SWNOVELS Chapter 5
(Eighteen years old)
“Do you really have to go?”
I dump another black lacy dress in the suitcase. “Yes.”
“How long will you be gone?” asks my best friend, Bianca, with a sad pout.
“A week, probably.”
“A week!” she squeals in shock, sitting up and leaning against the headboard of my bed. My pug, Maggie, startles at her reaction before settling down beside her legs. “Does Aunty Lily honestly think he’ll tolerate you, let alone keep you company for that long? You both can’t even stand in the same room for a few minutes without being at each other’s throats.”
“I told her the same but she likes to live in a bubble where Nova and I are hopelessly in love, eager to go off into the sunset,” I begrudgingly reply. God bless my mother, but denial is her best friend. Hell, her whole life is one big lie of a bubble she pretends is the truth.
Two years ago, she broke my trust with her confession that she had, in fact, played matchmaker to bind ours and Nova’s family together. I was given the most bullshit excuse to exist in history that I was a child and wouldn’t understand.
And yet, she didn’t bat an eye while giving her child to the enemy.
Our relationship hasn’t been the same ever since that breach of trust.
“Poor London,” she says sadly, disrupting my thoughts. “The city will be a bloodbath.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s quite an exaggeration, Bee.”
“Is it, though? I mean, you literally set his car on fire.”
“He burned my favorite book!”
“He could have died, Ro. And you would’ve ended up in jail,” she slowly says, always the voice of reason. “Then I would’ve been left without a best friend.”
“Why?” I gasp, aghast. Pressing my hand to my chest in mock hurt, I accuse, “You wouldn’t have visited me in prison?”
“I have to draw a line somewhere,” she mischievously replies. “I refuse to be best friends with a criminal.”
“Here I thought we were together for better or worse.”
“That will be one of your vows to Nova soon.”
“If I survive this trip first.”
My best friend’s shoulders slump at my morose tone.
Over the last two years, my mom’s lame attempts to fix my relationship with Nova haven’t lessened. In fact, they’ve gotten worse and more pathetic. Some days, I don’t understand why she’s desperately trying so hard.
Every time Nova returns home during his breaks from university, I’m overwrought with nerves, annoyance, and hatred. A fuse of turbulent emotions. It doesn’t help that Nova dutifully arrives whenever my mother invites him. As if it secretly pleases him to see me squirm to make an excuse to get out of them.
Honestly, I’ve run out of them.
There’s only so many times you can say you’re sick, have periods, or lie that your best friend has broken her leg and needs to be taken to the emergency room.
One would think the man would be scared to be in my vicinity.
But no… he’s become an unhinged and obsessive psychopath with a death wish.
It doesn’t help the older he’s getting, the more sinful his features are transforming. The chiseled and square jawline, always lit with a cocky smirk. The intensity and mysteriousness behind his caramel brown eyes, challenging and mocking when gazing at me.
Beneath his attractive looks and charm that is nothing but a smokescreen and has everyone eating out of the palms of his hands, lurks a manipulative and calculative man.
No one notices it. Because he reserves it for me.
The sneakiness characteristic seems to run in his family’s genes.
Nevertheless, there’s always a flock of girls frolicking around him.
I only wish he would choose one of them to marry.
“Is there anyone else you know there?” probes Bianca. Rising, she comes to help fold the dresses I’m rejecting for the trip. “Because even if he miraculously kept you company, he’ll be pretty busy for his graduation ceremony.”
“I heard he has a cousin living there,” I reply. “Miya something.”
“Hopefully she’s nothing like Nova.”
“Yeah, right. As if he wouldn’t have filled her head with venom.”
Bianca looks at me with sympathy, well aware how much I hate spending time with people outside of my close circle. Now, I’m being thrown headfirst in the deep water.
Both of us pull apart when there’s a knock on my bedroom door. Standing in the doorway, is my mother. She cautiously enters, looking as though she came straight from the office. Another thing that hasn’t changed—her endless galas and charities.
“Namaste, Aunty,” greets Bianca. “I came to say bye to Ro.”
“Lovely to see you, beta,” replies my mother genuinely. She’s always adored Bee like a daughter. “How’s your mother? I hope she’s coming for lunch next weekend.”
“Oh yes. She would never miss a chance for fresh gossip.”
My mom laughs. All of us aware of Bianca’s mother’s big mouth, which we joke about quite often. Thankfully, my bestie isn’t one to be offended.
“Is your packing done, love?” my mother says to me, eyeing the two full suitcases leaning against the wall while one is lying open on my bed. “You’re only going for a week. Are you sure you need so many clothes?”
I scowl. “Well, yeah. I’m also going to shop there and will need extra space.”
Most likely I’ll need to buy another suitcase, considering Bianca has given me her own list. The girl is a shopaholic and that list is a mile long.
“Like you already don’t have enough dresses stuffed in your closet,” admonishes my mother with a silly smile.
“So do you, Ma.”
She laughs and for a moment, it reminds me of old times. She and I have always been close and I miss it. Of course, my love hasn’t waned for her. Deep down, I’m just hurt. I wish she had at least warned me. So I hadn’t felt ambushed.
