Married in Vengeance (Dynasty Rebels #4)

Chapter 46

Forty-Six

AADHYA

“You’re the brightest part of the sun.”

Two weeks later, Aadhya still couldn’t get the words out of her head. She wanted to. She couldn’t do this anymore. She couldn’t love a man who thought her capable of what she’d been accused of.

And yet, she did.

She loved him with a gut-wrenching ache that left her feeling constantly lost and off kilter. She went into work, she fought to stabilize her company along with her brother and father and she went home to cry herself asleep in her childhood bed. She reached for him in the middle of the night, while half asleep, her body refusing to accept what her mind told her. She woke every morning, her heart a throbbing bruise in her chest, hoping she’d bump into him at work or otherwise, just so she could see his face one more time.

Unable to bear the cacophony in her head, she went looking for her brother at the office. She found him in a huddle with the company’s finance team, poring over some papers.

“Aadhya?” His eyes sharpened as they caught sight of her standing by the door. “Is everything okay?”

She nodded, tilting her head towards the door in a silent question.

“Excuse me for a moment,” he told the other people in the room and followed her out of the conference room and to his office where they could have some privacy.

“I want you to file the divorce papers.” The words shot out of her before the door had even fully slammed shut behind her.

Aarush paused, seemingly computing the words she spewed at him. “Okay,” he agreed for a second. “Have you read the Memorandum of Understanding Ram gave you?”

“No.” She shook her head, anxiety rising in a tidal wave inside her, her body again fighting what her brain was telling her to do. “I don’t want to.”

“You need to.” Aarush walked over to his desk and pulled out the papers, holding it out to her.

Aadhya stared at it like it was a venomous snake. “You read it.”

“Aadhya.” Aarush’s tone brooked no argument. “If you want to take the hard calls, you can’t shy away from the path to them. Read the damn agreement.”

She pulled the papers out of his hand, almost ripping the corner of one sheet in her agitation. She flipped the sheets, her eye racing from one line of legal jargon to the other. And then she slowed, her mind catching up to the words she was speed reading.

“Why?” she whispered, looking up at her brother. “Why would he do this?”

Her brother smiled faintly. “I could take an educated guess but I think it’s a question you need to ask him.”

“I don’t need his money.” Her voice rose in agitation. “I don’t want it.”

“And yet, he’s giving you almost all of it.”

“Change it.” She held the papers out to Aarush. “Make him change it. Make him take it back.”

“You need to talk to him about that. Not me.”

Furious tears stung her eyes as she stared at her brother. “You think I can’t?”

“You can do anything, Chinna,” Aarush said gently. “But this is something you can’t put off forever. You want a divorce? Go, get one.”

“You think I don’t want one?” Aadhya’s temper flared in direct reaction to her brother’s calm. “You think I’m simply threatening it? That I’m crying wolf?”

“It’s not about what I think but what I know.”

“And what do you know?” she challenged.

“I know that Ram signed those papers, but you still haven’t. You didn’t even look at it until now.”

His words slammed through her like a sledgehammer. “I’m not taking his money,” she told him, her voice quavering.

“Tell him. Not me.” Aarush watched her steadily.

“He betrayed me.”

“And I abandoned Priyanka at a bus stop.” Aarush rubbed a tired hand over the back of his neck. “You defended me until the bitter end and Priya eventually forgave me.”

“You had your reasons,” she said.

“And Ram had his.”

“Yours were valid!” she fired up.

“Who’s to judge, Chinna?” Aarush shrugged. “At the end of the day, the real question is, not can you forgive him but do you want to forgive him?”

Aadhya didn’t answer, her throat clogging with unspoken emotion.

“You’re the only one who can answer that question.” Aarush’s eyes softened at her obvious distress. “He’s a good guy, Aadhya. One of the best, to be honest. It doesn’t justify what he did but it does tell us that he’s as human as the rest of us. He screwed up once like the rest of us peasants do on a regular basis. His halo is just a bit askew now, that’s all.”

He came over to where Aadhya stood, silent tears streaming down her face. “And none of that matters if you don’t want to forgive him. You should do what you want to do. Only what you want to do.”

She buried her face in his shirt, sobbing openly now. Aarush smoothed her curls back from her damp cheeks.

“What do you want Aadhya?” he asked again.

“I want him,” she whispered, a weight sloughing off her shoulders at the admission. “I want him.”