Chapter 31
31
I n the elevator with Anna, Mihir’s heart was beating out of control. He rubbed a hand down his scar. Fuck, he’d been so wrong about everything.
He glanced at Anna. She stood beside him, still as a rock, her expression blank as she stared at the elevator doors. She appeared calm, composed even, but her tightly clenched hands and rigid jaw betrayed her inner turmoil.
All his past interactions with her flashed through his mind. Each time she’d met him, she’d left looking wounded and hurt by his behavior. Now, finally, he knew none of it had been a pretense. He was ashamed to have suspected her of faking innocence.
Seven years. They’d lost seven fucking years of their lives thanks to the choices made by one man—a man she’d trusted and called a friend.
The elevator doors opened into a plush, opulent lobby. Anna stepped outside with him and stopped short.
“Why am I here?” she asked, her voice tight. “I thought you were dropping me at the reception.”
“I want to talk to you for a moment,” Mihir said.
She glared at him. “I have nothing to say to you.”
He couldn’t blame her for being mad at him. He’d behaved awful with her.
“Please…” Mihir requested. “You’re already here. Can you give me a few minutes? That’s all I ask.”
She stared at him for a second before lowering her chin a fraction. Taking that as approval, he led her to his office.
She entered his office and moved towards his desk. Her head turned this way and that, looking around, taking everything in, and finally landing on the breathtaking view of Dubai city spread thirty floors below them.
Finally, she turned to face him. “Say what you want to, fast.”
“I made a huge fucking mistake,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Her expression saddened. “Okay.”
“Okay? Is that all you’re going to say?”
“Yes.”
He blinked. “I thought you’d have a stronger reaction than that.”
“That’s all you’re getting right now.”
“Anna—”
“—stop calling me that,” she said. “You and I mean nothing to each another. My name is Ananya. Address me as such or not at all.”
“I will always and only call you Anna.”
She rolled her eyes. “I want to leave.”
“No. Not before you and I resolve everything.”
Her brows pinched in anger, and her mouth tightened.
“Look,” he gentled his tone, “I made a mistake. Even you can see how I may have genuinely misunderstood the situation. I’d got text messages from your phone. Of course, I’d assume they were from you. But now, I realize how wrong I was. I’m sorry. I really want to fix this between us. I want us to be together and to start afresh. I want to be with you. I don’t think I can live without you.”
She froze momentarily, before she turned, facing his desk again. He didn’t see the projectile she flung at him, until it bounced off his arm.
“Fucking asshole!” she yelled.
Shock rendered him speechless.
“ You want us to be together, you want to resolve everything. You, you, you… It’s all about you !” she stormed. “Have you ever wondered what I want?”
She tossed a book at him. He ducked, and the book fell somewhere to the side.
“Stop throwing things at me,” he said.
She took an angry step forward. “Do you think you’ll just say sorry and I’ll forgive you? I always knew I had done nothing to hurt you. But your anger, your animosity, and your distrust made me question myself ever so often. But I was right, I’d done nothing at all. And yes, you were fucking wrong.”
She picked up a crystal glass tumbler from the side table.
His eyes widened. “No, Anna.”
She threw at him. It crashed into the wall behind him, shattering as it fell.
He winced. “That was a Baccarat .”
“Sure, and that is so relevant right now.” A second glass smashed to his left, barely missing his shoulder. Fuck, she was really mad at him, and she had every right to be. He reached her in two strides, just as she was lifting the matching glass decanter.
Holding her elbow, he pulled the bottle from her hand and put it to the side, watching her carefully. Her face was red with anger, and her breathing was heavy.
“Do you think that just because you’re apologizing, I’m going to forgive you?” she snapped. “You’ve been nothing but rude, mean, and nasty to me for years.”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” he said.
“If you say you’re sorry one more time, I will stab you,” she growled, glancing at his desk, “with your paperknife.”
His lips twitched.
“I hate you,” she said. “I hate that you didn’t trust me, that you didn’t believe in my love for you, and what I hate the most is that you find my outburst amusing. It’s not.”
He smiled. “You’re adorable when you’re angry.”
His words incensed her even more. She tried to shrug away from his hold but he tightened his hold on her.
“I really am sorry, Anna.”
“Sorry doesn’t cut it anymore,” she said. “I know you’re blaming Zeeshan for destroying us, but the truth is he didn’t ruin us, you did.”
He blanched. This time, when she shrugged, he released her arm.
“The thing is, Mihir,” she said, sounding tired now. “You chose not to clear the air with me. You saw the proofs, and you believed that I had decided to send you to die. If you had confronted me just once, we could have clarified everything between us. But you didn’t even give me a chance.”
