Till Snow Buries the Vow

1 When the crystal chandelier tore loose from the ballroom ceiling, Garrick lunged for my cousin. I didn’t scream. I didn’t throw a wine glass or stage a scene the way I used to when we were younger. I simply began to disappear from his life. At dinner, my parents demanded that I smooth things over. Cecilia had just been named guest principal dancer for the metropolitan ballet company, and she needed the Prescott name—and Garrick’s family foundation—to back her season. When I remained silent, pushing the roasted asparagus around my plate, my father slammed his palm onto the mahogany table. "If your mother and I hadn't spent the last five years in London and Paris shepherding Cecilia through the conservatory," he snapped, his voice vibrating with disgust, "do you honestly think you ever would have had the pedigree to land a man like Garrick Prescott?" I looked up, meeting his furious gaze, and nodded slowly. "Actually, Arthur, there’s an easier way," I said. "Convince your golden boy to sign the divorce papers and wire me my half of the estate. I swear on my life, you will never have to look at my face again." Before the echo of my words faded, the dining room French doors clicked open. Garrick stood framed in the archway, his tailored coat half-unbuttoned, his face drained of every drop of color. Divorce was the one word Garrick could never bear to hear. His parents had died in a head-on collision on the interstate, speeding toward the county courthouse to sign their final decree. On our wedding day at his family’s coastal estate, he had held me so tightly against his chest that the pearl buttons of my gown bruised my ribs. “Sloane, we’re in this for life,” he had whispered, his breath warm against my ear, trembling with an intensity that terrified me. “In my book, there is no divorce. Only death.” He had loved me with such desperate, consuming ferocity that I truly believed, after more than twenty years of being the discarded afterthought in my own home, I had finally found an anchor. Then, three months ago, my parents and Cecilia returned from Europe. At the welcome-back gala, suspended forty feet above the polished parquet floor, the bronze-and-crystal chandelier began to shudder. I saw the mount shear away. My instinct wasn't self-preservation; I reached out, lunging to shove Garrick out of the fall line. He didn't look at me. In a single, violent motion, he hurled himself sideways—wrapping his arms around Cecilia and rolling her clear of the dais. The impact sent me sprawling into the shattered glass. A jagged shard sliced through my palm, another raking a long, searing line down my forearm. Yet I felt completely numb, sitting in the glittering debris, watching my husband cradle Cecilia against his chest on the velvet carpet, his hands checking her pulse, her face, her ankles. My father shoved me aside, barking that my clumsy panic had almost prevented Garrick from rescuing Cecilia. Garrick scooped her up to rush her to the trauma center, never once glancing back to see if I was standing. He didn’t realize I was hurt until he saw me sitting alone on the vinyl bench of the emergency room corridor, waiting for stitches with a bloody towel wrapped around my arm. He had fallen to his knees before me, trembling, babbling in a frantic panic: "Sloane... baby, I swear to God, I didn't know you were behind me. I thought you were near the bar. Forgive me." Across the hallway, propped up on a stretcher with a superficial scratch on her collarbone, Cecilia had looked past him and smiled at me—a slow, venomous curl of her lips. I looked down at Garrick’s bowed head and softly said, "It's fine." From that night onward, an eerie stillness settled over me. When Garrick bought diamond bracelets and vintage Cartier watches to atone, I accepted them and put them in a drawer. When my parents booked private dining rooms at the club and told him he needed to bankroll Cecilia's upcoming charity showcase, I merely nodded. When Cecilia casually remarked over tea that she needed a bespoke stage wardrobe from a designer atelier in Milan, I looked at Garrick and said, "You should arrange that for her." Everyone seemed thrilled. My parents praised my sudden maturity; Cecilia basked in the royal treatment. Only Garrick grew increasingly hollowed out with dread. "Sloane," he had whispered in the dark one night, hovering over me, searching my blank eyes. "You used to raise hell whenever you felt slighted. When you were a girl, you'd burn the house down before you let anyone push you aside. Why aren't you fighting with me? Why aren't you screaming?" I hadn't answered him. And tonight, standing outside