Chapter 5
Michael
Jack Specter stood in my penthouse doorway, and I watched him absorb everything in real time.
The anger hit first—quick and hot, the kind I’d seen him direct at business rivals and guys who looked at his sister wrong.
Then confusion, because this didn’t make sense with anything he knew about us.
Finally betrayal, settling deep in his eyes, because I was his best friend and I’d married his sister without a word.
I deserved all of it.
He walked past me without a word, and I let him. Didn’t try to explain or make excuses. I just closed the door and waited for the explosion.
Claudette was on the couch, still wearing my T-shirt, looking small and lost in a way that made my chest hurt. Jack saw her and everything else fell away—the anger, the betrayal, all of it seemed to evaporate from him the second he registered his sister sitting there.
“Claudie.” He was across the room before I could blink, dropping to his knees in front of her. His hands went to her face, tilting it up to look at him. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine, Jack—”
“Don’t.” His voice was firm but laced with concern. “Don’t tell me you’re fine. You disappeared—” He stopped, breath catching. “Do you have any idea what went through my head? The things I thought might have happened?”
“Jack.” Claudette grabbed his wrists. “I’m okay. I promise.”
“You got married.” He said it like the words didn’t make sense in his mouth. “You married Mike. Without telling me! What were you thinking?” Anger was deep in his voice now.
“I don’t actually remember what I was thinking,” Claudette said. Her voice was quiet as her gaze found mine across the room.
Jack went completely still. “What?”
I stayed by the door, every muscle locked tight. This was it. The moment everything got more complicated.
“What do you mean you don’t remember?” Jack’s voice had changed. Gone sharp with a different kind of fear.
“I don’t know what’s happening either—” Claudette started.
Jack looked between us. “So let me get this straight. You flew to Vegas on impulse. Met up with Mike. Got married. And now you don’t remember any of it.”
“That’s pretty much it, yeah.”
Jack stood, shifting into the version of himself that ran a company and didn’t take shit from anyone.
“I need to talk to Michael,” he said after a beat. His voice had gone very tight. “Alone.”
“About me? Then I should stay—” Claudette looked from me to him.
“Please. Just give us a minute.” Jack wasn’t looking at her anymore—he was looking at me.
Claudette glanced between us. Whatever she saw in our faces made her decision.
“Fine.” She grabbed her phone from the table. “But I’m not a child, and I’m tired of being treated like one.”
She walked into the bedroom and closed the door. The second it clicked shut, Jack was moving. He grabbed my arm and hauled me toward the kitchen area, away from where Claudette could hear.
“Talk,” he said. “Now.”
I pulled my arm free. “We got married. Yesterday. That’s what happened.”
“Yes, I got that part right.” He repeated it like the words didn’t compute. “You got married to my sister. In Vegas.”
“Yes.”
He pulled out his phone and shoved the screen toward me. Someone had recorded our wedding video, because obviously I was a sought-after bachelor in all of New York City.
Claudette in that white dress, me in a suit, both of us saying vows. “The entire internet knows before I do,” Jack said, his voice was shaking with barely suppressed rage. “My best friend married my sister and I found out from a viral video.”
“It just happened. We were going to tell you—”
“Don’t tell me it just happened.” He ground out, shoving the phone back in his pocket roughly. “How long have you been planning this?”
I sighed, knowing whatever I said wouldn’t change anything. If I told myself the story, I wouldn’t believe it either.
Still, I tried. “It wasn’t planned—”
“Bullshit.” He was right in my face now. “You don’t just accidentally marry someone, Mike. So tell me. How long have you been lying to me?”
“I haven’t been lying—”
“You married my sister.” He shoved me—not hard, but hard enough to make his point.
“The same sister I told you—multiple times—to stay away from. Remember those conversations? Because I remember them really clearly and you promised me. She’s had this silly crush on you, but I warned you not to hurt her! ”
“Jack—”
“I told you she was off-limits. I told you that you don’t get to look at her that way. I told you—” His voice cracked. “I trusted you, and you stabbed me in the back.”
Those words hit harder than the shove. His eyes were dark with betrayal, red-rimmed like he’d been up all night replaying every moment of our friendship and finding lies in all of them.
“I know,” I said. No defense. No excuses. Just acknowledgment of what I’d done. What I’d taken from him.
“You took the one person I asked you not to touch and you married her. In secret.” He straightened, his whole body rigid with barely controlled fury. “She’s coming home with me. Now.”
Everything in me went cold. Then hot. Then absolutely still.
“No.” The word came out instantly. Non-negotiable.
Jack blinked. “What?”
“She’s not going anywhere.” I straightened too, meeting his anger with something harder. Something immovable. “She stays here.”
“The hell she does—”
“She’s my wife, Jack.” I said it clearly. “My wife. That changes everything.”
“You think saying that gives you rights over her?” His voice rose, sharp and incredulous. “You think marrying her in Vegas means you get to keep her?”
“I think it means she’s mine to take care of now. Mine to protect.” I took a step toward him instead of away. “You had your turn. You’ve been protecting her, hovering over her, making decisions for her since she was born. But she’s not yours anymore.”
“She’s my baby sister—”
“And she’s my wife.” I didn’t back down. Didn’t soften. “Which means when she needs something, I’m the one she comes to. When she’s scared, I’m the one who comforts her. When she wakes up confused and lost, I’m the one who’s there.” I paused. “Not you. Me.”
“You don’t get to decide that!” He seethed.
“I’m not deciding anything. She already decided when she married me.” I held his gaze. “You want her to go home with you? Fine. Go in there and ask her. See what she says.”
