Chapter Eleven

Jake

I have faced hostile boardrooms, billion dollar deals on the verge of collapse, and enemies who would’ve loved to see me crumble. Nothing, nothing ever rattled me the way this moment does. I had thought I was ready for this, but nothing could really prepare anyone for something like this, 

The gala lights blur around me, drowned by the thunder of camera flashes. Reporters scream questions I can’t even register, and for once, the perfect smile I practiced for nights like this dies on my lips.

Because I see her.

Eleanor.

My Eleanor.

The woman I buried in the quiet corners of my heart five years ago. The woman I convinced myself was gone, lost forever even though deep down something always felt off. 

But she isn’t gone. She’s here, alive, breathing, stepping onto the red carpet like she owns every inch of it. 

For a split second, my lungs stop working. My chest feels like it’s collapsing in on itself. I blink, once, twice, trying to shake off the impossible, but the vision doesn’t fade. She doesn’t vanish back into the grave I forced myself to believe in. She was here, and she was walking towards me. A big smile plastered on her face. She had not aged a day, if anything she looked more beautiful than the last day I saw her. 

God, she looks… different. Stronger. Sharper. The Eleanor I knew had a softness to her, a vulnerability she never hid from me. But this version, she’s carved from steel. Midnight blue silk clings to her body like it was made just for her, her head held high as though every camera belongs to her. And maybe they do, because no one else exists right now. It's her world. 

Not even Amina, whose hand rests on my arm.

I don’t feel her touch. I don’t feel anything but the pounding in my veins, the heat climbing up my neck as Eleanor’s gaze slices across the carpet and lands on me.

It’s like being gutted.

Those eyes once mine, once filled with trust and warmth are colder now. Distant. They don’t tremble when they meet mine. They don’t soften. They burn, steady and unyielding, as if to say: You thought I was gone. You thought you won. But I’m back.

My jaw tightens until it aches. My fingers curl into fists at my sides, the only thing keeping me upright.

She’s alive. Eleanor is alive. 

But I am not shocked really, deep down I always had a feeling she was, I just didn't know where or what could have happened. Or maybe it's the fact that we never found her body. 

Where the hell has she been all these years? Why didn’t she reach out? Why let me, why let the world think she was dead?

My throat dries, but my mind is a storm.The anger starts kicking in, she has been well clearly living her best life while I mourned her. That day is still fresh in my mind, the day she disappeared. 

Five years of silence. Five years of guilt and questions I buried under the weight of Amina’s comfort, of moving forward, of trying to forget. And now, now those years collapse into dust with just one look from her.

“Jake,” Amina hisses softly, tugging at my sleeve. I can feel her tension, the way her nails dig into the fabric. “It’s her. It’s really her”

“Don’t,” I snap, sharper than I mean to. My voice is raw, low, so unlike the polished man I usually am in public. I can’t tear my eyes away from Eleanor long enough to reassure Amina. I can’t do anything except stare.

The cameras are going insane, the crowd screaming her name like she’s risen from ashes, and maybe that’s exactly what she’s done.

Eleanor Donovan, the woman the world thought was dead. My wife. My ex wife. She wasn't really my ex wife since we never got a divorce. She was still my wife. 

My mistakes rush back, one after the other. The betrayal. The nights of lies. The choice I made, the choice to fall into Amina’s arms, thinking Eleanor would never know. Thinking secrets stay buried.

But secrets don’t stay buried. They come back in gowns and diamonds, walking red carpets like ghosts who learned how to haunt you in the flesh.

I don’t realize I’ve stepped forward until the cameras shift, their lenses angling to catch me in the same frame as her. A murmur ripples through the crowd, a collective awareness that history is rewriting itself right here, right now.

Her eyes don’t flinch.

She doesn’t break.

I’m the one unraveling, the one drowning in five years of questions I can’t answer.

Does she hate me?

Does she blame me?

Or worse, does she not feel anything at all anymore? 

Of course she hates me, I am married now to none other than her blood sister. But maybe she would understand we found solace and comfort in each other, we bonded over our grief. 

The thought claws at me. The idea that she could return, look at me with those eyes, and feel nothing. That the love we once had is dead, even if she isn’t.

I swallow hard, my throat like sandpaper.

Some part of me wants to push through the flashing bulbs, to reach her, to demand answers. Another part wants to disappear, because facing her means facing the truth I’ve run from all this years. 

But I can’t move.

I can only stand there as the cameras immortalize the moment Jake Donovan sees his ghost return. The perfect man, undone in front of the entire world.

And maybe that’s what I deserve.

Because Eleanor isn’t just alive. She’s back on her throne. And I’m still the man who moved on with her sister and never made any real effort to find out what happened to her. 

Her lips curve, not into a smile, not quite. More like a blade hidden in silk. The kind of look that promises a war is coming.

And for the first time in years, I’m afraid.

Not of her.

But of what she makes me feel, even now.

My Eleanor.