my parents’ dining room, he had finally heard the answer he feared most. Without greeting my parents, he stepped forward, seized my wrist with white-knuckled force, and dragged me out into the autumn chill toward his car. 2 Inside the Maybach, Garrick slammed the door. The interior smelled of expensive leather and the sharp, metallic tang of his bottled fury. "Sloane Mercer," he said, his jaw working so hard a muscle twitched beneath his cheek, "you will never get a divorce. Take that thought and burn it." I didn't blink. I tilted my head back against the headrest, let out a slow, deliberate yawn, and turned to look out the tinted window at the passing streetlights. I was too exhausted to indulge him in an argument. The Prescott Group retained one of the most ruthless litigation teams on the Eastern Seaboard—a firm of corporate sharks who hadn't lost a high-stakes case in three decades. Fighting him through conventional threats was pointless. I had been blind. Pathetically, unforgivably blind. It wasn't until last month that I stumbled across Cecilia's private Instagram burner account. There was a photo of a terrace overlooking Lake Como. In the frame was a man’s sun-tanned wrist, resting beside a chilled glass of vintage champagne. On his wrist was the bespoke platinum Patek Philippe watch I had helped design for Garrick’s thirtieth birthday—its custom dial engraved with the Little Prince and his rose. The caption read: “Thank you, Mr. G, for flying three thousand miles across an ocean just to file a frivolous little injunction for a damsel in distress.” Looking back through the timeline, the puzzle pieces snapped together with nauseating precision. Over the past twelve months, Garrick had spent nearly half his time on "critical European acquisitions." He wasn't acquiring logistics hubs in Frankfurt or hedge funds in Zurich. He was trailing Cecilia’s ballet company from Vienna to Paris, securing her private rehearsal studios, burying bad press, and hiring private security to shield her from stage-door stalkers. He had rented a vintage convertible and driven Cecilia and my parents across a dozen countries, gazing at the snowfields of Zermatt and basking in the lavender-scented sun of Provence. In her captions, she called him "Mr. G." In private video clips, her melodic voice called him "hubby." And my parents, seated in the leather passenger seats, smiled at the camera, raising their glasses to their "wonderful son-in-law." The realization had torn through my chest like jagged sheet metal. That evening a month ago, hands shaking violently, I had dialed Garrick’s private cell. He hadn't answered. Instead, the line connected, and Cecilia's soft, purring voice floated through the speaker. "Sloane, darling," she had whispered, dripping with sweet condescension. "I told you when we were seven years old. If you have something truly precious, you'd better bury it six feet under where no one can see. "Because if you leave it in the light, I will always take it." She had always possessed terrifying follow-through. I knew that better than anyone on earth. 3 The very first time Cecilia met Garrick was shortly after our civil ceremony. My parents had flown back from London for a brief tax filing, and they agreed to a dinner at an upscale French bistro in the city to meet the man I had married. Garrick had been seething with indignation on my behalf before we even stepped out of the car. During the two years we dated, he had listened to every quiet confession I made about my childhood. He knew my parents treated my cousin like an anointed saint while treating me like an unpaid tenant. Growing up, every hand-tailored tutu, every imported pair of satin pointe shoes, every ounce of doting affection went to Cecilia. When she was accepted into the elite European academy, my parents sold their suburban home and relocated abroad to manage her daily life, leaving me behind in an empty, rented apartment with nothing but a stipend for community college. Even when I announced I was marrying Garrick, my mother had dismissed it in a three-minute FaceTime call: "Cecilia is in the quarterfinals of the Prix de Lausanne. We can’t possibly leave her now. You’ve always been fiercely independent, Sloane. You don’t need us hovering over your shoulder to pick out china patterns." Garrick had stared at my phone screen in utter disbelief. "My parents had a toxic, miserable marriage," he had said that night, pulling me onto his lap and kissing my forehead, "but they never neglected me. Your family is monstrous, Sloane. One day, they are going to realize what an incredible soul they threw away, and they will choke on their regret." I had