Chapter Nine The Gravity of Guilt #3
He watched her carefully, noting the slight tightening of her jaw at the mention of the media. He knew she hated the spotlight. He pressed his advantage, softening his voice, infusing it with as much genuine, desperate sincerity as he could muster without terrifying her.
“I do not want you to endure that,” Rovanth said quietly.
“You have suffered enough because of this family. I assure you, in the meantime, you can have all the freedom you want in every other sense. You are not a prisoner here. You can travel, you can visit Pune, you can run the foundation exactly as you see fit. If there is anything at all you need—financially, personally, logistically, I will gladly provide it. You will not have to worry about a single thing. It is simply the divorce itself, the legal paperwork, that needs to wait a while longer. Until the dust settles.”
Anshira absorbed his words calmly. She looked out over the dark water of the lotus pond, her highly analytical mind processing his argument.
It made a depressing, frustrating amount of sense.
The Kalresh-Dhen name was a lightning rod for controversy.
If she filed now, the paparazzi would camp outside her parents' modest apartment in Pune.
She couldn't subject her mother and father to that kind of vicious, unending scrutiny.
She turned her gaze back to him, nodding slowly in understanding.
“I see your point,” Anshira conceded, her voice perfectly reasonable, betraying no anger or disappointment. “The Kalresh-Dhen name invites chaos. I have no desire to invite a scandal that will hurt my family. So, we wait.”
She paused, looking at him with a calm, clinical curiosity. “How long do you think we'll need to wait? Six months? A year?”
The question struck Rovanth like a physical blow. She was asking for her parole date.
He found himself violently reluctant to name any timeline.
Giving her a specific date felt like signing his own death warrant.
He was equally reluctant to actually let her go, but he had absolutely no idea how to voice either feeling.
He needed more time, that much was certain, but what could he possibly say to justify it?
Could he look her in the eye and say, I intend to make you fall for me again? I intend to prove my devotion to you?
She would laugh in his face. Or worse, she would look at him with that same polite, impenetrable pity. She didn't trust him anymore, and looking back on the cruel, unyielding contempt he had shown her for twelve months, he completely, profoundly understood why.
Still needing the time to somehow prove himself, he settled for something frustratingly vague.
“I will try my best to expedite the process,” Rovanth murmured, unable to hold her gaze, looking instead at the dark gravel beneath his shoes. “But I cannot offer a specific timeline right now. The news cycle is unpredictable.”
He looked back up, desperate to offer her something, anything, to make her stay in his house a fraction more bearable.
“Do you need anything else? Is there anything I can do?
I can have the staff move your belongings back into the main master suite.
It is rightfully yours, too. You don't have to stay confined to the guest wing.”
Anshira looked at the undisputed heir of the Kalresh-Dhen dynasty, a man who commanded thousands of employees and billions of dollars and saw only a man drowning in his own belated conscience.
Taking his hesitation and his desperate offers as simple, overwhelming guilt, a quiet wave of genuine pity washed over her. She didn't hate him. The hatred would have required a passion she no longer possessed. She just felt a profound, exhausting indifference.
“Rovanth,” Anshira said gently, her voice soft, lacking any of the malice he so richly deserved. “There is no need for you to feel this way.”
Rovanth froze. “Feel what way?”
“Guilty,” Anshira said simply, offering him a small, kind smile that absolutely gutted him. “I know why you are doing this. I know why you are watching me, and offering me the suite, and trying to fix things. But you don't have to. What happened is done. It is over. It is firmly in the past.”
She stood up from the bench, brushing a stray leaf from her saree. The fading light caught the deep, permanent exhaustion in her eyes.
“Now that the truth is known to everyone, there is no reason for you to keep dwelling in it,” Anshira told him softly, absolving him of a sin he had no intention of letting go of.
“I am perfectly content remaining in the guest room. I like the quiet. There is absolutely no need for me to move anywhere else.”
She offered him one last, polite nod, the kind of nod one gives to a stranger on the street, and began walking back toward the sprawling, illuminated mansion.
Rovanth stood alone by the edge of the dark lotus pond, the humid air pressing down on his chest. He had nothing left to say. He had no arguments left to make. He simply agreed, his silence a hollow, ringing testament to his defeat.
Whatever she wanted was fine by him. Even if what she wanted was to remain as far away from him as the walls of his own house would allow.