‘In on what?’ he asked, confusion slicing through his anger.
Siya took a step forward, guilt rising like a tide in her throat. ‘Oh my god, you actually believe it. Dhruv, no, that’s not what happened. I wasn’t married to Abhay for two years. Dad made it all up.’
He just stared at her, frozen.
Her fingers curled against her palm as she repeated the story for the second time today. ‘It was all for PR appearances. When the Patel-Riaz partnership was announced, Dad became paranoid about losing his place in the market. He forced us to marry, then made up a story of how we’d already been married for two years to avoid suspicion and rumours.’
‘But why would you agree to such a thing?’
When Siya told him how he’d used Kashvi to blackmail her into saying yes, his face became pale, and his eyes went wide as saucers. His arms dropped to his sides, and his gaze fell to look at the floor.
‘I thought you knew,’ she whispered. ‘I thought you’d been a part of his plan.’
‘You really thought I’d go along with something like that? Of course, you wouldn’t need another reason to believe the worst in me.’
His taunt brought her pain to the surface. ‘I didn’t think you’d care.’
‘I have always cared, even when I shouldn’t have, even when you ignored my existence as kids!’ Dhruv snapped and looked away.
Siya froze when she caught light swelling across his cheekbone. There was a faint discolouration, yellowing at the edges. She might have missed it under the harsh light of the office floor, but the bruise was visible under the muted light of the lamp.
She recalled seeing something similar on his cheek the day the partnership was announced. She touched his jaw, and though her touch was light, he flinched and took a step back. ‘Show me your cheek, Dhruv.’
He hesitated, his eyes narrowing like he didn’t trust her intentions, but then he tilted his head to the side.
She knew what it was, and worse, she knew what it meant. She’d seen bruises like that before. Once on her mother the morning after a fight with their father, and again, once on herself before Kartik learned that she was not the kind to suffer silently.
Now, seeing it on her younger brother, made her stomach churn with disgust and rage.
‘Dad hit you?’
When he didn’t answer, she insisted, ‘Tell me, Dhruv, did Dad do this to you?’
Dhruv pulled back, stepping away from her like she’d burned him. Her body stiffened at the sound of raw pain in his voice.
‘You don’t get to ask me that.’
‘Like hell I don’t! If you don’t tell me right now, I’ll—’
‘You’ll do what? Ignore me some more? Oh no, wait, you already do that enough! If you hadn’t, you’d see that this has been going on for years.’
Siya felt the shame come over in a huge wave. He was right. If she’d looked at him before, really looked at him, she would’ve never missed the signs. If she’d been as hyper vigilant about him as she’d been about Kashvi’s safety, he wouldn’t have suffered. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘You threatened him when he slapped you once. You made it clear that you will take it public if he touched you or Kashvi but you didn’t hide me behind your shield. He never laid a hand on either of you after that. But me? He had free rein over me.’
‘I… I thought you’re the child he’d never hurt because he wanted you, he loved you. I never thought…’ she trailed off, unable to finish it.
He gave a short, bitter laugh. ‘Dad loved me? That’s got to be the joke of the century. Siya, I was the orphan he never wanted and the problem he didn’t know how to control, so he had no reason to hold back with me.’
Siya shook her head, not able to bear his accusation. ‘No, I…’
He smirked but his gaze held unshed tears. ‘But I wasn’t your problem, right? You never looked twice, not when I came home with a limp, not when I flinched when he was around, not when I disappeared for hours in the garden just to get away from him.’
Siya closed her eyes, absorbing the blast of his anger, and saw him as the lanky and quiet boy he used to be. He was the living proof of her father’s betrayal and she had resented that reminder every time she saw him at home, in the backseat of the car, sitting next to her at the dinner table.
But now, standing in front of him, she saw how the driving force of fear and abandonment and loneliness had shaped him into the angry and suspicious man he was today.
She reached out and touched his arm, hoping to bridge the distance she’d built between them over so many years. ‘I can say that I was only eleven when Dad brought you home, that I was grieving my mother, recovering from my injuries, and raising a school-aged sister who always clung to me fearing she’d lose me too. But all of them are flimsy excuses in the face of what you had to go through alone.’