merely shaken my head. Deep in my chest, I had secretly prayed my parents and Cecilia would stay in Europe forever. Cecilia was a magpie. If it had shine, and if it belonged to me, she had to have it. Garrick was brilliant, devastatingly handsome, and immensely powerful. I was terrified of what would happen if she saw him. You couldn't blame my paranoia. Every caution sign in the world is erected because someone already committed the crime. Nate Miller, the boy who lived next door to me from kindergarten to high school—the boy who swore he would protect me from my father’s temper—had defected the second Cecilia turned sixteen. She had curled her pinky finger at him, offered him a breathy compliment about his track medals, and Nate had dropped my hand like it was poisoned, spending the next decade fetching her water bottles and carrying her dance bags. So when I fell in love with Garrick, I guarded him like contraband. I never shared family photos; I never spoke of him to my mother; I hid Cecilia’s portfolio from his coffee table. I was terrified that the only good thing life had ever granted me would be plucked from my hands. Yet fate delights in crucifying the insecure. That sunny afternoon at the French bistro, the brass latch of the private dining room clicked open. Cecilia swept in, wearing a crimson silk wrap dress that fell in liquid folds around her slender frame. Her porcelain collarbones, her delicate swan-like neck, and the dewy, luminous gaze of her hazel eyes seemed to command the very air in the room. She smiled—a radiant, effortless expression that held both vulnerability and breathtaking allure. In that single, suspended second, Garrick looked at her. It was the look of a man struck by an instantaneous, tragic lightning bolt of recognition. His hands, usually so steady, grew clumsy. During the meal, his gaze drifted across the linen tablecloth again and again, fixating on the curve of her throat. When the waiter served the entrées, Garrick absently spooned roasted eggplant onto my porcelain plate. He had lived with me for two years. He knew the smell of eggplant made me physically ill. 4 I pushed my chair back and stood up to leave right there. My father instantly barked across the table, his fork clattering against his plate, reprimanding me for making a scene and acting like an undisciplined child the moment I had a ring on my finger. Garrick snapped back to reality, his face flushing red as he scrambled to apologize, stammering that he was suffering from brutal insomnia and corporate fatigue, that it was an innocent mistake. Cecilia had lifted her crystal goblet, taking a dainty sip of Pinot Noir, her movement as fluid as water, completely unruffled. "Cousin," she murmured, a patronizing little smile gracing her lips, "that fiery little petulant streak of yours is still so precious. Some things never change." With one sentence, she painted me as an unhinged, neurotic drama queen. No one understood that my tantrums had been a survival mechanism. If I didn't scream, if I didn't claw, if I didn't throw my plate across the linoleum floor, I got nothing. Cecilia was handed the world on a silver platter simply for breathing; I was expected to survive on crumbs and silence. Only when I wept until my nose bled and tore the wallpaper from my bedroom did my mother, exhausted and annoyed, finally throw a fraction of attention my way, always muttering under her breath: "You don't have a tenth of Cecilia’s beauty, and you don't have an ounce of her grace." Cecilia had inherited her mother’s legendary, ethereal features. She was snow and porcelain, delicate wrists and a fragile, arched foot. Anyone standing next to her looked coarse, earthy, and dull. She was an angel who had fallen from the heavens, and society hurried to pave her path with silk. Yet she was an insatiable black hole. She wanted the bedroom with the bay window; she wanted my private piano hour; she wanted my brand-new winter coat; she demanded the masterclasses. My parents eventually mortgaged our family house to fund her life in Paris, leaving me behind. I refused to be the obedient, self-effacing martyr who faded quietly into the background. I screamed. I fought. I demanded tuition money. I worked three retail shifts a day. I dragged myself through state college on pure spite, which was the only reason I ever made it to the corporate gala where I met Garrick Prescott. 