Chapter 12: Counter Strike

The phone screen dimmed, throwing my reflection back at me. Pale face. Wide, restless eyes. Hair coming loose around my shoulders. I barely recognised myself anymore.

I looked like a woman losing.

And that was exactly what Emily wanted.

My gaze dropped to the message thread with Sebastian. I hadn’t opened his last text. Not because I’d forgotten, but because I hadn’t been ready to see it.

> “Got something. It’s worse than you think. Call me when you’re alone.”

My thumb hovered over the screen, trembling. One swipe, and I’d see what Emily was hiding. One call, and Sebastian would hand me the ammunition I needed to fight back.

But a small, traitorous part of me still hesitated. Because once I used it, once I let Sebastian into this war, there would be no going back. Gabriel would know. He would feel it—that I didn’t just want to protect our marriage, I wanted to destroy his mistress.

Was I ready to go that far?

My stomach twisted. I thought of the photo Emily had posted—their arms linked, Gabriel smiling. That smile wasn’t casual. It was intimate. Tender. Like he’d let Emily see a side of him I hadn’t seen in years.

My throat tightened.

That decided it.

I shoved the phone aside before I would change my mind and opened my laptop. The glow lit up the kitchen, harsh against the dark. My fingers flew over the keys, searching, digging. Emily wanted to use dirt? Then I would find hers first.

There had to be something. Bank records. A fake address. A mistake buried in a background check. A skeleton tucked so deep Emily thought no one would find it.

My pulse raced as page after page of search results filled the screen. I didn’t even know what I was looking for yet, only that I would know it when I saw it.

And then—

A floorboard creaked.

My breath caught. I froze.

“Eve?”

Gabriel’s voice.

I whipped around, heart hammering. He stood in the doorway, leaning against the frame. His hair was messy from sleep, his shirt half-buttoned, and shadows darkened his face. But his eyes—his eyes weren’t soft, weren’t lost in the fog of amnesia.

They were sharp. Watching.

For a beat, neither of them moved.

His gaze flicked to the phone on the table, still lit with Sebastian’s name across the screen. Then to the laptop, pages of search results glowing. Finally, back to me.

“Who were you talking to?” he asked, voice low.

My mouth went dry. Words tangled in my throat, useless.

Because for the first time since the crash, Gabriel wasn’t looking at me like a husband.

He was looking at me like a man who suspected me.

Emily’s phone buzzed against the marble counter, the screen lighting up her reflection in the café’s polished window. She didn’t check it immediately. She already knew what it would say.

I had seen the post.

Emily stirred her latte, slowly, deliberately, the spoon scraping the porcelain in lazy circles. Around her, the café hummed with quiet chatter and clinking cups, but she heard none of it. Her mind replayed my face in her imagination—shattered, pale, humiliated. Exactly how she wanted me.

She picked up the phone at last. The flood of notifications almost made her laugh. Comments, likes, private messages. People loved a scandal. They always had.

But it wasn’t the strangers that mattered. It was Gabriel.

Her smile sharpened. Because I would be scrambling now, making excuses, trying to patch a marriage that was already bleeding out. And Gabriel—sweet, broken Gabriel—would start asking questions. She’d planted just enough doubt. He didn’t need memories to feel betrayal. He only needed the right push.

Emily slid her phone into her bag, rising from her seat. She walked like she was on a runway, every step measured. This was her stage now.

On the sidewalk, she pulled out her phone again, thumb hovering over her camera roll. There was more. Photos I hadn’t seen yet. Videos. Screenshots of texts from Gabriel, cropped to look intimate, and damning. She hadn’t released them. Not yet. She was saving them like ammunition.

The first strike was just to soften the ground. The next would burn it.

Her phone buzzed again. A message from a private number. She frowned, opening it.

> “You think you’re untouchable. You’re not. I know what you’re hiding.”

Her pulse spiked. She froze on the street, traffic blurring around her.

Another message.

> “Careful, Emily. Eve isn’t the only one who can play.”

Her grip tightened, knuckles whitening. Who the hell—?

Her thoughts raced. Eve? No, this didn’t sound like her. Someone inside the company? A jealous employee? Or… Sebastian.

The name scraped across her nerves like glass. Eve’s old shadow. The man with money, charm, and a dangerous habit of digging until he found bones. If I had turned him loose, then maybe—just maybe—he would have known things she’d buried. Things that could ruin her.

Her nails dug crescents into her palm. She refused to flinch. Not here. Not now.

Emily lifted her chin, and typed back with steady hands.

> “You don’t scare me. Gabriel is mine. Always has been.”

She hit send.

Slipping her phone back into her bag, she caught her reflection in a darkened shop window. For a heartbeat, she saw the crack in her confidence—the doubt, the fear. Then, as quickly as it came, it was gone.

A slow smile curled her lips again.

Because panic was a weakness. But anger? Anger was fuel.

And if I wanted to unleash Sebastian, then Emily would unleash something worse.

Something I wasn’t ready for.

Back to Eve and Gabriel.

“Eve?”

Gabriel’s voice still echoed, heavy in the silence.

I froze in place, every nerve alive, my hand hovering above the phone where Sebastian’s name still glowed on the screen.

He stepped further into the room, his presence filling it. He wasn’t foggy or distracted tonight. He wasn’t the broken man fumbling for pieces of memory. His eyes were steady, sharp, and cutting right through me.

“Who were you talking to?” His voice was low, and measured. Dangerous.

My pulse thundered in my ears. I swallowed hard, trying to summon words, but my tongue felt thick, useless.

“I—” I cleared my throat, forcing myself to breathe. “It’s not what you think.”

A humourless laugh escaped him, short and bitter. “Then tell me what I should think, because from here…” His gaze swept deliberately over the glowing laptop screen—articles about Emily, screenshots, and threads of suspicion pinned together like a crime board. “…it looks like you’ve been digging.”

My chest tightened. “I’m protecting us, Gabriel.”

“By calling him?” His jaw ticked, and for a moment, there was something almost feral in his expression. “By calling Sebastian?”

The air cracked between us. My heart slammed against my ribs.

“I didn’t have a choice.” My voice trembled, but I pushed through. “Emily isn’t going to stop. She’s already attacking me online, spreading lies, making you look like—like—” I bit down on the word “hers”, too bitter to speak. “Sebastian can find things I can’t. Things we need.”

Gabriel’s fists clenched at his sides. “So you don’t trust me to handle it?”

“It’s not about trust!” I shot back, louder than I intended. “It’s about survival. She’s winning, Gabriel. And if we sit here doing nothing—if you keep pretending she’s not out there—you’ll lose me. She’ll take everything, and you won’t even see it until it’s gone.”

My words hung between us, sharp and raw.

Gabriel’s chest rose and fell, his eyes still fixed on me. He didn’t look broken anymore. He didn’t look lost. He looked cornered, dangerous, as though every shadow of the man he used to be was pressing against the edges of who he was now.