Chapter Eleven
The news came during breakfast, three weeks after the luncheon incident.
Advika was pushing eggs around her plate, only half-listening to Rishabh discuss some shipment issue, when Sidharth's head of security, Arjun, appeared in the doorway. His face was grim but triumphant.
"Sir, we found him."
Sidharth's fork stilled. "You're certain?"
"Completely. Vikram has confessed. He's been feeding information to the Khanna family for the past six months. We have evidence—bank transfers, phone records, everything."
The room went silent. Advika felt everyone's eyes shift to her—Rishabh's sympathetic, Nisha's stunned, Sidharth's unreadable.
"Vikram," Sidharth said slowly. "My father's guard. The one who's been with us for fifteen years."
"Yes, sir. The Khannas approached him eight months ago. Offered him enough money to retire comfortably. He gave them warehouse locations, security schedules, shipment details." Arjun's voice was flat, professional, but Advika could hear the anger beneath. "He's the one who planned the attack."
Not Advika. Never Advika.
She set down her fork carefully, her hands surprisingly steady despite the emotion churning in her chest. Weeks of suspicion, of being treated like a potential traitor, of having her every movement monitored—and it had been someone who'd been part of the family for over a decade.
"Where is he now?" Sidharth asked.
"Secured location. Waiting for your orders."
"Good. I'll deal with him personally." Sidharth's voice was cold enough to freeze blood. "Dismissed."
Arjun left. The silence that followed was suffocating.
"Well," Advika said finally, standing. "At least now you know I wasn't selling you out to my father. That's something."
"Advika—" Sidharth started.
"Save it." She grabbed her coffee cup. "I'm going to the library. Try not to investigate me for any crimes today. I'd like a break."
She walked out before anyone could respond, her head high even as her hands shook.
She'd been in the library for maybe an hour, staring unseeing at a book, when the door opened.
Sidharth stood in the doorway, and for a moment, they just looked at each other.
"Can we talk?" he asked.
"Can I say no?"
"You can. But I'm hoping you won't."
Advika closed her book, gesturing to the chair across from her. "Fine. Talk."
He sat, and for a long moment, he just studied her. She met his gaze steadily, refusing to look away first.
"I owe you an apology," he finally said.
"You think?"
"I suspected you without real cause. I let my paranoia and my past cloud my judgment. I made you feel like a criminal in your own home." His jaw tightened. "That was wrong. I was wrong."
The apology should have felt satisfying. Instead, it just made her tired.
"You know what the worst part was?" Advika's voice was quiet. "Not that you suspected me. I understand paranoia after betrayal. But that you never asked. You investigated, monitored, searched my things—but you never just sat down and asked me directly if I was betraying you."
"Would you have told me the truth?"
"You'll never know, will you? Because you didn't trust me enough to ask.
" She stood, needing to move. "I've been here for five months, Sidharth.
Five months of trying to build something with you, trying to earn your trust, trying to be more than just the treaty bride.
And the moment something went wrong, you immediately assumed I was the problem. "
"You're right." The admission seemed to cost him. "I let my fear override my reason."
"Your fear of what? That I'd hurt you? Betray you like your parents' killer did?"
"Yes." The single word was raw, honest. "After what happened to them, after seeing what betrayal from someone trusted can do... I've spent five years keeping everyone at arm's length. Not letting anyone close enough to destroy me."
"And then you married me."
"And then I married you." His smile was bitter. "A Pradhan. The daughter of a man who's been my enemy for years. Every logical part of my brain said not to trust you. Said to keep you at a distance, keep you under surveillance, never let my guard down."
"But?"
"But you weren't what I expected." He stood, moving to the window, his back to her. "You were supposed to be a pawn. A means to an end. Someone I could compartmentalize, keep in a box labeled 'political necessity.'"
"What am I instead?"
He turned, and the look in his eyes made her breath catch. "You're everything I didn't know I needed. And that terrifies me more than any enemy ever could."
The confession hung between them, vulnerable and honest in a way he'd never been before.
"Tell me about your mother," he said suddenly. "The real story. Not the gossip or the rumors. Who was Akshara Singh?"
The question surprised her. In five months of marriage, he'd never asked about her past, her family, her life before him.
"Why do you want to know?"
