest flicker in his jaw, the only sign that he’s heard me. “Whitney is a part of my past.”

“She’s a part of your present! You are legally married to her, Zayn. Which makes me… what? What have I been for eight years?” I’m pleading now, my voice cracking. I hate the sound of it. I want to be steel, but I’m shattering.

“You were my life, Jocelyn.”

“Don’t.” The word is a blade. “Don’t you dare say that to me now. If I was your life, you would have told me. You would have fixed it. You wouldn’t have let me live a lie.”

He walks over to the bar and sets his glass down with a heavy clink. He moves with a purpose I don’t recognize. He’s not my husband. He’s a stranger.

“I couldn’t fix it,” he says. “It wasn’t an option.”

“Why not? Divorce isn’t some ancient, impossible ritual. People do it every day.”

“My world is not like other people’s, you know that.”

“This isn’t about your world. This is about ours. The one you built on a foundation of sand.” I take a step toward him, my hands clenched into fists. “Why, Zayn? Just tell me why. Was it for her? Do you still love her?”

He looks at me then, and his eyes are cold, so cold they burn. “She’s coming back.”

My breath catches in my throat. Ancient history. That’s what he called her.

“It’s over, Jocelyn. Whitney and I… we’re going to be together.”

It’s a clean, brutal cut. No apology. No remorse. Just a statement of fact. A business decision. And I was the asset being liquidated.

All the fight drains out of me, replaced by a hollow, aching numbness. This is it. This is the truth. It wasn't a mistake or a trap. It was a choice. He is choosing her.

“I see,” I say, my voice impossibly small. I wrap my arms around my stomach, a subconscious shield for the only thing that’s truly mine.

Zayn’s eyes follow the movement, but his expression doesn’t change. He doesn’t know. He can’t know.

He reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulls out a long, white envelope. He slides it onto the marble coffee table between us.

“What is that?” I ask, my voice dead.

“It’s a settlement. Ten million dollars. My lawyer can have it wired to any account you choose by morning. It’s enough to start over. Go anywhere you want.”

Ten million dollars. For my trouble. For eight years of my life. For my heart, my body, my loyalty. He is trying to buy my silence, to put a price on my humiliation.

“You think you can buy me off?” I ask, the numbness giving way to a white-hot rage. “You think ten million dollars erases this?”

“I think it makes for a clean break,” he says, his voice still level, still cold. “Take the money, Jocelyn. Don’t make this messy.”

“Messy?” I walk over to the table and stare down at the envelope. My name is typed on it. Ms. Jocelyn Foster. He had this prepared. He knew this was coming.

“You are a son of a bitch,” I say, the words clear and sharp. I look up from the envelope and meet his empty gaze.

“I don’t want your money,” I tell him. “I don’t need it.”

A flicker of something. Annoyance? Surprise? “Don’t be a fool. You can’t afford this place on your own.”

“I don’t have to,” I say, and for the first time, I feel a sliver of power. It’s a cold, bitter thing, but it’s mine. “My grandfather’s will was very specific. In the event I was unmarried, the entire estate passes to me. Solely.”

I watch his face, searching for a reaction. For a moment, just a fraction of a second, I see it. A crack in the mask. Shock. He didn’t know. For all his planning, for all his control, he missed the most important detail.

Then the mask is back. He recovers so quickly I almost think I imagined it.

“Is that so?” he says, his voice tight.

“Three hundred and forty-seven million dollars,” I say, letting the number hang in the air like a death sentence for what we were. “Properties. Assets. Controlling shares. It’s all mine, Zayn. He protected me from you, even from the grave.”

He nods slowly, a dark look crossing his face. “Good for him.”

I expected a fight. An argument. A negotiation. I expect him to stake some kind of claim, to tell me I owed him.

He does none of those things. He gives me the cruelest gift of all: indifference.

“Then take it,” he says, his voice flat and final. “Take it all and go. It’s better this way. It makes the clean break even cleaner.”

He turns his back on me then, walking back to the window, dismissing me as if I were a servant who had overstayed her welcome. The conversation is over. My life with him is over.

Any lingering hope I had, any pathetic, desperate fantasy that this was some terrible misunderstanding, dies in that moment. It shrivels and turns to ash in my chest.

My hand is shaking as I reach down and twist the diamond ring on my finger. The weight of it, once a comfort, is now a brand. I pull it off. It resists, clinging to my skin after all these years. I finally get it free and my finger is pale and indented underneath.

I don’t throw it. I don’t make a scene. I walk to the coffee table and place it carefully on top of the envelope that holds my ten-million-dollar severance package.

The diamond winks under the recessed lighting, a cold, empty fire. A beautiful, expensive lie.

“I’ll take what’s legally mine,” I say to his back. “And nothing more.”

He doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t say a word.

I walk out of the room, out of the penthouse, out of the life I thought was mine. The click of the door closing behind me is the most final sound I have ever heard.

He wants me to go. He wants me to disappear.

Fine.

But I won’t just run. I will erase him. I will take the life he thought he controlled and I will become something he can never touch again.

Chapter 3

Jocelyn

The city lights blur into streaks of gold and red through the taxi window. My hand rests on my stomach, a useless, instinctive gesture. The penthouse door clicking shut behind me was the sound of an amputation. Eight years of my life, severed.

I pull out my phone. My fingers feel clumsy, disconnected from my brain. I scroll through my contacts, past names that feel like they belong to a stranger’s life. Then I find him. Julian Vance.