5 The Maybach came to a halt at a red light on Michigan Avenue. The autumn air outside was sharp. Garrick slipped his cashmere overcoat off his shoulders and reached across the leather console to drape it over my bare knees. I shifted slightly, feigning an awkward turn in my seat, and allowed the heavy coat to slide off my legs and crumple onto the carpeted floor. Throughout the drive, his gaze had been burning into the side of my face—stubborn, feverish, suffocating. Finally, he couldn't bear the heavy silence. His voice came out low and hoarse. "Sloane. You’re not asleep." I opened my eyes, staring at the glowing digital dashboard, and offered a cold, dead smile. "Sharp as ever, Garrick." His jaw clenched, a profound sense of wounded shock flickering across his dark eyes. When we first met, his uncles were mounting a vicious coup within the board of Prescott Enterprises to strip him of his inheritance. I was the one who stood by him in the trenches. I went over shareholder ledgers with him until four in the morning; I helped him nurse his grandfather through a brutal bout of pneumonia to secure the patriarch's voting proxy. We used to share everything. Suffering together is the most fertile soil for obsessive trust. Back then, if I ever jokingly teased him, "Garrick, if the day comes where we have nothing left to say to each other, does that mean we pack our bags?" he would pin me to the mattress, covering my mouth with bruising, desperate kisses until I was gasping for oxygen, unable to speak a single syllable of departure. And now, he gripped the steering wheel so hard the leather groaned. "Sloane, you don't get to do this." You don't get to fake sleep. You don't get to stop arguing. And you sure as hell don't get to mention divorce. I turned my head toward him, my eyelashes barely lifting, my tone thoroughly detached. "I don't get to do what, exactly?" The utter lack of heat in my eyes acted like a fist shoved down his throat. The words died on his tongue. 6 I tossed and turned in the guest bedroom all night, listening to the muffled rain against the glass, and left the penthouse before dawn. The regional broadcast network where I worked as a senior segment producer had scheduled an exclusive profile piece on Cecilia Vaughn this morning. In the green room, my production assistant, Hannah, was practically bouncing on her heels. "God, she’s breathtaking!" Hannah sighed, staring at the monitor feed. "She looks like she was sculpted out of moonlight. Not a single pore, not an awkward angle. She’s like a porcelain doll." I looked at the screen and offered a faint nod. Cecilia had never endured the greasy, awkward humiliations of puberty. When she got a single pimple at fourteen, my father panicked and drove her across state lines to a private dermatology clinic, while my mother brewed organic herbal teas and bought her three-hundred-dollar imported serums. Meanwhile, I wore oversized, faded hand-me-downs, locking myself in the den to cram for AP calculus. When I begged my mother for a tube of concealer, she scoffed that I was throwing money down the drain. My father had barked from the dining table: "With a plain face like yours, slapping paint on it is like a construction worker troweling wet spackle over concrete. Focus on your grades; vanity doesn't suit you." I had smashed a ceramic mug against the kitchen cabinets that day, screaming until the neighbors threatened to call the police. Only then did my mother throw fifty dollars on the counter to shut me up. I wouldn't run away from this broadcast. In my world, stepping back never brought peace; it only yielded territory. If I was going to leave this city and this marriage, I was going to finish my job with absolute precision. 7 In the studio green room next door, my father was scurrying about like an overeager personal assistant, carrying Cecilia’s designer leather bag, fetching bottled glacier water. In the hair and makeup chair, my mother was hovering over the artists, repeatedly lecturing them about Cecilia’s hyper-sensitive skin and demanding they use only unopened high-end palettes. I sat at my laptop across the partition, typing the final interview teleprompter copy. Hannah peeked over her cubicle wall, whispering, "Her parents are absurdly devoted, aren't they? I read an article that they basically liquidated their lives just to follow her across Europe and build her into a prima ballerina." I smiled faintly, remaining silent. Hannah rested her chin in her hands, her eyes wide with tabloid excitement. "And rumor has it, Garrick Prescott is her primary benefactor! The gossip forums are blowing up this morning. They say they’ve been secretly seeing each other for over a year and an engagement announcement is coming. Why else would Prescott Enterprises pour millions into her touring company? Did you hear that at that charity gala three months ago, he threw his own body over her when a chandelier fell? Talk