“I mean exactly that,” she replied, her tone calm. Too calm. “We’re done.”
His frown deepened. “I don’t follow what you’re saying, Shauna.”
“I said we are done. Over. I’m breaking up with you.”
“What?” Akash shook his head, feeling confused. “No. No, this isn’t funny. Where is this coming from? Talk to me properly.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she said. “This was always how it was going to end.”
Something in the way she spoke sent a cold shudder through him.
“What does that mean?” he asked slowly.
His heart began to pound. Disbelief rocked him to his core. This couldn’t be what he thought was happening. Surely, this was some kind of joke, and she’d start laughing at the end of this.
“It means,” she continued, her voice sharpening, “none of this, us… was real.”
Akash blinked. “What?”
“You heard me,” she said. “You, me, all of it. It was never real.”
She’d just spoken to him a little while ago. She’d seemed fine then. Why was she talking like this now? It didn’t make sense. All their moments together flashed before his eyes. Her smiles, her laughter, her kisses, the way she melted into him. It was real. He knew it in his bones that it was.
“That’s not—” he cut himself off, shaking his head harder now. “I don’t know what has gotten into you, and I’m not talking to you about this on the phone. I’m reaching the house in a few minutes. Let’s talk more, and then you can look me in the eye and tell me it wasn’t real.”
“I’m not there, Akash,” she said. “I never came here this evening, and I will never be coming here again.”
“What is going on, Shauna?” he asked, getting angry now. “Why are you suddenly behaving like this? This is not funny, and I don’t like this joke anymore.”
“This is the truth.” She barked out a mirthless laugh. “I planned for you to fall in love with me, and it was so easy.”
His chest tightened. “You planned it? Why? For what purpose?”
“I agreed to marry you and then got close to you to show the board that they could believe in you. With me by your side, they saw you as stable and reliable.”
His mind scrambled to deny it, but her tone left no room for doubt. Her voice, her words, all of it felt too real.
Still, his heart refused to believe it. “You’re lying.”
“Am I?” she said. “You think the board would’ve trusted you the way they do now without me standing next to you?”
“So what? This was all some kind of… setup?” he demanded.
“Yes.”
His heart cracked open at her words, but a part of him still couldn’t believe it.
“So none of it was real?” he asked.
“None of it was real,” she repeated. “Not the nights spent in your apartment or our time here. It was all a big ploy to get you to this point where the board believed in you. That ends now. You will fail in front of the board. My grandfather will be forced to take up the reins again, and with time I will prove to him and the board that I am the better leader for Sehgal Media. After all, it is my family’s name on the logo.”
His stomach dropped as the reality of her words sank into him. “So, this was always about you leading Sehgal Media? It was about you competing with me?”
“Yes. It was all for me to get here to this point. I told you once that I will always choose power over everything else.”
He felt the crack in his heart widen.
His voice sounded hoarse to his own ears as he spoke. “You don’t mean that. You can’t. You don’t fake something like this for this long. Not everything. Not all of it.”