My grandfather’s voice echoes in my memory. ‘If you are ever in a storm you cannot navigate, call Julian. He is the only man I’ve ever known who can see the rocks beneath the waves.’

I press the call button before I can lose my nerve.

He answers on the second ring.

“Julian Vance.” His voice is exactly as I remember it. Calm, deep, and unhurried. The sound of absolute control.

“Julian, it’s Jocelyn Foster.” I say my own name. It feels both foreign and right.

“I know,” he says. There’s no surprise in his tone. “I’ve been waiting for this call. Are you safe?”

My breath catches. “I am. For now. I need to see you.”

“I’m at the old Rivington office. Your grandfather kept it off the official books. No one knows it exists. Can you get here?”

“Send me the address.”

“It’s already on its way to your phone. The cabbie will know the building. Take the service elevator to the top floor. I’ll be waiting.”

The line goes dead. He didn’t ask what was wrong. He already knew something was.

The office is a time capsule. Rich mahogany, the scent of old leather and paper, a wall of books that have actually been read. It smells like my grandfather. It smells like stability.

Julian stands from behind a large desk as I enter. He is as impeccable as ever, his grey hair perfectly cut, his dark suit tailored with military precision. He looks like a hawk in winter, all sharp angles and sharper intelligence. His eyes, a pale, piercing blue, miss nothing.

“He did it, then,” Julian says. It’s not a question.

“He did.” My voice is thin.

“Sit down, Jocelyn.” He gestures to the leather chair opposite his desk. “And tell me everything.”

I do. The words tumble out, a torrent of betrayal and pain. The forged certificate. The other wife, Whitney. Zayn’s coldness. The ten-million-dollar insult on the coffee table. I tell him everything except the one secret I’m holding tight in my womb. That is mine alone.

He listens without interruption, his expression unchanging, his hands steepled on the desk. When I’m finished, a heavy silence fills the room.

“I warned your grandfather,” he finally says, his voice a low rumble of vindication. “I told him Maddox was a predator in a bespoke suit.”

“My grandfather liked him.”

“Your grandfather saw a reflection of his own ruthless ambition,” Julian corrects gently. “He failed to see that Zayn Maddox’s loyalty extends only to himself.”

A tear I didn’t know was there escapes and traces a cold path down my cheek. I wipe it away angrily.

“I don’t have time for tears,” I say.

“No,” Julian agrees, a flicker of approval in his eyes. “You don’t. You have time for strategy. He has made a critical error.”

“By telling me the truth?”

“By underestimating you. He thinks he’s discarded a wife. He has no idea he’s created an adversary with three hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of resources.”

He stands and walks to a wet bar in the corner, pouring two glasses of water. He hands one to me. “First thing. You are not to go back to that penthouse. Not for clothes, not for anything. It is compromised territory.”

“Where do I go?”

“Your grandfather established a private residence years ago. A contingency. A safe house with a skyline view. It’s in the Carlisle Tower, registered to a shell corporation. It has its own staff, its own security, and it is impenetrable. I had it prepared for your arrival this afternoon.”

I stare at him. “You knew?”

“I hoped I was wrong,” he says, his gaze softening for a fraction of a second. “Your grandfather and I planned for the worst. It seems the worst has arrived. The keys and access cards are in this envelope.”

He slides a thick, grey envelope across the desk. It reminds me of the one from Mr. Davies. This one feels like a lifeline, not a death sentence.

“Now, for the money,” he says, his voice turning sharp and clinical again. “Davies is a good probate lawyer, but he’s a tortoise. We need to be a wildfire. By morning, I want every liquid asset that is legally yours moved, not just to a new account, but through a labyrinth.”

“A labyrinth?”

“Blind trusts, holding companies layered on top of each other, accounts in nations that do not cooperate with extradition requests. We will make your fortune a ghost. It will exist, it will be yours to command, but no one will be able to find it, let alone touch it.”

“Zayn didn’t even seem to care about the money,” I whisper, the memory of his cold dismissal still a fresh wound. “He told me to take it.”

Julian allows a small, cold smile. “He thinks it’s a consolation prize. He doesn’t understand that the Foster Legacy is not just wealth. It is power. Deep, structural power. We are going to teach him the difference.”

“How?”

“We start by severing every last tie. We change your digital footprint, your phone numbers, your entire financial identity. We create a fortress, and from within it, we will plan our first move.”

He takes me to the Carlisle himself. The apartment is breathtaking, a palace in the sky that takes up an entire floor. It’s furnished with an elegant, impersonal style, nothing like the home I shared with Zayn. It’s not a home. It’s a base of operations.

Julian walks me through the security systems, the encrypted communication lines he’s already had installed, the panic rooms.

“The staff here reports only to me,” he says, standing by the door. “You are safe here, Jocelyn. Utterly and completely.”

“Thank you, Julian.” The words feel inadequate.

“Your grandfather loved you more than his entire empire,” he says softly. “He would want me to protect you both. Get some rest. The war begins at dawn.”

He leaves, and the silence that descends is different from the one in the penthouse. That was the silence of emptiness. This is the silence of anticipation.

I walk to the vast windows. The view is higher here, the city spread out even wider. From the penthouse, I looked down on the world with him, as a queen surveying her kingdom. From here, I see it for what it is. A chessboard.

My hand finds my stomach again. The dull ache in my heart is still there, a constant throb of what I’ve lost. But beneath it, a new feeling takes root. A cold, hard resolve.

Zayn wanted me to go. He wanted me to disappear.

He has no idea what he has just unleashed.