CHAPTER 63! HIS APOLOGY
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Aadhira stood exactly where he had left her, staring at the dark mahogany door of the bathroom. His words still hung between them, heavy and impossible to take back:
I am yours.
He had said it with that terrifying, absolute ease of his, as if their bond had never been a matter of debate.
Through years of bitter silence and cold misunderstandings, Aryav had never hesitated to mark himself as hers.
He was a man built to stand between the fire and whatever he claimed, entirely unbothered by the damage left in his wake.
Yet, staring at that dark wood, the contradiction twisted inside her until she could barely draw breath.
If he had always been so certain about her, why had he left an envelope of cash on her nightstand eight years ago?
Why had he separated her from their newborn baby, Ayaan, right after birth? And why had he forced her to sign a cold, calculated marriage contract before letting her move into his home?
Every choice he had made seemed to exist somewhere in the space between protection and control.
For nearly a decade, Aadhira had viewed him as cruel, using that belief as armor to survive losing her son and her youth.
She couldn’t keep living inside a story built on assumptions. She needed the truth.
Aryav was holding a silver tray loosely in his hands. His wet hair was combed back, dark strands clinging to his temples, his eyes fixed on the floor, his expression unreadable.
Aadhira forced her legs to move. She crossed the room, dragged a heavy armchair directly opposite him, and sat.
"Aryav."
He paused, his spoon clinking softly against the bowl on the tray. "Hmm?"
Her hands folded tightly in her lap, her knuckles turning bone-white against the fabric of her dress. "Can I ask you something?"
The shift in her tone—the sudden, total absence of the defenses she’d worn around him all afternoon—made him look up instantly.
Sitting under his steady gaze, Aadhira felt an old, disorienting memory surface. For one second, she wasn’t a mother navigating the ruthless Singhania family.
She was eighteen again—the girl who looked away whenever he entered a room because she was convinced he was dangerous.
Aryav noticed the rigid tension in her shoulders. He set the bowl on the nightstand with slow, deliberate precision and leaned forward, resting his forearms against his knees.
"Ask."
Aadhira took a slow, steady breath.
"Why...Why did you...Why did you leave money on the nightstand eight years ago?"
Silence slammed down on the room.
Aryav froze. The subtle, rhythmic rise and fall of his chest stopped entirely as his dark eyes locked onto hers.
He had known this question would come eventually, but hearing the raw, preserved humiliation in her voice still hit him like a physical blow.
His fingers twitched against his knees—a subtle, involuntary tremor that he quickly buried by locking his hands together.
Aadhira caught it. It was strange; Aryav was rarely nervous. Angry, certainly. Impatient, dangerous, cold enough to make grown men lower their eyes in fear. But hesitant?
She had never seen it.
He didn’t offer a quick defense.
He looked down at his calloused hands, his jaw tightening so hard the muscle ticked violently.
When he finally looked up, his usual commanding authority was completely shattered.
"You won't believe me," he said, his voice dropping into a rough, low register.
"Tell me," she replied softly.
He exhaled a short, dry breath. "I genuinely didn't know."
Aadhira frowned, her brows drawing together. "Didn't know what?"
He looked almost irritated with himself, dark brows pulling down in genuine frustration. "That leaving money beside a woman after spending the night with her was an insult."
She stared at him, waiting for the punchline, waiting for the cold sarcasm she knew so well. But his face remained completely blank.
"Aryav... you're lying. How can someone not know something so basic?"
"I was seven when my training began, Aadhira." he said, meeting her eyes directly, refusing to look away.
"By the time I was old enough to understand ordinary life, I was already being taught how to survive a world built on power, leverage, and force.
No one taught me ordinary boundaries. No one taught me what kindness looked like. In my world, if a man wanted something, he brought it—or he took it, they never paid for it. That was the only language I understood."
Aadhira felt a bizarre mixture of anger and disbelief. A disbelieving laugh escaped her chest before she could stop it, though it held no humor.
"Then why did you leave it?" she demanded, her voice cracking.
Aryav leaned back slightly, the afternoon light shifting across his face and leaving half of his sharp features in deep shadow. "Because I found out you wanted to attend that fashion program in Milan."
Her breath caught in her throat. "What. How?"
