Chapter Fourteen

Jake.

The silence swallows me after she leaves.

Her perfume lingers, faint but sharp, cutting through the sterile hotel air. My hands still ache from gripping her arms too tight, but I don’t regret it. I needed to feel her, to know she was real, not some cruel hallucination conjured up by guilt.

Eleanor is alive. And I just touched her arm, she is alive. 

The thought pounds in my head with every heartbeat, relentless and impossible to quiet. My chest feels like it’s caving in, as though five years of buried grief just clawed its way out all at once.

I press my palms against the wall, leaning forward, dragging in a breath that doesn’t steady me. My throat burns, my vision swims. I’m not the man who unravels in public, not the man who loses control, but right now, I’m standing on the edge of collapse. I feel like my whole life has just been removed from under me. I don't know what's real anymore or what's not.

And then her voice cuts through.

“Jake?”

I freeze.

When I turn, Amina is there, framed in the doorway of the dim corridor. Her dress is perfect, every strand of hair pinned immaculately, but her eyes,sharp, calculating are fixed on me like I’m an animal she can’t afford to let loose.

She strides toward me, her heels clicking against marble, her lips pulled into a smile too brittle to be real. “What the hell was that?” she hisses, the fake sweetness cracking the moment we are alone. “Do you have any idea how that looked?”

I straighten myself up, dragging a hand over my face. “What are you talking about now because I don't have the time Amina?”

Her laugh is bitter, edged with fury. “You just snatched her off the red carpet in front of a hundred cameras, Jake. Everyone saw it. They are probably already spinning it into headlines. Jake Donovan still obsessed with his wife who he thought was dead. Do you understand what that does to us? To me?”

Her words are sharp, but they barely graze the storm inside me. I take a step toward her, my voice low, trembling with restraint. “Us? That’s what you’re worried about? How it looked and not the fact that she is back, she is not dead?”

Her eyes flash, her chin tilting in defiance. “Yes, Jake. Because perception is everything. We have worked too hard, I have worked too hard, to build this life with you. And now, now she just waltzes in from the grave and you” she breaks off, throwing her hands up, “you hand the press a scandal on a silver platter five minutes after she resurfaces.”

Something inside me snaps. I close the space between us, my voice rising despite myself. “Eleanor just walked back into my life after five years of thinking she was dead, and all you can talk about is the damn press?”

She flinches, but not from guilt, only annoyance. “What do you want me to say, Jake? That I’m falling apart because she’s back? I’m not. I won’t. I refuse to give her that power over me.”

The words slice, and for a moment I can only stare at her. My blood runs hot, anger pulsing through me. “She is your sister.”

Amina’s mouth twists, her eyes narrowing. “Half sister,” she spits.

I shake my head, disgust curling in my gut. “You really don’t care, do you? Not that she’s alive, not that she’s standing right there after years of being gone. You’re more concerned about headlines than the fact that your blood, your own flesh and blood isn’t in the ground like we thought.”

Her jaw tightens. “You don’t get to stand there and lecture me on how to feel, Jake. You didn’t exactly put her on a pedestal when she was alive, did you?”

The hit lands, clean and cruel. I stagger back half a step, my chest hollowing out.

She knows exactly where to cut.

I grit my teeth, my hands curling into fists. “Don’t you dare.” My voice is low, shaking with rage. “Don’t you dare throw that at me like you weren’t part of it. You.. ” my throat works, raw with memories, “you were the one who knew how broken we were, and you still stepped in. You still took what wasn’t yours to take.”

Her expression flickers, but she hides it quick, lifting her chin like armor. “You were already halfway out of that marriage, Jake. Don’t rewrite history just because she’s back.”

I stare at her, stunned by the coldness. The woman standing in front of me is polished, poised, and utterly unbothered by the ghost that just shattered our world. And for the first time, I see her clearly, not as the comfort I clung to in the aftermath, not as the safe harbor I convinced myself I needed.

But as the woman who helped bury Eleanor long before the world thought she was dead.

I drag a shaky hand over my mouth, my chest rising and falling too fast. “You know what scares me the most, Amina?” My voice cracks despite my best effort to hold it steady. “It’s not that Eleanor’s back. It’s how calm you are about it. How little it shakes you.”

Her lips press into a thin line, her silence heavier than any argument.

I step back, shaking my head slowly, the walls of the corridor pressing in. “Maybe that’s the difference between us. I thought I lost her, and it gutted me. You thought you lost her, and it freed you.”

The truth tastes like ash on my tongue, but I can’t swallow it anymore.

Amina’s eyes harden, her smile returning like a weapon. “Believe whatever makes you sleep at night, Jake. Just remember, you’re mine now. And no matter what game Eleanor’s playing, she can’t change that.”

She turns sharply, her gown swishing as she disappears down the hall, leaving me alone with the wreckage inside me.

I lean back against the wall, dragging in a breath that won’t fill my lungs. My hands tremble at my sides, my heart thundering like it’s trying to break free.

Eleanor’s alive.

Amina’s unbothered.

And me?

I’m standing here unraveling, realizing that maybe I never buried Eleanor at all. Maybe I buried myself.