James POV
Six months into marriage, James Ashford is happier than he's ever been.
This surprises him. He's never believed in happiness. He's believed in power. In control. In building things that can't be taken away. But Eleanor has changed something fundamental in the way he exists in the world.
She's real. That's the thing. Even though she's mysterious about her past, even though she flinches when people ask questions about where she's from, even though there are moments when she looks like she's somewhere else entirely, she's real in a way that nothing else in his life has ever been.
He watches her in the morning while she sleeps. She looks peaceful. Like she's not running from anything. Like she's just a woman. Just his wife.
His mother thinks he's insane.
Victoria calls him three times a week asking him to have Eleanor investigated properly. Asking him to dig into her past. Asking him what he really knows about the woman he married.
He tells his mother to stop.
Because James doesn't care about Eleanor's past anymore. He cares about her present. He cares about the way she looks at him. He cares about the fact that for the first time in his life, he's not alone.
One evening, he comes home with a surprise.
Eleanor is in the living room and he has workers bring in a grand piano. A beautiful one. The kind that concert pianists dream about playing.
She cries when she sees it.
Actually cries. And then she sits down and plays something that sounds like her entire life compressed into music. Something beautiful and broken and healing all at once.
He stands in the darkness of his penthouse and listens to his wife play and thinks he's never felt anything like this before. This completeness. This rightness.
After she finishes, she turns to look at him and her eyes are wet.
"Thank you," she whispers.
"You don't have to thank me," he says. "Play for me whenever you want. Play for me every night."
And she does.
Every night, Eleanor plays the piano and James listens. The music is sad sometimes. Joyful sometimes. But always honest. Always real. It's like she's telling him her entire story through the keys without having to use words.
He starts planning a real wedding.
Not like the secret courthouse ceremony. A real wedding. With his family. With his friends. With the world knowing that Eleanor is his wife. That she exists. That she matters.
He talks to her about it one morning over breakfast.
"I want to marry you properly," he tells her. "I want a ceremony where everyone knows. Where you're not hidden anymore."
Something flashes across her face. Fear, maybe. Or sadness.
"I don't know if that's a good idea," she says carefully.
"Why not?" he asks. "Are you ashamed of me?"
"No," she says. "Never. It's just... I'm private. I don't like attention."
"Then we'll keep it small," he says. "Just family. Just people who matter. Just a moment where we can be honest about what we are to each other."
She doesn't answer. She just picks at her breakfast and looks like she's a million miles away.
Three months after the piano, James starts to notice things.
Eleanor gets phone calls that she doesn't answer. She'll see the caller ID and her whole body tenses up. Then she deletes the call from her recent list like she's erasing evidence.
He tells himself not to be paranoid. She's entitled to privacy. Everyone is.
But he can't help wondering who's calling her.
She also disappears sometimes. Just for an hour or two. She tells him she's going to the library. Going for a walk. Going to get coffee. But when she comes back, she looks like she's been crying.
He wants to ask her about it. He wants to demand answers. But he's afraid. He's afraid that if he pushes, she'll disappear completely.
So he tells himself that his mother was wrong. That Eleanor is private, not deceptive. That there's a difference between having secrets and being a liar.
One evening, she's in the shower and her phone buzzes on the nightstand.
He shouldn't look. He knows he shouldn't look. But he does.
The text message is from an unknown number. "Trial date moved up. You need to be ready."
He stares at the message.
Trial? What trial?
He scrolls up to see if there are other messages. The conversation history has been deleted. Just this one message left behind.
He puts the phone back down before she comes out of the shower.
When Eleanor emerges, she's wrapped in a towel and her hair is wet. She looks beautiful and fragile and like someone who's carrying something too heavy.
"Who's Samuel?" he asks carefully.
She goes completely white.
"What?" she says.
"Samuel," he repeats. "Is that a friend?"
"Why are you asking?" Her voice is shaking.
"Your phone got a message," he says. He's trying to be gentle but it comes out like an accusation. "About a trial date."
She reaches for her phone so fast that she almost falls over. She checks it and her hands are shaking.
"It's nothing," she says, but her voice is all wrong. All broken.
"Eleanor—"
"I said it's nothing," she says. But her eyes are full of tears and fear and things he doesn't understand.
She gets dressed in silence. She doesn't talk to him for the rest of the evening. When he tries to touch her, she pulls away.
By the time they go to bed, there's distance between them. A distance that wasn't there before.
He lies awake beside his wife and realizes that he doesn't actually know her.
That underneath the beautiful woman he married, there's someone else. Someone carrying secrets. Someone who might be running from something.
His mother was right.
He's been a fool.
The next morning, James makes a decision he knows he shouldn't make.
He has his security team investigate Eleanor's background.
Not to hurt her. But to understand her. To figure out who she really is and what she's hiding.
The report comes back two days later.
Eleanor Marsh doesn't exist.
No birth certificate. No social security number. No family records. No past. Just a woman who appeared three weeks before the charity gala and started teaching piano.
Before that, nothing.
James sits at his desk and stares at the report and realizes that everything he believed about his marriage is a lie.
His phone rings.
His mother.
"Have you found out the truth yet?" Victoria asks without hello.
"How did you—"
"Because I had her investigated months ago," his mother says. "Because I knew something was wrong. Eleanor Marsh isn't real, James. Your wife doesn't exist."
"I know," he says quietly.
"So what are you going to do?" his mother asks.
He looks at the wedding plans spread across his desk. The wedding that's supposed to happen in two weeks. The wedding where he's planning to announce to the world that Eleanor is his.
"I'm going to find out who she really is," he says.
"And then?" his mother asks.
"And then," he says, "I'm going to decide if I can forgive her for lying."
He hangs up the phone.
That evening, he comes home early. He finds Eleanor in the bedroom and he's holding the report.
She takes one look at his face and every drop of color drains from hers.
"We need to talk," he says.
And Eleanor looks like her entire world is ending.
Which, James realizes, it probably is.