She stepped a little away from him. “You know, on the way from Moscow to Dubai, I kept wondering why you never did that. Now, after knowing your past, I understand better. I think that in your head, you’re still that poor little orphan who’s still questioning his luck. You got rich, you got to have a real family, and you met a girl who loved you, for you . I didn’t know exactly how wealthy you were; hell, I didn’t know anything about you at all. But I still loved you. However, even that didn’t take away your insecurity. You never once believed that you were more important to me that anyone else, including my family. That I never would have betrayed you over them. That if there was a problem, then I would have come to you first. I wouldn’t have sent you to die. You believed the worst of me because deep down, you never believed you were lucky enough to find the kind of love that we had, and so you ruined it. Hating me thus came so easy to you.”
She paused to stare at him, her eyes brimming with sorrow. “ You broke us, Mihir. Your lack of faith, your distrust, your anger, and your contempt broke us. I don’t regret our time in Moscow, because that showed me that you never really loved me, because once again, when the time came to choose me and to believe me, you didn’t.”
Her words struck him with a brutal, wounding force. He stared at her. The determined look on her face, the resignation in her eyes, the tightness in her shoulders—he was going to lose her.
He opened his mouth to speak, but she held a hand out, stopping him.
“I loved you so fucking much, Mihir. But you stayed married to me as some form of revenge—just to ensure I never found happiness with another man. And I was so stupid that I never even attempted to move on. Such a foolish mistake I made. What you want no longer matters to me anymore. You and I are over, Mihir. This is what I want now.”
“No, Anna,” he begged. “Listen…”
“We need to let the past remain in the past. I want to move forward. I can never be happy with a man who doesn’t have faith in me and in my love for him. So, I’m ending this. Right here. Right now.”
“No, you cannot. I won’t let you,” he said. “You’re mine.”
She looked at him, her features contorted with pain. Her hand curled over her belly. When she looked up, her eyes were clear. “I’m pregnant.”
Those two words knocked the life out of him. His throat knotted. No words would come out. For sure, he hadn’t heard her right.
She was… Anna was pregnant ?
He thought back to the times in Moscow when he’d made love to her so many times without protection. She’d told him… It didn’t matter right now. His eyes fell on her flat belly. A baby . His and Anna’s baby.
His chest constricted before realization settled, and his heart was filled with absolute and utter delight. He was going to be a father. In a few months, a little boy or girl would be born who would be part Anna and part him. Oh God. He was going to be a father.
“It’s yours,” she said, watching him carefully.
He had to clear his throat to speak. “Of course, I know it’s mine.”
“I really thought it was the wrong time of the month. Unfortunately, I think all the medication I took after I was stabbed affected my cycle. What I’m trying to say is that I didn’t trick you.”
“What?” he choked out. “That thought never even crossed my mind.”
“I had to clarify, lest you blame me for trapping you with a baby.”
“I didn’t…”
She held a hand out, stopping him. “I didn’t think I’d tell you this soon. But since we’re having this discussion about us, I thought you needed to be told this as well.”
“When did you find out?” he asked.
“Two hours back.”
Something jolted in his head. “At the restaurant?”
Fuck. So, that was why Navya had made an excuse to get medication for her. And that was why her sisters both looked mad at him.
He ignored all that to ask something pertinent. “Are you keeping it?”
“Yes.” She glared at him. “Of course, I am keeping the baby.”
He exhaled a sigh of relief. Now he understood why she looked so exhausted.
“Who all knows?” he asked.
“Only my sisters, but I’ve asked them not to tell anyone. I’m not ready for everyone else to know right now.”
“Of course, whatever you want.” He neared her. “Be with me, Anna. This baby needs both its parents.”
“No, absolutely not.” She backed away from him, shaking her head. “I told you about this baby because it was the right thing to do. You have no say in what comes after this. I’m going to decide if I want you in my baby’s life or not.”
Her words angered him. “This is my baby just as much as it is yours.”
“Before you learned the truth from Zeeshan, you wanted nothing to do with me,” she said. “Now, you suddenly want the baby and me?”
“That’s not true,” he replied, taking calming breaths. “I’d already decided that I was going to talk to you and tell you that I want you in my life. That I fucking can’t live without you. And, of course, I want the baby.”
She clutched the strap of her purse. “I want to leave.”
There was so much he still wanted to say to her, but he could see she was tired and probably hungry. She hadn’t even eaten anything at the restaurant.
“Alright,” he said. “But this isn’t over.”
She threw him a dark look.
“You’re mine, Anna,” he said softly. “This baby is mine. And I will fight with everything I have to ensure that the two of you are in my life. You take all the time you need, but I am not going away. I will never leave you. It’s best I tell you that right now itself.”
Shaking her head, she left his office, taking his heart and his baby with her. He was going to win her back, even if it was the very last thing he did on this planet. He was going to get her to forgive him.