"I knew the registration deadline," Aryav continued smoothly, though his hands remained tight against his knees. "I knew how much the program cost. And I knew your father's business was failing."
Aadhira remembered that girl. Eighteen. Proud. Terrified. Holding a folded application form in her notebook, dreaming of an escape she couldn't afford.
"You knew all that?" she whispered.
"I knew everything I could find out about you. If I had known which specific program you wanted, I would have paid the tuition directly instead of leaving cash," he said. There was no pride in the admission, only fact.
"I knew you refused to ask Shourya for help because he had just started working for me, You didn’t want to become a burden on him just after he started working. You were trying to handle everything alone. I checked the fee for the program and knew you couldn't cover it.
So I left the money to clear it before the deadline passed."
Aadhira remembered holding that thick envelope with shaking hands, feeling degraded, dirty, convinced he viewed her as a paid distraction he had decided was no longer worth keeping.
"I thought... I thought you were paying me," she whispered, the old shame burning her throat.
Aryav's jaw tightened instantly, his eyes darkening. "I was not."
The sheer quiet intensity of his answer made her look back up at him. "Then how did you find out?"
"I mentioned it to Asher next morning, to check if you enrolled with the money," he said, his voice dropping an octave. "He was the one who explained what I had done. And how it looked."
Aadhira let out a ragged sigh—half a laugh, half a sob. She covered her mouth with her hand, torn between the sheer absurdity of it and the weight of eight years of misplaced hatred.
"You dismantle international cartels," she whispered, looking at him as if seeing a stranger. "You handle corporate takeovers without breaking a sweat. You can quiet a room of dangerous men with one look... and you didn't know that basic thing?"
"No," he said, his tone entirely serious. "I didn't."
Aadhira looked at him, her chest heaving as the ridiculousness clashed with her pain. "At this moment, I really want to kill you."
He turned to look back at her, his eyes locking onto hers with a searing, unfiltered intensity. "You should."
"Then why didn't you just talk to me?" she asked, her voice trembling.
A bitter, humorless smile touched his mouth.
"Talk to you aadhira? You were always scared of me. Even When I came to your house to meet Shourya, you used to hide in your room until I left. You never would have let me talk to you. And I thought you'd read the note and understand. Instead,
you looked at me as though I was something you hate with everything you have."
"I did hate you!"
"I know," he said softly. The words landed harder than any accusation could have. "And I gave you every reason to do."
For several long seconds, neither of them spoke. The wind rustled the trees outside, casting swaying shadows across the floor.
Then, the deeper, festering wound resurfaced. "Then what about our baby?" Her voice dropped, thick with an eight-year-old grief.
"Why did you tell me to terminate the pregnancy? Or did you not know what a baby meant?"
The shift in the room was immediate and violent.
Aryav’s posture stiffened instantly, the familiar darkness settling back into his features.
His shoulders locked, his hands clenching into tight fists on his knees so hard the skin stretched taut over his knuckles.
"You were eighteen," he said quietly.
"I know how old I was!"
"Then you should know how risky it was," Aryav said, his voice turning surprisingly soft—not commanding, but heavy with an emotion she couldn't label.
"The risks were real, Aadhira. You were eighteen and barely forty kilos. Your body was still growing. There was a possibility that pregnancy could take your life. You had your education, your dreams, Milan—a future you hadn't even had the chance to touch yet."
He looked down at his fists, his voice dropping until it nearly broke.
"And I was terrified."
The word hung between them—heavy, raw, and completely unexpected.
Terrified. It was a word she had never associated with Aryav rai Singhania.
Aadhira stared at him. "Terrified?"
"Yes," he said, looking up to meet her eyes, his steady mask completely gone.
"I learned to deal with enemies. I learned to handle threats, weapons, betrayals. I learned what to do when someone wanted me dead. But no one taught me what to do with the person I wanted to keep.I was so afraid of losing you that I forgot you were never mine to control."
Aadhira felt hot tears spill down her cheeks. It wasn't a clean apology; it was a cold breakdown of his own arrogant flaws.
"You refused to end the pregnancy. You were stubborn to keep him," he added quietly, his voice rough. "And every day since, I’ve been grateful that you were stronger than my instincts."
Aadhira swallowed the thick lump in her throat, wiping her cheek. "Ayaan is my entire world."
"He became mine, too," Aryav whispered.