“She doesn’t even remember marrying you—”
“Exactly.” I cut him off. “She doesn’t remember. Which means if she wanted to leave, she would. If she felt unsafe or uncomfortable or trapped, she’d say so. But she’s not asking to leave, Jack.”
“Do you even love her?” He threw the words like a weapon. “Or was this just some impulsive Vegas thing you’ll regret in a month?”
The question should have felt heavy. It didn’t.
“I love her,” I said. Simple. Direct. No room for doubt.
Jack’s jaw worked, his eyes sharp with disbelief. “And when the hell did this happen? You were engaged to Hannah Pierce—did that slip your mind?”
“We broke up.”
Jack stopped. Just stopped moving entirely. Stared at me. “What?”
“Hannah and I. We broke up.”
“When?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, it matters.” His voice rose sharply. “You were engaged last week last I knew!”
“And we ended it.” I met his eyes. Held them.
“When?”
“Recently.”
“Define recently.” He said the word slowly.
I said nothing. Just looked at him.
“Mike.” Still nothing.
“How recently?” Silence.
Jack’s eyes narrowed and I said, “That’s not the relevant part—”
“When, Mike?”
“The details don’t really—”
“When?”
I held his gaze. “A few hours before you called me to look for Claudette.”
Silence followed my announcement like I knew it would. Complete, absolute silence.
Jack just stared at me. His face went through about five different expressions in three seconds.
“You broke up with your fiancée a few hours before you married my sister?”
“I broke up with Hannah because I was in love with Claudette.”
He shook his head like I was speaking absolute bullshit.
He ran his hands through his hair, and I saw the frustration in his eyes about the impossible situation we were all trapped in now.
“Your stupidity aside, how did she lose her memories?” he asked. The question brought back every moment of my panic when she’d suddenly gone limp.
“Seizure,” I said. “She was fine one second, then unconscious the next.” I could still feel the weight of her in my arms, the terror of not knowing if she was breathing.
“I flew Dr. Rivera here. He checked her out. She’s stable, but the seizure affected the last year of her memories.”
Jack’s eyes widened, understanding dawned slowly, and I saw the exact moment he realized what this meant.
She didn’t remember the diagnosis, being sick and all of it.
“Holy, shit,” he cursed quietly.
“She thinks she’s fine,” I finished. “Just dealing with memory loss.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“So Claudette stays here,” I said, before he could suggest anything else. “With me. It was what she wanted at first—space, freedom, not being treated like she was fragile.”
“This is insane,” he said, voice low and furious. “The doctor warned us about memory loss. In the later stages. When things… when things get worse.”
“We can tell her when she’s stronger.” I met his eyes. “She needs time to adjust to the memory loss. Time to process the marriage. Then we tell her.”
“This is a mistake.”
“Maybe. But it’s her mistake to make.”
“She’s my sister.”
“And she’s my wife.” I said it firmly. “She stays here. With me.”
“You don’t know how to take care of someone who’s sick.”
“I know how to take care of someone I love,” I said.
“It’s my duty as her family to take care of her,” Jack’s voice went sharp. “Stress makes everything worse. The seizures, the headaches, all of it. And you being involved is about as stressful as it gets.”
“If her family was so caring, she wouldn’t have run away.” I shot back. “You want to stress her out more? Take her back to that house where she feels suffocated and see what that does.”
Jack flinched.
We stood there in silence, the weight of everything pressing down.
“I’m sorry, Jack, really,” I said finally. “For not telling you. For doing this without your blessing. You’re my best friend and I should have—”
“Yeah. You should have.”
“But I’m not sorry I married her.”
Jack studied me for a long moment. “If she stays here,” he said carefully, “you take care of her properly. Doctor appointments. Medications. Whatever she needs.”
“Done.”
“I mean it, Mike. She’s my sister. If you hurt her—”
“Our friendship is over. I know.” I held his gaze. “I’m not going to hurt her, Jack. Ever.”
He nodded, then he began to walk toward the door, then he stopped. Turned back around to face me.
And punched me.
Hard.
Right in the jaw.
I staggered back, my hand flying to my face. Pain exploded through my skull.
“What the hell—”
“That’s for enabling my sister’s impulsive act.” Jack shook out his fist, looking grimly satisfied. “And for lying to me about your feelings for her.”
I worked my jaw. It hurt like hell, but nothing felt broken. “I probably deserved that.”
“You definitely deserved that.” He headed for the door again. “Don’t hurt my sister, Mike. Not emotionally, not physically, not in any way. Because if you do, I won’t just punch you next time.”
“Understood.”
He paused at the door. “I’ll handle our parents. Buy you some time before they come after you.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I’m doing this for her, not you. I’ll be around,”
He left.
I stood there, touching my jaw, tasting blood. My phone started vibrating in my pocket. I pulled it out.
Hell no. It was my grandfather. Probably calling to demand an explanation.
I sent it to voicemail.
I wasn’t ready to deal with him yet, or defend why I hadn’t married Hannah Pierce like he’d demanded. That I’d married someone else entirely.
My grandfather was going to lose his mind. Probably threaten to disinherit me again.
I didn’t care.
For now, I was only going to focus on her.
I’d just gotten her back, and she deserved time. To feel normal and loved, even if the normalcy was a lie.
Until then, I’d keep the secret. Let her think she was fine and adjust to being my wife without the shadow of death hanging over everything.
It was selfish. Probably wrong. Definitely complicated.
But it was the only thing I could do.