The Reborn Designer's Vow

Darcy

“Just like we practiced, darling.” Julian’s voice is a low murmur against my ear, his breath smelling faintly of champagne and victory. “Keep it simple. Don’t get emotional. The press will eat that up, and we need to project strength.”

My heart hammers against my ribs, a frantic bird trying to escape its cage. The velvet box in my palm feels slick with sweat. From our position on the small, spotlit dais, the grand ballroom of the Vance family’s winter gala stretches out before me. A sea of expectant faces, glittering diamonds, and flashing camera bulbs. This is it. The moment I have orchestrated my entire life around.

“I know,” I whisper, my throat tight. The single diamond earring he gifted me for this occasion feels like a tiny, cold weight, pulling me down.

“Good girl.” He squeezes my arm, a gesture that looks like affection to the crowd but feels like a warning to me. “They’re all waiting. For you. For us. Show them how perfect we are.”

He gives me a small, proprietary push forward. The microphone stands waiting. I am supposed to step up to it, give the little speech we rehearsed for weeks, and then I am supposed to get down on one knee. An unconventional move, a woman proposing, but Julian insisted. A power play, he’d called it. A way to show the world that the Holloways were finally, formally, bending the knee to the Vances.

My gaze finds his. Julian Vance. The man I have loved since I was a girl sketching designs in my grandfather’s dusty workshop. His eyes, the color of a winter sky, are fixed on me, but they aren’t filled with love. They are filled with assessment, with calculation. He is watching a prized asset perform.

He straightens his perfectly tailored tuxedo jacket, smoothing a non-existent wrinkle from the lapel. It’s a small, vain gesture. Utterly insignificant.

But it’s the key that unlocks hell.

The world fractures. A dizzying, nauseating flood of images slams into me, so real and so violent I stumble. It is not a thought. It is a memory.

*Julian’s face, not here in the warm glow of the gala, but in the harsh fluorescent light of a lawyer’s office. His expression isn’t expectant; it’s bored, tinged with a cruel sort of pity. “Of course I’ll marry you, Darcy,” he says, his voice flat. “It’s the least I can do after your grandfather’s… misfortune. The Vance family takes care of its obligations.”*

The ballroom’s murmur fades, replaced by the sound of my own ragged breathing in a different time.

*Isabella Croft, my rival, my shadow, on the cover of ‘Vogue Jewelry,’ a smug, triumphant smile on her face. Around her neck is the ‘Star of Elysia,’ my masterpiece, the design she stole from my workshop. The headline reads: ‘Isabella Croft, The New Vance Visionary.’*

A gasp escapes my lips, but no one seems to hear it.

*A hospital room. Sterile, white, and cold. So cold. A sharp, searing pain in my abdomen. The taste of blood in my mouth. I am alone. My hand goes to my swollen belly, but there is no one to call for. Julian is in Paris with Isabella, closing a deal. He didn’t even read my messages.*

The cold of that memory is so profound it leaches the warmth from my bones right here, right now, under the hot glare of the spotlights. I feel the final, fading beat of my heart, the life seeping out of me and my unborn child, alone on a starched white sheet.

It was real. All of it. It happened.

I died.

And now I am here again. At the exact moment the gilded cage was set to snap shut.

“Darcy?” Julian’s voice cuts through the fog, sharp and impatient. “What is it? Are you ill? Don’t you dare faint. Get on with it.”

I blink, and the ballroom swims back into focus. The expectant faces. The poised photographers. The man who will be my destroyer.

The frantic bird in my chest is gone. In its place, something cold, hard, and impossibly heavy settles. Resolve. Pure and unbreakable as the diamond in his earring.

I look at him. I mean, I truly *look* at him for the first time. Not as the golden boy of my childhood dreams, but as the architect of my ruin. I see the casual cruelty in the set of his jaw, the entitlement in his perfect posture. I see the man who will watch my life’s work be stolen and call it good business. The man who will let me die for the sake of his convenience.

“The microphone, Darcy,” he hisses, his smile a tight, furious line meant only for me. “Now. Stop making a scene.”

“You’re right,” I say. My voice is shockingly clear. It doesn’t tremble. It doesn’t break. It cuts through the charged air like glass.

Julian’s irritation gives way to a flicker of confusion. This isn’t in the script.

“This has gone on long enough,” I continue, my voice gaining strength. I am not speaking to the crowd. I am speaking only to him.

I look down at the velvet box in my hand. Inside rests a platinum signet ring, engraved with the Vance family crest intertwined with the Holloway family’s artisan hammer. A symbol of union. Of submission. A collar.

With a flick of my thumb, I snap the box shut.

The click is deafening in the sudden, absolute silence of the room. Every murmur, every cough, every clink of glass has ceased. A thousand pairs of eyes are on us, sensing the shift, smelling the blood in the water.

Julian’s face drains of color. The mask of charming indifference cracks, revealing a flash of raw fury. “What do you think you’re doing?” he whispers, his voice dangerously low.

I raise my head, meeting his shocked gaze without flinching. The fear is gone. The desperate, pleading love is gone. All that’s left is a clarity so sharp it could draw blood.

“No, Julian,” I say, my voice ringing out, clear and final. It needs no microphone.

I take a small step back, away from him, creating a chasm between us on the small stage.

“I’m done.”

I don’t wait for his response. I don’t look at the stunned faces of his parents in the front row or the frenzied activity of the photographers, who have just realized they are witnessing the society scandal of the decade.

I turn my back on him. On all of it.

I walk to the edge of the dais and descend the short steps, my movements measured and calm. The crowd parts before me like the sea, a silent, gaping wave of silks and jewels. Whispers erupt in my wake, a growing storm of speculation.

“Did she just…?”

“To Julian Vance?”

“What on earth just happened?”

I don’t look back. I can feel his stare burning into my spine, a promise of rage and retribution. Let him stare.

Let them all stare.

This life will be different. I am not the same girl who walked into this ballroom. She died in a cold hospital room, her dreams stolen and her heart broken.

The woman walking out is someone new. Someone forged in the memory of betrayal and pain.

My grandfather’s workshop is failing. My legacy is on the verge of being erased. In my past life, I let Julian’s family absorb it, gut it, and discard the pieces after they had taken everything of value. All for a love that was nothing more than a transaction.

Not this time.

This time, I will not be a pretty, tragic footnote in the Vance family history. I will not be their pity project or their acquisition.

I will be the woman who reclaims her name. I will save my family’s craft. I will build an empire on the foundations of my own genius, the genius he and Isabella tried to steal.

And as for Julian Vance and everyone who stood by and watched me fall? I will not just survive them. I will not just beat them.

I will utterly, completely, and magnificently destroy them.