"Because Nisha used her memory as a weapon against you. Because I realized I know nothing about the woman who shaped you into who you are." He moved closer. "Because I want to know you, Advika. Really know you. And I think that starts with understanding where you came from."
Advika sank back into her chair, emotions welling up. "She was beautiful. Kind. She loved to sing—she had the most beautiful voice. When I was little, she'd sing me to sleep every night."
Her voice cracked on the last word. Sidharth sat across from her, leaning forward, his complete attention on her.
"She met my father at some business event.
She was working as an event coordinator.
He was already married, already had Abhishek, but he pursued her anyway.
" Advika's hands twisted in her lap. "She knew it was wrong.
She knew she should walk away. But she loved him.
Genuinely loved him. And she thought he loved her back. "
"He didn't?"
"He wanted her. There's a difference." A bitter laugh escaped her. "When she got pregnant with me, she thought he'd leave Anjana. That he'd choose her. Instead, he set her up in a small apartment, gave her a monthly allowance, and visited when it was convenient."
"And after you were born?"
"He acknowledged me privately but never publicly.
I was his dirty secret. The proof of his infidelity that he couldn't quite hide but refused to claim.
" Advika wiped at her eyes, frustrated by the tears.
"My mother never complained. She loved me fiercely, gave me everything she could.
She made our tiny apartment feel like a palace with her love and her laughter and her songs. "
"How did she die?"
"Cancer. Ovarian. By the time they caught it, it was too late." The memory still hurt after all these years. "She was only thirty-two. I was five. And my last memory of her is sitting by her hospital bed, listening to her sing one last lullaby in a voice so weak I could barely hear it."
Tears were streaming down her face now. She didn't bother wiping them away.
"After she died, my father had no choice but to take me in. Anjana hated me on sight—the living reminder of her husband's infidelity. My half-brothers ignored me. I grew up in that house feeling like a ghost, like I was somehow less real than everyone else."
"Until you built Sinfully Sweet."
"Until I built Sinfully Sweet," she confirmed. "That was mine. My mother's life insurance money, my hard work, my dream. The first thing in my life that was completely, utterly mine. And then..." She gestured around them. "And then I had to give it up."
Sidharth was quiet for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was rough with emotion.
"My parents died when I was twenty-eight. Nisha was twenty-one, Rishabh was twenty-four. We were at a family gathering—aunts, uncles, cousins. Celebrating Diwali."
Advika went still. He'd never talked about this. Not to her, anyway.
"Raghav Malhotra had been my father's best friend since childhood.
More than a friend—like a brother. We called him uncle.
Trusted him completely." Sidharth's hands clenched into fists.
"He'd been stealing from my father for years.
Small amounts at first, then larger. When my father finally discovered it, confronted him privately, offered him a chance to make it right. .."
"He killed them instead."
"Car bomb. Meant for my father, but my mother was with him. They died instantly." His voice was flat, emotionless in that way that meant he was feeling too much. "Raghav tried to make it look like a rival family. But he got sloppy. We found evidence. And when we confronted him, he ran."
"Did you find him?"
"Three months later. In Bangkok." Sidharth's smile was cold, cruel. "He didn't run far enough."
She didn't ask what happened to Raghav Malhotra. She didn't need to.
"I was twenty-eight," he continued. "Suddenly responsible for an empire I wasn't quite ready to lead, siblings who were grieving and looking to me for answers I didn't have, and the knowledge that someone we'd trusted completely had destroyed our family for money."
"So you stopped trusting anyone."
"So I stopped trusting anyone," he confirmed. "I built walls. Made sure no one could get close enough to hurt me or my siblings again. Became the cold, ruthless bastard everyone expects me to be."
"You're not—"
"I am," he interrupted. "At least, I was. Until you." He reached across the space between them, taking her hand. "You've been breaking down my walls piece by piece, Advika. And it scares the hell out of me."
"Why?"
"Because if I let you in completely, if I let myself care about you the way I'm starting to, and you leave—or worse, if something happens to you—I don't think I'd survive it."
The admission was raw, vulnerable, everything she'd wanted from him.
"I'm not going anywhere," she said softly. "Even when you've given me every reason to leave, I haven't. Because despite everything, despite the suspicion and the distance and your emotionally constipated bullshit, I love you."