...
❝He was the poison I was dying to taste on my lips.❞
...
I was a coward.
The coward who wanted to leave behind the wreckage of her life for the man who had tormented her for as long as she could remember. The boy who had spit venom at me gro...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
august 2012 — age seventeen
I BROKE MY PROMISE.
Four years ago, I'd told myself with full certainty that I was never going to step foot in this town ever again but there I was, with both feet planted firmly once again in Glésford. I'd been chased away from a stunning, ancient mansion and had been coerced into coming to one that rivalled the beauty of the Vanderbildts'. Only I belonged here. I wasn't the servants' daughter. I wasn't the help.
I was the family of a man who had immense power in this town. The man who probably had dozens of servants working under him and it felt strange to think I was on the other side now. The impoverished life I'd lived before possibly wasn't the one I would have lived if my parents hadn't eloped. I would have stayed in my father's hometown and I would have grown up around all these people, maybe being as snobby and entitled as them.
I shivered at the thought and suddenly, I was glad I'd lived the way I had. It had made me more humane, more sympathetic and real instead of feeling the need to turn my nose up at those who had less. I was glad that my parents hadn't taught me to define a person by their wealth. I was glad for the humility they'd engrained in me, even though my father had grown up in wealth.
Maybe Mr Gulzar was the type of man who didn't appreciate snobbery or arrogance.
"Ishwarya." I was jolted out of my reverie by Mr Gulzar's voice, to see his expectant gaze fixed on me. "Shall we head inside?"
I nodded, swallowing hard as I closed the door behind me and walked the short distance from the driveway to the porch. The mansion before me was massive, yet it retained a modern and welcoming atmosphere, far less imposing than the Vanderbildt one.
The foyer was bathed in natural light, opening up to a vast living room with a warm, inviting aesthetic of dark browns and creams that seemed intentionally comforting. Or maybe it was a trap, a façade, that reeled you in only to reveal its skeletons later.
"You've renovated," my dad remarked, to which Mr Gulzar hummed.
"I was starting to see cobwebs every time I walked from the kitchen to here. It was time for a change."
"It looks terrific."
"Jalal!" A woman rushed towards my dad, embracing him in a huge hug and almost toppling him over.
"Soha," he laughed. "I'm glad to see that you're excited to have me back."
"Are you kidding? It's been years since we last saw each other. You were my best friend growing up; it felt like losing a limb when you left."
