Ashish nodded, dropping his gaze. “You’d unlocked it to take a selfie of us and then you were talking to that young girl at the next table, showing her the ring…”
“The how doesn’t matter,” Aakash said. “I’m more interested in the why.”
“Why were you stalling the deal?” Vikram asked, sounding confused. Daksh didn’t blame him. He felt like they all had ablueprint in front of them, one that made no sense. His brother had fucked up, apparently intentionally, but why?
“Because he needed time to collect and invest money in Banlay. When their deal with Thakkar Industries went public, his shares would skyrocket and he’d cash in. Instant millionaire.”
Aakash managed to sound bored as he laid out Ashish’s masterplan but his eyes…they promised Ashish an eternity in hell, with a fiery poker skewering him.
“Vedu.” Ashish reached for her hands. She took a step back, bumping into her father who steadied her.
“It’s not what it looks like,” Ashish said, shamefaced. “I never meant to screw you over.”
“But you did,” she said, and for the first time her voice shook. “You…before we started dating, you were my friend, Ash. Why? Why would you do this? Why would you fuck with my career like this?”
“Your career? Your career was always safe. It’s practically nuclear missile proof. You’re Aakash Thakkar’s daughter! Vedu.” This time he grasped her hands and she let him. “I had debts. I wanted to wipe them out before we got married. I…It’s hard being Aakash Thakkar’s son-in-law and I just wanted to get there with a clean slate. This would have done that for me. It wasn’t about you. It was never about you.”
“No, it wasn’t, was it?” she replied, pulling her hands from his. “It wasn’t about being my husband. It was about being his son-in-law. You’re right. It was never about me.”
She pulled her engagement ring off her finger and set it gently on the dining table, beside the plate full of her uneaten food.
“We’re done,” she said quietly.
Her family rose, all of them as one, following her out of the room. Vedika was halfway to the door when she crossed Daksh. She stopped, tilting her head up to look at him, to meet his gaze.
“Did you know?” she asked, her voice empty of all emotion.
“I suspected,” he replied, honestly. He would always give her honesty, hard though it was. “I knew something was off.”
“And you didn’t tell me?” There was something in her voice that had her father glancing sharply at Daksh.
But Daksh didn’t look away from her. He always only wanted to look at her, even when he saw the pain he’d caused. There was no denying the brutal fact that he hadn’t warned her of his suspicions. “Would it have made a difference?” he asked her, one hand reaching for her before he pulled it back and shoved it in his pocket.
She shook her head, turned away from him but not before he saw a stray tear escape her, slide down her cheek.
“That fucking lobster,” she murmured.
And then she was gone.
CHAPTER 25
VEDIKA
A strange numbnessdescended over her, a vacuum of sound and emotion. She ignored the angry voices of her family, the concerned glances, the comforting touches and focused on the kernel of rage inside her.
She followed her father into his study as he spoke to some of the senior leadership, discussing options for damage control.
Damage control. She was the damage he had to control. Her bad choices, her blind faith, her naïve illusions…
“Vedika.” Aakash’s calm voice throbbed with an undercurrent of tension, of worry. “We’ll have to call off the Banlay deal.”
“Why?” Kanak asked, frowning. “It’s a good deal. The profit margins are massive and it’s scalable. It pushes new frontiers in AI and-“
“Because of Ashish,” Vedika interrupted, a headache throbbing behind her eyes. “If we push this through, he makes a lot of money. The ‘insider trading’ finger will point directly at us when he does.”
“He’s not your fiancé anymore,” Vikram pointed out from his corner of the room.
“But he was when he made the trade,” she countered. “Pa is right. We need to nuke the deal.”