about a real-life romance." Hannah was young, completely enamored with the fairy-tale trope of the billionaire CEO and his delicate swan princess. I looked down and realized I had bitten my thumbnail raw. A bead of blood welled at the cuticle. It was an old nervous tic from my childhood, born from the suffocating pressure of being unseen. I hadn't done it in years. Garrick had never publicly registered our marriage with the press. In the beginning, he swore it was to protect me from the vicious tabloid smear campaigns launched by his estranged cousins during the corporate proxy war. Then, after our small courthouse ceremony, when he met Cecilia, his reasoning shifted. He claimed he didn't want the media to undermine my career by painting me as a corporate trophy wife riding his coattails. Every excuse he had ever framed as an act of noble chivalry now looked like a grotesque joke. I pressed a tissue against my bleeding thumb, clamping down on the acid rising in my throat. I refused to let grief overcome clarity. 8 Suddenly, my father’s booming voice erupted from the hallway outside Studio B. "Get your senior producer out here right now! Who the hell approved these interview questions?" The double doors banged open. "Who had the audacity to write this garbage? Implying my daughter stole someone’s husband? Implying she isn’t our biological child and that we abandoned our own family for her? Have you people lost your damn minds? I’m going to the network president’s office and having whoever wrote this fired!" When people are struck by the naked truth, their first defense is always an explosion of righteous fury. Behind him, Garrick stepped into the room, his expression dark and commanding, his voice cutting through the studio like a chilled blade. "I will not see a single segment air on this network that casts aspersions on Cecilia’s character. If one defamatory syllable leaves this room, the Prescott legal team will dismantle this entire division by sundown." I let out a soft, humorless chuckle and signaled the cameraman to track behind me. I pushed open the frosted glass door. My father, my mother, and Garrick stood like a human wall in front of Cecilia’s makeup station. And right beside them was Nate Miller. My former childhood protector was acting as her personal security detail and logistics runner, his muscular arms crossed, his eyes fixed protectively on her. I stepped into the light of the studio grid. A professional, perfectly neutral smile touched my lips. "Mr. Prescott," I said, my voice echoing clearly over the studio intercom. "Every question in that brief reflects the most searched inquiries from your online viewership. Which part of it is inaccurate? Which specific clause would your prestigious legal department like to litigate? Please, enlighten us. The cameras are rolling, and the audience would love an official statement." Garrick froze mid-breath. His face drained of color. "Sloane? What... what are you doing running this set?" "Mr. Prescott has been in Europe so often this past year, he must have missed the memo regarding my promotion to executive segment director." The questions were mine. Every single one of them. I wanted to force him to speak the lie into the light. Cecilia shot my father a rapid, calculated glance. My father caught the cue instantly. He puffed out his chest, stepping squarely in front of the main camera lens, and cleared his throat with booming authority. "It’s pure slander! I have only one daughter, and her name is Cecilia. And Garrick Prescott is her devoted partner. I will not allow jealous, irrelevant nobodies to drag my family through the mud." My mother averted her eyes, staring resolutely at the polished floor tiles, unable to meet my gaze. Garrick flinched, his head turning sharply toward my father as if he hadn't anticipated such a brazen lie. Cecilia leaned against Garrick’s side, her delicate fingers slipping around his bicep. She looked up at him with wide, glistening eyes, her voice quivering with theatrical distress. "Cousin, please... stop this humiliating scene. My parents took care of you for years. You can't slander my reputation just because you resent them for traveling abroad with me. Garrick and I have kept our marriage private for the past year to protect my career. Did you really think you could use this broadcast to force yourself between us? Garrick... tell her. Tell everyone." Garrick looked at the red recording lights, looked at the production crew holding boom mics, and looked at me. His throat convulsed. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, the coldness of corporate survival settled over his features. "Yes," he said.