Hateful Games: (An arranged marriage billionaire romance) (Arranged Games Book 2)

Chapter Eighty-two

Two days have passed since Mihir’s ultimatum.

He’s yet to make good on his threats.

Though, he keeps texting me that time is ticking.

No one more than me is aware of the fact. Because it’s been the slowest, most suffocating, and dull forty-eight hours of living without Rose—returning to an empty house, desolate of life. I’ve been on autopilot as I convince my heart of the depths of her betrayal and to harden it into granite against softer human emotions.

Otherwise, I’ll never be able to go through with my plan.

To bring to light the truth about Jasmine.

Lily’s transgressions.

To even the score.

The devil chirping on my shoulder taunts me that Rosalie didn’t think twice about selling me out to my biggest enemy, so why should I? Everything is fair in love and war, they say.

However, every time I’ve come close to picking up my phone and sending the proof to all the media outlets, my fingers become paralyzed.

A force stopping me.

Because a part of me believes there’s still a chance, albeit miniscule, of Rosalie and I reconciling. Her regretting and becoming mine again. I haven’t even returned her things, secretly hoping she’ll come demanding them and I’ll have one more glimpse of her.

It’s like I’m chasing the ghost of her.

She’s ceased to exist.

I was desperate enough to almost call Nathan and beg him to ask Iris if she’s heard from Rosalie. But it’ll lead to questions from my best friend that I’m not ready to answer. One second, I had it all, and now, I have nothing.

Instead, I’ve put all my focus on battling against Mihir.

My father is working tirelessly on saving the port from Mihir’s greedy hands and before he blasts the pictures.

Meanwhile, I’ve searched every inch, nook, and cranny of my firm’s building for proof of how he’s receiving all his information. Each desk and computer has been investigated, every employee from top to bottom interrogated. Nothing incriminating has been found.

Feeding information manually is impossible.

She’d had to have been in the office daily to accomplish that.

I’m pondering what I’m missing when there is frantic movement outside my office before the door is thrown open unceremoniously.

My father’s pale face and rumpled appearance fill my vision.

I’m out of my seat before he even speaks.

“What happened?” I demand, expecting to hear another sneak attack or threat from Mihir. Maybe he released the evidence.

But nothing in the world prepares me for what he utters next.

“Your mom has been in an accident.”

***

Everything is blurred into white noise.

The outside hum. The chatter. The clanking. The hurried footsteps.

Nothing penetrates past the echoing silence ringing in my ears.

I stare at my mom’s lifeless form on the hospital bed, the dried blood from the gnash on her forehead. My fingers brush her hair back, connecting with her skin slowly turning colder by the minute.

She’s gone.

In the blink of an eye.

Just like that.

Even before we rushed to the hospital, every news channel out there announced her demise and spread the CCTV footage of her getting hit by a truck and flipping in the air before slamming and crunching against the windshield.

She died on the spot, is what the doctors said.

The impact caused her to bleed from the ears and nose.

“Ma,” I whisper past the ball lodged in my throat. Sliding my hand down her frail arm, I wrap mine around hers. Squeezing and waiting for the squeeze that won’t come or the warmth telling me she’s only sleeping and will eventually wake up.

She always did.

I startle when a strong hand curves around my left shoulder. “Son.”

“How can she be gone?”

He sighs heavily, unable to answer. What is there left to say?

My last and final conversation with her replays in my head.

“When were you going to tell me, Mom?”

She jerks back, confused, as I enter the kitchen. “About what?”

“That you blackmailed Lily into marrying her daughter with your son.”

Eyes turning wide, her face pales and she swallows. Cautiously she approaches, hands poised to touch me, but I step back. Despair crosses her soft features. “Nova, beta, please. I’m so sorry. It wasn’t my best moment. Once the decision was made, I regretted it immediately and tried to fix it, but Mihir, he—he wouldn’t listen to reason.”

“Yet you let me believe it was Dad who forced me into it.”

“I wanted to confess but you… seemed happy. You were always so angry at your father, the world, but with Rosalie, you smiled and laughed.”

“She’s leaving me.”

My confession renders her shocked. “She loves you.”

“She never did.” A hollow chuckle slips past my mouth. Gazing into my mother’s heartbroken and guilty face, I accuse, “You’re the reason I’ll be living the same fate as you. Unrequited love. And you’re the reason I hardly have a relationship with my father, because all my life I thought of him as the bad guy, when it was you.”

I didn’t mean it. It was a mistake confronting her when I was hardly myself and freshly wounded from my encounter with Rosalie.

Mom called and texted, but I never replied.

Her drinking had escalated, as mentioned to me by the cook, but I stubbornly didn’t check on her.

I’m the reason she was drunk on booze and driving on the road today. I’m the reason she was on her way to Rosalie’s house to fix my marriage. That’s what her text said from three hours ago.

In a mere few days, I’ve lost the only two women I’ve ever loved.

Along with any humanity I possessed. Love and affection are fickle and weak emotions. Having attachments and wearing your heart on your sleeve only invites misery and emptiness.

Our story was and will always be a hateful game.

Rosalie has felt my love, now she’ll face my wrath.

Nothing is more dangerous than a man who has nothing left to lose.