HIS FORGOTTEN VOWS

Chapter 3

CASSIAN’S POV

The office was the only familiar place to me.

Everything was clear and familiar. Almost like I had never left.

Same lines. Same numbers. Same decisions based on logic and not emotions from memories I no longer had. Same staff. I was the same man. I felt like the same man. The CEO and renowned strategist who rebuilt our empire from the ashes of my father’s mistakes.

What I didn’t know was why I’d apparently married Diana Vaughn.

Yes she was beautful and extremely attractive. She had this class and elegance that made men run after her and act stupid for her attention. But I was not other men. I was Cassian Kane.

Love, she kept saying. We were in love.

But I didn’t remember love. I only remember waking up with extreme head pain surrounded by strangers who claimed to be family. Only my sister and business partner Richard was I able to recognize. I didn’t know the pale shaking woman with tear stained eyes claiming she was Diana, my wife.

I’d thought she was lying.

Part of me still did.

…..…..…..…..

I stared out of the window of my office sipping my coffee slowly. I had just completed the last of my work and was free. I could see the whole city from where I stood. My office was located at the topper most floor of the skyscraper and surrounded by glass. If I went very close to the window, I could look down and see people, as tiny as ants and rushing about and the cars which looked like small stones, trying to beat the traffic. This sight always made me chuckle. Those people I looked at every day were hopeless people, people who worked their whole lives working for a pension. Some just wanted to work and save up for their kids college, a decent retirement home, or to spend some stupid vacation on an island, silly dreams. I hated how contented they were with their lives, their jobs, their families. Some were not even ready to change anything. They would say they were contented and happy. They enjoyed doing the same thing every day. The routine they had developed after some years and they stuck with it.

I always wondered why anybody would be content with anything, why some people do not even try for more. I had met some and what they would say is

“Cas, money and status is not all there is in life, what matters that you are happy. Haven’t you ever wondered what it is like to fall in love?”

How pathetic. Fall in love? That was the dumbest thing I ever heard. I had never fallen in love and I didn’t want to.

That was why I could never believe the ridiculous lie that the reason I had married Diana was because I fell in love with her. Ha!

My office phone buzzed. “Mr. Kane, your nine o’clock is here.”

Marcus Reid. Right. I’d asked my cousin’s friend to meet me, needed his perspective on the financial discrepancies I’d found in the joint accounts Diana claimed we’d opened together.

“Send him in.”

Marcus entered with the easy confidence of old money….tailored suit, expensive watch, the kind of smile that probably charmed investors and women equally. We’d known each other peripherally before the accident, but he’d been surprisingly helpful these past few months. Offering advice, sharing information about Diana’s past, helping me navigate the minefield of a marriage I couldn’t remember.

“Cassian.” He shook my hand, settled into the chair across from my desk. “You sounded stressed on the phone. What’s going on?”

I pulled up the financial records on my computer, turned the screen toward him. “These transfers. Diana says they’re from joint accounts we opened for the business merger. But the amounts don’t make sense. And the timing….” I pointed to a series of transactions. “These all happened right after I woke up from the coma.”

“That’s… concerning,” he said.

“Is it?” I wanted him to tell me I was being paranoid. That there was a reasonable explanation. That my wife wasn’t systematically draining our accounts while I was too confused to stop her.

“Look, I don’t want to speak out of turn.” Marcus sat back, choosing his words carefully. “But Diana has a history. Before you, there was a tech mogul. Before him, an investment banker. She always dated wealthy men, and she always walked away richer than she started.”

Ice slid down my spine. “You’re saying she’s done this before.”

“I’m saying there’s a pattern.” He met my eyes. “Cassian, I know you can’t remember, but I knew Diana in college. We dated briefly. She was… ambitious. Calculating. The kind of person who always had an angle.”

“She seems genuine.” Even as I said it, I heard the doubt in my own voice.

“The best cons always do.” Marcus’s expression was sympathetic. “I’m not telling you what to think. Just… be careful. Verify everything she tells you. And maybe consider that the accident gave you clarity you didn’t have before.”

The same thing Lauren Vaughn had suggested yesterday when she’d visited my office. Diana’s own mother, warning me about her daughter. What kind of family did that?

A family that knew the truth.

After Marcus left, I sat alone with the financial records and my growing suspicion. My phone buzzed….a text from Ava.

Lunch today? Need to talk to you about something.

My sister. The only person I completely trusted. If anyone could give me perspective on this mess, it was her.

Noon. The usual place.

If she was running a con, she was phenomenal at it.

If she wasn’t… then I was the worst kind of husband.

My desk phone rang. Dr. David’s office.

“Mr. Kane, the doctor wanted to remind you about your appointment this afternoon. Three o’clock.”

Another follow-up. Another round of tests that would tell me what I already knew: my memories weren’t coming back.

“I’ll be there,” I said, and hung up.

I checked my medical files on my computer….the ones Dr. David sent after each appointment.. Pages of scans and treatment notes that mostly meant nothing to me. But I read them anyway, searching for something. Anything that would explain why my recovery felt wrong.

And then I saw it.

Handwritten in the margins of my prescription list, in cramped, urgent letters: CHECK YOUR BRAIN SCANS.

I stared at the note. It hadn’t been there last week. Someone had added it recently. But who? And why?

I opened another file. More notes in the margins: THEY’RE WATCHING.

My pulse kicked up. This wasn’t random. Someone was trying to tell me something. Warn me.

Someone was trying to warn me. About what? About Diana? About my treatment? About the accident itself?

My phone buzzed again. This time, a text from a number I didn’t recognize:

Don’t trust Dr. David. Don’t trust your wife. The accident wasn’t an accident.

I stared at the message, my blood running cold.

Then another text came through:

Your wife’s family tried to kill you. The marriage contract is a trap. Get out before the next reset.

I stood abruptly, my chair rolling back and hitting the window. My mind was racing, fragments of paranoia and possibility colliding.

Lauren’s visit yesterday. Her suggestion about annulment.

Marcus’s warnings about Diana’s history.

The financial transfers I couldn’t explain.

The notes in my medical files.

The pattern of my memory loss, too regular to be natural.

Diana, playing piano in the dark, looking at me like I was killing her.

I grabbed my jacket and headed for the door.

Ava could wait. Lunch could wait.

I needed answers. Now.

And I was starting to suspect that everyone I’d trusted….my doctor, my wife, maybe even my own family….had been lying to me from the beginning.

My phone buzzed one more time as I stepped into the elevator.

Three o’clock appointment is a trap. Don’t go alone. And whatever you do, don't tell Diana you know.