Chapter Twelve

Jake.

The chaos doesn’t stop.

If anything, it grows. The moment Eleanor disappears deeper into the gala, the cameras whip toward me. I’m suddenly drowning in a sea of microphones, shouts, flashes that make my vision blur.

Normally when this happens it's because they all want a statement from me about something business related and I always know how to handle it. Over ten years in the business I had become a pro at this. But this moment, nothing could have ever prepared me for this. 

“Mr. Donovan! Did you know Eleanor was still alive?”

“When was the last time you saw your wife?”

“Jake, were you hiding her?”

“How does it feel to see her after five years?”

"Is she okay with you marrying her blood sister?"

Questions are hurled at me like stones, each one heavier than the last. The words your wife sting like acid, because she isn’t mine anymore. She stopped being mine the moment I betrayed her and married her sister. 

Amina’s grip tightens on my arm, nails digging into my tuxedo sleeve. Her perfume is cloying, her voice sharp in my ear. “Don’t say anything, Jake. Just keep walking. Ignore them.”

Ignore them? As if that’s possible when the entire world just witnessed my dead wife walk out of the shadows alive.

“Jake, did you know?” a reporter screams, his voice cutting through the din.

The question lances through me, raw and direct. I freeze, my feet rooted in the red carpet. Did I know? God, I wish I had. Every sleepless night, every time I stared at the ceiling wondering what I could have done differently, every time guilt chewed at me, I would have given anything just to know she was breathing.

But no one will believe that now. Not when my own sister in law is on my arm, the same woman Eleanor trusted with her secrets, her blood. And here I am, parading her at galas like she’s my prize.

The flashes intensify, the air thick with the frenzy. Eleanor’s name is everywhere, bouncing from one mouth to another like wildfire.

Amina leans closer, her whisper sharp. “Smile, Jake. Don’t let them see you unravel. This is what they want.”

Smile? My chest feels like it’s cracking open. My heart is lodged in my throat, beating against the walls of a cage I built with lies and cowardice.

But something feels off about how she is acting, I expected her to be more ravelled, this was her sister. We both had a hard time accepting she was gone, but Amina looked unbothered, like she was more worried about how this all looked to the press and not the fact that her sister was here alive, a few meters away from us. 

One journalist shoves forward, nearly tripping over the velvet rope. “Jake Donovan! Did you know Eleanor Donovan is alive? Did you ever suspect?”

I turn, the weight of every camera aimed directly at me. For a moment, I forget the world, forget Amina, forget the chaos. My voice is hoarse when it finally breaks free.

“No,” I say, louder than I intend. The crowd quiets just enough to hear me. “I didn’t know she was alive, I am just as shocked as you all are tonight.”

The admission hangs in the air like smoke. It doesn’t calm the storm, it feeds it.

“What do you mean you didn’t know?”

“You are her husband!”

“Are you saying she faked her death?”

“Did you two conspire together?”

The barrage slams into me, merciless.

I rake a hand through my hair, trying to breathe. My pulse is racing so hard it feels like I might collapse right here on the carpet. I can’t think. I can’t focus. All I see is Eleanor’s face, the steel in her gaze, the way she didn’t falter when the world erupted around her.

She didn’t look at me like a woman seeing her husband after years apart. She looked at me like a queen staring down the man who betrayed her throne.

And maybe that’s what I am, the traitor.

Amina presses tighter against me, her arm practically wrapped around mine like a shackle. She plasters a bright smile across her face, waving at the cameras as if this is just another photo op. Her voice drops, low enough only I can hear.

“Don’t lose control, Jake. Do you understand me? If you break now, they will eat you alive.”

Her words dig under my skin, but they can’t anchor me. Not when my insides are unraveling at the seams.

Reporters are shouting Eleanor’s name again, her face plastered across the screens hovering above the hotel entrance. I glance up, and there she is frozen in that moment of stepping out of the car, flawless, untouchable. The world already belongs to her again, and I’m left here, drowning under the weight of her resurrection.

I force myself forward, dragging Amina with me, past the screaming journalists and the wall of flashes. But every step feels like walking through fire.

Because I don’t have answers.

I don’t know where Eleanor has been. I don’t know why she let me think she was gone. And I don’t know what I’ll say when I finally face her, not in front of the cameras, not with the world watching, but when it’s just the two of us and no one else to hide behind.

The thought terrifies me.

Because I don’t know if I’ll survive it.