The man who wanted to sell her home.
Meera had been pacing for so long that the movement had become automatic. She stopped before the framed image of Kul Devi, arms crossed, dupatta slipping from one shoulder.
She looked at the goddess as she did when the weight grew too large to bear alone.
She had known for a week. A full week. And she had not slept properly.
She turned and picked up the magazine from her desk.Forbes.She had ordered it the day she learned he was coming. Before that, his face had never mattered. Now it did.
Three days ago, she had promised herself she would stop looking.
She opened it again.
Abhinav Kumar Anand.
Dark suit. No smile.
His face struck her with the same unwelcome pull every time. As if the portraits in the gallery had gathered into one man and stepped out of their frames.
She knew that bloodline. She had grown up studying it.
Men who entered a room and expected it to bend. Men who wore authority as if it were simply a part of them.
And men, she thought with quiet irritation, who were entirely and unnecessarily handsome. As if power and wealth were not already enough.
She shut the magazine and placed it face down.
Those men loved this Haveli. Every single one of them. It showed in the portraits. In the way they stood inside these walls, as if the stone rose from them.
This one wanted to sell it.
That left two options. Either he was nothing like them. Or he was exactly like them in a twisted way.
She was not sure which possibility unsettled her more.
She moved to the window.
The voices had calmed. The fountain kept its rhythm. Lamps glowed low in their niches. The Haveli stood as it always had.
Completely unaware of the fact that tomorrow would be the most difficult day of Meera Chauhan’s life.
She turned back to the goddess.
“Maa,” she began. “I need to say something. And you need to listen.”
Her gaze stayed fixed.
“I know he is an Anand. I know you belong to his family. I know all of that.” She drew in a breath. “But I have been coming to you since before I could walk.”
Her voice softened, but it did not lose its strength. “You have watched me grow up.”
She lifted an eyebrow, just slightly. “So when he walks through that gate tomorrow remember that you have two people in this. Not one.”
The lamp on the windowsill flickered. Meera noticed.
“I don’t have a plan,” she went on. The words came lower, stripped of defense. “I had one for every buyer.”
A breath left her.