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He caught her in his arms. She struggled against him. Her leg raised to knee but he was expecting it and shifted at the last second.
He trapped her against his chest. “I think you know by now that nothing and no one can keep me away from you. Not evenyou.”
“Stop it,” she yelled. “Stop lying to me.”
“I love you, Sheena, and that is the absolute truth.”
She stared at him for a long moment, and then she pressed her hands to her face and began to cry.
He loosened his hold on her and clasped her face. “Sheena, baby, please don’t cry.”
She shrugged out of his hold, but he didn’t let her move. “I swear upon my family that I love you. You’re the only woman I have ever loved.”
She wiped her eyes and stared at him. “What about Avantika? Don’t even try to deny that she isn’t important to you because I have eyes, and I saw you with her. I could see she was special.”
“Avantika is and will always be special…” When she began to back a step, he held her arms. “She is a friend. But I have never loved her the way I love you.”
“And yet you asked her to marry you. You’ve been doing so for the last seven years. And if she is that important, then what about that model you were with last night? And Avantika’s son…is he yours? Oh God, have you been hiding a child from the world?”
“Neil is Avantika’s son. He’s not mine. Avantika and I have never had that sort of a relationship. We’ve ever only been friends, nothing else.”
He caressed her cheek. “I have never touched her the way I touch you.” He dipped his head to the side of her neck, kissing her. She shivered. Her reaction gave him immense satisfaction. “I have never kissed her the way I kiss you. You are the only woman I have ever loved.”
She lifted his head up. “Stop touching me like this. I can’t think.”
“Asking me not to touch you is like asking a thirsty man in an oasis not to drink.” He caressed her cheek again. “I know you have questions, and in order to answer those questions, I will have to tell you my biggest secret. There is no option now because Aaryan and Vihaan ensured that when they brought you to the restaurant. Both of them knew I’d be meeting Avantika there. They called you there to reveal themselves to you, and thus force me into telling you about them and their story. It was their way of showing me that they trust you enough to bring you into their circle.”
She blinked. “What secret? What story?”
“The Rajpoots—Avantika, her brothers, and Neil. They are my secret. The world thinks the Rajpoots are dead. However, they live here in Dubai, hiding from some dangerous people. They fear that these people may find them and try to eliminate them again because all the wealth, assets, and properties which belonged to the Rajpoots have been stolen by those very people.” He sighed. “Almost seven years ago, their enemies killed their parents. They would have killed them, too, but the siblings escaped from their house in Shimla, where they had been held hostage. They were badly beaten up, and Avantika has an arm covered with tattoos because under her tattoos are dozens of scars. Those people hurt her and made her brothers watch. The siblings escaped just before their house was burned to the ground, and that’s why we assume their enemies think they are dead. The Rajpoots keep to themselves and have no friends other than me in order to stay off the radar of their enemies.”
“What happened to them? And how are you involved in all this?”
He took her hand and led her to the living room. He made her sit beside him on the sofa. He sat close to her, refusing to stop touching her or having her close.
“What I am going to tell you is something very few people know. Not even my family knows about this. It is important that you don’t discuss this with anyone ever. Lives are at risk, Sheena. I mean it.”
When she nodded, he continued. “I’ve known Aaryan and Vihaan since school. One day, because of a stupid football match in high school, we ended up having a fallout. We moved on and soon lost touch. A few years passed. I became twenty-one, and had just started working at Poseidon. My grandfather, who is the brain behind Poseidon, had passed away. My dad has been the primary caregiver for my sisters and me. He was a stay-at-home dad while Mom ran the business.”
“That’s amazing. I didn’t know that.”
“He is amazing. Anyway, in those years, Mom had just started running the show and my uncle, Mom’s younger brother, was quite useless. Grandfather had given him a small portfolio at Poseidon and a huge salary to keep him distracted and out of the way. Wine, women, gambling, that’s all he was good at. He wanted to live his life on his terms, without a wife and kids weighing him down. Unable to deal with the trauma of a disastrous marriage, his wife passed away when Navya and Ananya were quite young. Uncle had always been a shitty father, but now he became even more negligent and selfish. My parents stepped in and began looking after the girls. After grandfather’s death, Uncle Gautam allowed my parents to legally adopt Navya and Reina with the condition that my mother gave him freedom to do what he wanted at Poseidon. For the sake of the girls she agreed.”
“Oh my, I never once suspected Navya and Reina are not your real sisters.”
“They are my sisters, just like Ananya is, and we don’t go around announcing our history to everyone,” Rajiv sighed. “Anyway, my uncle suddenly thought he could take decisions in the business. Mom didn’t want to deal with her brother, and hence had asked me to keep an eye on him. One day, I heard him talking about some shipments from Shimla that had come to Mumbai and had been sent across the world. He seemed to be very happy about them. I dug into the situation and learned that the shipments were from the Rajpoot Marble Mines and that one of the Rajpoots’ partners was shipping marijuana in the marble shipments and he had convinced my uncle to help him. I fought with my uncle and didn’t allow him to accept any more shipments.”
Familiar guilt washed over him as he continued the rest of the story. “What I ought to have done was call Aaryan or Vihaan and ask them outright if they knew what was going on. No matter our fallout, they were honest men, and their dad had also been honest. But I didn’t. I was young, stupid, and still angry with them. A few days later, I got a call from an old acquaintance from school who told me that the Rajpoots had all died. That their house had caught fire and all of them had perished. I was stormed with guilt. I had an opportunity to call them, and I hadn’t even spoken to them one last time. I was so pained by that news. Then, about a month or so later, as I was leaving my home in Mumbai, Aaryan and Vihaan stepped in front of my car. I thought I was seeing ghosts. I ran out to meet them, so glad they were alive. They told me their story, and that’s when I realized how my one mistake in not calling them had led to them being orphaned and on the run.”
“I don’t understand,” Sheena said.
“You see, their dad’s partner and his son were behind the illegal marijuana trading. They had killed the Rajpoots’ parents and hurt the siblings. Aaryan and Vihaan had escaped with Avantika and were living in Mumbai in hiding. They were barely surviving. The world thought they were dead. Possibly, even their enemies thought the same, as they had since stolen all the assets owned by the Rajpoots and staked a claim on them. I felt so awful. It was because of me that they had suffered. Had I called one of them and informed them of what I suspected, then maybe their parents would have been alive. Maybe they’d be living a happy and complete life instead of this incomplete one.”
Sheena held his hand. “Hey, their ordeal is not your fault. You informing them may not have changed their past. What if they had acted against their enemies and then gotten killed because they knew too much? Have you ever considered that? What if they are alive today because you kept quiet?”
“Aaryan and Vihaan have told me that so many times.” Rajiv squeezed her hand. “Yet, I have always been burdened with guilt. I helped them escape to Dubai on one of our ships and helped them build a new life here. I soon learned Avantika was expecting a baby and offered to marry her. Until recently, I believed that marrying me would be the best bet for the Rajpoots to live safely. I am powerful in my own right, and no one can challenge me. Even their enemies would think twice to come at them if I was standing in front, protecting them. They could have easily announced to the world at large that they were alive. They could have fought with their enemies to reclaim their assets. But they didn’t want that. Nonetheless, I moved Poseidon’s headquarters to Dubai so I could be close to them. So I could protect them better and be there for them when they needed me.”
“Vihaan told me that you’ve been asking her to marry you every year on her birthday.”