“Did you need anything, Ma?” I ask when she doesn’t leave.
“Actually.” She clears her throat and reveals, “I came to tell you, you will need to leave tomorrow morning for London.”
“What? Why?”
She grimaces apologetically. “Your father needs the jet the day after tomorrow.”
Fucking hell! Even an extra day with the cocky bastard sounds like torture. Mom leaves after delivering the bad news and I look at Bianca when she lends a sympathetic hand on my shoulder.
“Any chance you’d be willing to let me break your leg?”
“Shut up.” She rolls her eyes. “You’ll be fine.”
***
It may come as a shock but I’m moody, an extremely quiet person, and ambivert in nature. Commonly known as the girl with the resting bitch face. However, if you asked my best friend or my older sister, they’d tell you the opposite.
They often complain I can’t stop talking and can be blunt at times.
But they love me for me. They mean the world to me.
The ones who can get past my walls, I’m fiercely protective of them.
I simply can’t tolerate most people, especially the ones who love to point out loudly that you’re always so quiet. You know, the annoying ones in the group who go like this: ‘Oh, why aren’t you talking?’ As if that will magically turn the other person into a chatterbox.
I either want to tape their mouth shut or slap them in the face.
So you can imagine just how fast my heart is hyperventilating at the thought of spending the next week surrounded by strangers and an asshole fiancé.
Small talk is not my forte.
The place being London—one of my favorite cities—is a tiny blessing. There’s nothing I don’t love about here, minus the unpredictable weather and the fact I hate getting wet in the rain.
Oh, and Nova.
Sitting in the back seat of the car, I gaze at the tall buildings zooming past and the people on the street, buzzing with life. The sky is clear and bright, uplifting my mood a tad while my brain is still stuck on my fiancé’s callousness.
As predicted, he left me stranded at the airport.
Luckily, I had arranged transportation beforehand, listening to myself rather than my mother. Although I have a tiny intuition that she forgot to inform him that I’m arriving a day early. Not that it would’ve made any difference.
His apartment is a three-hour drive from the airport and if it were any other circumstances, I would be feeling sleepy as I rode to his place. Ever since our announcement was made in the media a day after my eighteenth birthday, our parents have been throwing us together in public at every opportunity.
My worst fear came true—being thrown into the limelight.
After spending all my life in the shadows, I’m now expected to constantly bask in the sunlight. Smile a certain way, behave as if my life is perfect, pretend to be blindly in love with my fiancé, who worships the ground I walk on.
I have been to so many galas in the last three months since I turned eighteen than I have my whole life. I hate everything about them. The mind-numbing chat, oohing and aahing over fashion, the tacky gossiping and the snide looks.
Our world may seem like a dream on the outside.
But the ones in the deep end know it’s cutthroat and vindictive, swarmed with vultures. While my family’s name instills respect with thinly veneered fear, Nova’s family name only evokes fear and wrath.
Bringing us together has made the two families untouchable and the most powerful in all of India. Everyone will bow down to us.
Exactly what our fathers crave.
I blink, my thoughts interrupted when the car comes to a stop outside a lavish high-rise apartment building. My neck straining while staring at the top. My elderly driver rounds the hood and opens my door.
Stepping out, I straighten my black denim skirt and halter top under my frayed denim jacket. I unpin my hair from the messy bun, letting it fall down to the middle of my shoulders.
“Why don’t you go inside, Miss Kapoor?” says my driver politely, his accent posh. “I’ll have your bags sent upstairs.”
“Thank you.”
I already have my phone and purse with me, carrying the important valuables as I enter the well-lit lobby. While the doorman holds the glass door open.
As conveyed by my mom, Nova stays alone in his private apartment, a short distance from his uni. Unlike most Indian parents, she didn’t seem too worried about sending her teenage daughter to live alone with a man.
As long as it’s the husband or fiancé, the normal rules of swearing off all men doesn’t seem to apply. It’s disheartening that even living in the twenty-first century, most parents subconsciously believe in the old patriarchal ways. That a woman needs a man to finally live her life, fulfill her wishes.
Or that they have the right to choose a man their daughter should marry.
Mine is even worse. I was used as a pawn in a power-hungry game between ruthless men.
“Which floor was it again?” I mumble to myself, staring in confusion at the floor numbers inside the elevator. I check my mom’s text and roll my eyes while reading it.
Of course, his highness lives in the penthouse.
Pressing the button for the top floor, I try to relax as the elevator begins to rise. Meanwhile my mind runs amok with a million thoughts. Without my parents as a buffer, it will be the first time he and I will be alone after the stunt I pulled two years ago.
He has kept me on my toes, dreading his inevitable payback for the past two years.
I just know he’s toying with me, waiting for the right opportunity to strike.
The elevator opens to the private hallway, the door at the opposite end. The second I’m standing outside, I take a deep breath before knocking once. I hear footsteps coming closer from the other side before the door whooshes open.
I gape at the chiseled six-pack abs that greet me and slowly trail my gaze upward to stare into a pair of dark eyes.
“Like the view, darling?”