Page 2 of The Promise of a Traitor

A bead of sweat trickled down his brow as the unease he’d been struggling to hold back surged to the fore. He opened his emails, went through old voicemails, and even purged his messages, looking for something, anything…

But every search came back with nothing.

He thought back to the night before. He’d emptied out his account to take her to a three-star Michelin restaurant. They’d gone dancing afterwards…He could still feel her fingers in his hair, her arms around his neck, her supple, svelte body moving in tandem with his own awkward, uncoordinated one.

“I love you, Aastha Agarwal,” he’d whispered, kissing her long and deep. “Promise you’ll never leave me?”

“I love you, Advik Malhotra,” she’d murmured, her words mere breath over his lips.

The cab pulled up in front of their campus and Advik paid the driver before jumping out and running towards the dormitories. If Aastha wasn’t at work, she’d be in her dorm. She didn’t have classes this morning. He knew. He had her schedule memorised. How else could he keep finding pockets of time for them to meet?

He stopped outside the door to her shared room, his heart pounding, sweat pooling at the base of his spine. He knocked on the door, and it swung open. Cathy, Aastha’s roommate, looked at him in surprise.

He knew.

Even before he met her gaze and saw the tinge of pity in it. Even before he glanced towards Aastha’s side of the room and saw the stripped bed, the empty shelves, and the cleared-out writing desk, he knew…

She was gone.

“I love you, Aastha Agarwal. Promise you’ll never leave me?”

It was only in this moment, as he stared at the empty space where the love of his life should have been, that he realised she’d never answered him.

Chapter One

Advik

He took a deep breath as he stood on the crowded pavement outside the café. An elderly lady jostled him as she strode past, bumping shoulders with him and walking away without a backward glance or a mumbled apology. The moment reminded him so much of life in New York that he almost smiled. Almost.

He’d stopped smiling a long time ago at the thought of New York.

He shifted slightly on his feet as he continued to stand there, staring at the cute, flower filled frontage of the café. Chai & Stories. It was a cute name. Except he hated tea. All he drank was black coffee.

And he didn’t do cute. Not anymore. And yet, here he was.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, reminding him of exactly why he was here. He pulled it out and swiped to receive the call.

“Ma.”

“Don’t bark at me, Advik Malhotra.” His mother’s crisp voice came through loud and clear. “Have you reached?”

“Yes,” he said dryly. “How could I not when you’ve been barking at me all day about this?”

Maya, his mother’s, voice softened. “It’s one meeting Adi. Can’t you do that much for me?”

“When did you become one of these typical mothers?” he asked, keeping his voice conversational as his gaze went back to the sickeningly sweet window of the café.

“Typical mothers?” Maya sputtered on the other end of the call.

“You know the kind? The ‘my kid needs to get married and have children before I grow old and die’ kind.”

“You bite your tongue,” Maya retorted briskly. “I will never be old. Older maybe but not old.”

Advik grinned. This was fun. “I don’t know, Ma,” he mused. “I saw a grey hair the other night. It kind of highlighted the eye crinkles by your temple.”

“You,” Maya said, her voice going sharp with amusement, “are not too old for me to put you over my knee. Older or otherwise. Don’t push your luck.”

“You’ve been pushing your luck with me for months,” he shot back. “Why are there different rules for you?”