CHAPTER 53
The soft echo of footsteps stopped just outside the studio.
Yamini didn't turn immediately.
She stood in the center of the room, surrounded by her paintings. Years of her life layered in oil and silence.
She felt him before she saw him.
The doorway darkened.
“You broke the lock.”
His voice was low and controlled.
She turned slowly.
Bharat stood just inside the threshold, suit jacket still on, tie loosened slightly as if he had come straight from work. His gaze swept the walls once, quick and assessing, then settled on her.
He didn't look shocked or embarrassed. He looked calm and controlled as always.
“You painted me,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
The word was simple.
Her throat tightened.
She moved toward one of the canvases, where she was muddy and laughing in the Rewa fountain. Her fingers hovered near it without touching.
“When did you paint this?” she asked, her voice steadier than she felt.
“On the first day I saw you. You were six years old. It was the day you helped me out of a cave near Rewa Palace.”
The air left her lungs in a slow, unsteady breath as fragments of memory formed in her mind.
The fountain. The mud. And then, a faint memory of crawling into a narrow space between rocks, the smell of stone and water, a boy sitting with his back against a wall, hands over his ears, not screaming or talking.
She had reached for his hand because it seemed like the obvious thing to do.
She had forgotten it completely over the years.
“So all this time...” She turned to face him fully. “You have been painting me since I was six years old?”
“Yes.”
He offered no apology. He gave no denial.
The calm honesty unsettled her more than defensiveness ever could have.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “If I was important enough for this.” She gestured around the studio, at every version of herself over the years. “Why do you feel I’m not worthy to have your child?”
The room went still.
His expression didn't shift dramatically, but she saw the flicker in his golden-brown eyes.
“You are worthy of a child,” he said.
“But not yours?” she asked.
He held her gaze.
“You deserve a perfect child,” he added. “My genes are not perfect.”
Yamini frowned as confusion cut through the hurt.
“What do you mean by not perfect?” she asked. “You are the most impossibly perfect man I know. You are breathtakingly handsome. You run a business empire. You are a maharaja.”
He looked at her for a moment.
“My father,” he said calmly, “was known as the Mad Maharaja.”
She froze.
“He was unpredictable,” Bharat continued. “Most people called it brilliance. The media called it passion. It was none of those things.”
His tone didn't change.
“He died from an accidental fall from a snow cliff. That is the official record.”
Her pulse quickened.
“There were rumors,” he continued, still controlled, “that he jumped.”
She was stunned.
“I was called that as a child too by a few,” he added. “The mad maharaja.”
His face showed no visible pain. He spoke as though it was just the plain truth.
“I do not process the world the way others do,” he said. “I am precise. Structured. Controlled.”
His gaze held hers.
“When I am not, the consequences are severe.”
Her heart thudded.
“I will not risk passing forward what should not burden a child,” he said.
The words weren't self-loathing. They were simply stated as a fact.
“I made this decision a long time ago,” he said. “At twenty. Before our engagement or the contract. Before I asked my mother for your hand.”
Yamini stared at him.
“I got a vasectomy procedure done.”
The room felt very quiet as the implications sank in.
“Then I don't understand,” she said slowly. “Why did you pull out each time? Why did you make me take the morning-after pill and get a blood test to verify it?”
“The procedure carries a small failure rate,” he said. “Less than half a percent.”
He held her gaze.
“I did not want to risk even that.”
She thought of him at twenty. Walking into a clinic by himself. Signing whatever was needed. Telling no one, not even his mother or his brothers, and carrying the heavy load for a decade without a single person knowing.
She had spent weeks furious after the morning-after pill incident, thinking that he was being a controlling bastard.
But it had been because he feared he would give her an imperfect child.
Her chest tightened painfully.
“So you decided I should carry some other man’s child?” she asked.
He didn't flinch.
“I decided you deserved a future without limitation.”
“Then what about my genes?” she asked. “I am reckless. Impulsive. I say things without thinking. I do things even if they seem risky. I am far from perfect.”
“I know.” The answer came without hesitation.
“I like those aspects of you,” he added.
Her breath caught.
The words were simply stated as the truth.
The honesty sliced through her heart.
He turned slightly, his gaze drifting to the canvases. Her childhood. Her defiance. Her fire.
“I have spoken to my lawyers,” he said. “The contract will be invalidated. And a divorce will be processed soon.”
Her heart thudded hard.
“Meanwhile, you should leave the country,” he continued calmly. “You should take the position in London as planned.”
He knew.
For weeks, she had believed his silence meant indifference. She had built an entire understanding of the last month around that belief.
The ache in her chest grew.
“You should build a life where you don't have to adjust yourself around me,” he said.
He wasn't commanding her. He was simply letting her go.
And that was what shattered her.
She had come here thinking she hated him. That she would always hate him, despite the fact that her heart ached for him each moment she was apart from him.
But now, she could no longer use hatred as a shield.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped toward him, close enough to break the careful distance he had been maintaining.
“No,” she said, looking at him with her chin raised.
He didn't move.
“I'm not leaving.”