"He wanted her. There's a difference." A bitter laugh escaped her. "When she got pregnant with me, she thought he'd leave Anjana. That he'd choose her. Instead, he set her up in a small apartment, gave her a monthly allowance, and visited when it was convenient."
"And after you were born?"
"He acknowledged me privately but never publicly. I was his dirty secret. The proof of his infidelity that he couldn't quite hide but refused to claim." Advika wiped at her eyes, frustrated by the tears. "My mother never complained. She loved me fiercely, gave me everything she could. She made our tiny apartment feel like a palace with her love and her laughter and her songs."
"How did she die?"
"Cancer. Ovarian. By the time they caught it, it was too late." The memory still hurt after all these years. "She was only thirty-two. I was five. And my last memory of her is sitting by her hospital bed, listening to her sing one last lullaby in a voice so weak I could barely hear it."
Tears were streaming down her face now. She didn't bother wiping them away.
"After she died, my father had no choice but to take me in. Anjana hated me on sight—the living reminder of her husband'sinfidelity. My half-brothers ignored me. I grew up in that house feeling like a ghost, like I was somehow less real than everyone else."
"Until you built Sinfully Sweet."
"Until I built Sinfully Sweet," she confirmed. "That was mine. My mother's life insurance money, my hard work, my dream. The first thing in my life that was completely, utterly mine. And then..." She gestured around them. "And then I had to give it up."
Sidharth was quiet for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough with emotion.
"My parents died when I was twenty-eight. Nisha was twenty-one, Rishabh was twenty-four. We were at a family gathering—aunts, uncles, cousins. Celebrating Diwali."
Advika went still. He'd never talked about this. Not to her, anyway.
"Raghav Malhotra had been my father's best friend since childhood. More than a friend—like a brother. We called him uncle. Trusted him completely." Sidharth's hands clenched into fists. "He'd been stealing from my father for years. Small amounts at first, then larger. When my father finally discovered it, confronted him privately, offered him a chance to make it right..."
"He killed them instead."
"Car bomb. Meant for my father, but my mother was with him. They died instantly." His voice was flat, emotionless in that way that meant he was feeling too much. "Raghav tried to make it look like a rival family. But he got sloppy. We found evidence. And when we confronted him, he ran."
"Did you find him?"
"Three months later. In Bangkok." Sidharth's smile was cold, cruel. "He didn't run far enough."
She didn't ask what happened to Raghav Malhotra. She didn't need to.
"I was twenty-eight," he continued. "Suddenly responsible for an empire I wasn't quite ready to lead, siblings who were grieving and looking to me for answers I didn't have, and the knowledge that someone we'd trusted completely had destroyed our family for money."
"So you stopped trusting anyone."
"So I stopped trusting anyone," he confirmed. "I built walls. Made sure no one could get close enough to hurt me or my siblings again. Became the cold, ruthless bastard everyone expects me to be."
"You're not—"
"I am," he interrupted. "At least, I was. Until you." He reached across the space between them, taking her hand. "You've been breaking down my walls piece by piece, Advika. And it scares the hell out of me."
"Why?"
"Because if I let you in completely, if I let myself care about you the way I'm starting to, and you leave—or worse, if something happens to you—I don't think I'd survive it."
The admission was raw, vulnerable, everything she'd wanted from him.
"I'm not going anywhere," she said softly. "Even when you've given me every reason to leave, I haven't. Because despiteeverything, despite the suspicion and the distance and your emotionally constipated bullshit, I love you."
"I know." His thumb traced circles on the back of her hand. "And I'm trying to be worthy of that. Trying to be the man you deserve instead of the man fear and grief made me."
"You're getting there." She managed a watery smile. "Slowly. But you're getting there."
They sat in silence for a while, hands linked, the air between them clearer than it had been in months.
