“Separate suites… connected by a door.” Yamini kept her voice carefully neutral.
Pooja was quiet for a moment. Then a thoughtful look appeared on her face. “Maybe he's giving you space. Being considerate. You've just got married. You barely know each other. Maybe he doesn't want to make you uncomfortable before you're ready.”
Yamini tried not to blush, recalling the previous night and the soreness that still lingered between her legs.
“Yeah, maybe,” she muttered.
Pooja continued to talk, asking about the wedding attire, the visit to Rewa Palace, and then about the Jogra Palace.
Even as Yamini answered her excited friend, her mind kept circling back to the previous night and then that morning. She still didn’t know what Bharat Jogra’s motive was.
Why did you marry me?
CHAPTER 14
The conference room smelled faintly of steel, coffee, and controlled impatience.
Bharat sat at the head of the table, shoulders squared, posture exact. The screen behind him displayed charts. Production graphs, supply chains, and bid projections.
“The margin was less than one percent,” one of the senior directors said carefully. “The international consortium edged us out again.”
Again.
Bharat's jaw tightened imperceptibly.
The project had been clean. Strong. Financially superior. Technically unmatched. And yet, the contract had slipped through his fingers by a hair's breadth, awarded instead to a foreign conglomerate with weaker infrastructure but louder political backing.
“Was there any irregularity?” Bharat asked.
A pause followed.
“We can't prove anything,” another executive said. “But the timing aligns with the protests. Environmental pressure is being weaponized.”
Bharat's fingers tapped once against the polished table. Exactly once.
“So,” he said, “we're being destabilized from two sides.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
“Good,” Bharat replied.
The room stilled.
He leaned back slightly. “That means the attack is deliberate. Which means it can be traced.”
No one argued.
The discussion shifted to mitigation. PR strategies, legal routes, and regulatory compliance. When the meeting ended, he dismissed them with a nod.
One by one, the room emptied.
Silence returned.
Only then did Bharat allow himself to move.
He stood and walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. Cars crawled below like ants. Predictable. Ordered. Contained within lanes.
Unlike his thoughts.
