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PROLOGUE
His parents just wouldn’t stop fighting. He hated it. Why the hell did he have to be stuck between them? His house was already a war zone, thanks to their daily squabbles, and now this car journey had become equally taxing. He checked the time. Half an hour more, and they’d drop him off at the stud farm to his grandfather. At least his weekend would be peaceful. He’d be with the horses… He’d be happy.
He simply couldn’t wait to get there.
“This trauma will never end,”his mother screamed at his father. “It’s torture. We’re paying the price of what you did, Vaibhav.”
“Relax, Diksha. I’ve taken care of everything. We won’t be bothered again.”
“Forgive me if I don’t believe a word of what you say…”
Rohan put his headphones on, droning out their argument. His headphones were his one relief from all the perpetual chaos that had been part of his upbringing since the last seventeen years of his life. But he was almost done with it all. One more year, and he’d be sent away to America to study. One more year, and he’d be free of his parents and their negligence. He waited for the day he would leave that house. He’d made up his mind to never return. Sighing, he focused on the audiobook he was listening to on his phone, peering out the window at the sun setting in the distance.
Several minutes later, he looked in the front and gasped.
A car was coming at them at full speed…
“Dad!” Rohan yelled.
But his father paid him no heed. His mom was still ranting and his dad was looking at her.
A loud crash ensued. His stomach plunged. His mother’s screams echoed around him. Their car somersaulted before it fell to the ground. Pain erupted through his body, and the world turned black.
Rohan Bali jolted upright. It had been seventeen years since the accident—the accident that had taken his birth parents’ lives and changed his forever. He hadn’t dreamt about them for so long now. He thought he’d even forgotten the sound of their voices. But this dream… God. It reminded him of so much.
He ran a shaking hand down his face. Post the accident, his life had changed drastically. His father’s elder brother, Varun, and his wife, Tara, had taken Rohan into their fold, and now, they were his adopted parents. He’d subsequently learned that Rithwik was not his cousin with whom he coincidentally shared a birth date but his twin brother. He was so grateful for all that Varun and Tara had done for him, and still did for him. He was lucky in so many ways.
He turned on the night light and checked the time. It was three in the morning, and he’d barely been asleep for two hours. Sleep eluded him on most nights, and tonight it was bizarre that this nightmare had decided to haunt him. It felt especially ominous after what he’d recently discovered.
He’d thought his past had been laid to rest, but this dream was a stark reminder that one never really got over their past. Like a ghost, the past crept into your life when you least expected it.
Awake now, he drank half a bottle of water before washing his face and brushing his teeth. He knew from prior experience that he wouldn’t be able to sleep again. Insomnia had been his friend since he was twelve. Sleeping for only a couple of hours a night was common for him.
Leaving his bedroom, he went to his den. He opened a drawer and flicked through the torn note he’d found a few days ago. The note was yellowed, faded, and old. He’d come across it while scanning through an old philosophy book he’d found on a book shelf.
“It isn’t enough, we need more mon…”
His mouth tightened on reading it again. Someone related to him had been threatened in the past. Considering his latest dream, his gut warned him that the note concerned his birth parents. They were being threatened before they died. For years, he’d buried away the memories before the accident, but now he knew it with an alarming and intuitive certainty that something had been amiss with them.
The dream tonight had definitely been a sign that he needed to dig deeper and find out why Vaibhav and Diksha had been threatened.
His hand curled around the note. He had no choice but to unlock the past in order to get to the bottom of this mystery.
1
Once upon a time, there was a girl who had a career she loved, and then one day, after years of searching, she found her Prince Charming. And now, they lived happily with their two kids in a perfect life they’d built together.
Jiya Deewan had always believed in fairy tales. In fact, when she was thirteen, she’d been asked to write a story in less than fifty words for a school assignment, and this had been the story she’d written.
Now she was all grown up, but her belief hadn’t wavered even the slightest. She’d seen firsthand that fairytale romances existed, case in point the many happy marriages within her close circle of family and friends.
For a while now, Jiya had believed that she was already on her way to finding her happily ever after. She had a great job, a great set of friends, a fine apartment to live in, and a lovely family. The only thing missing was her Prince Charming. She hadn’t met him yet, but her romantic heart knew that she would meet him someday.
However, right at this moment, the second she uttered the words that were dying to come out of her lips, she knew she would jeopardize her own fairytale or at least one important part of it.
She rubbed her gloved fingers in the cold Inverness air, listening to the speaker pacing ahead. Fuck. Who in their right mind would want to do a management conference in the open air in freezing Scottish weather, especially the last session of the day? The wind chill had picked up considerably as the day had progressed, and it was fucking freezing now.
It was insane. Around her, all ten of her colleagues were huddled in overcoats, mufflers and beanies, sticking close to the fire pits spread outside, desperately trying to tolerate the cold. However, no one had the guts to voice their disapproval.
