...
❝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...
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IT TOOK GULZAR ONE HOUR to tell me over twenty years' worth of history. Each moment of time and every detail about the sordid past. With each word that left his mouth, nausea rolled in my stomach as I sat opposite him, shockingly still, unable to understand the extent of the truth.
God.
My father and Esther? My mother and Callahan? Surely, everything he was telling me at the moment was purely fictional. Surely, I was living a fever dream and I'd be waking up any second now.
But I didn't wake up, and all the missing pieces of the puzzle slotted themselves into place. Everything suddenly seemed to make sense. Esther was the mystery woman who'd penned the letters to my father. The engagement ring had been hers, and the lock of hair I'd found must have belonged to the baby Callahan had killed. River's half-brother... and mine.
I was going to be sick.
I shot out of my seat, rushing over to the bathroom in Gulzar's office as I heaved into the toilet, emptying out my entire stomach and some more. He silently held my hair back, rubbing my back comfortingly. But his touch was nothing of the sort and after quickly rinsing my mouth with mouthwash and taking a gulp of water he passed over, I took my seat again.
Gulzar sat down beside me, watching me carefully before telling me what I'd already figured. "You'll have to end whatever you have going on with River, Ishwarya. There's too much history between you both for anything to work out."
I nodded slowly, reluctantly. "I know."
"You can't tell him what you know, but you need to break up with him as soon as you can."
"What do you mean I can't tell him?" I frowned. "He knows, doesn't he?"
"Not the whole story." He shook his head. "He doesn't know about your mother and his father. He likely thinks that Jalal and Esther were in love. Are in love."
My heart broke. That was why he hated me. That was why he'd wanted me to leave. Each second we stayed was another opportunity for my father and his mother to wreck the status quo. I reminded him of everything horrible in his life and I couldn't even blame him for it.
If anything, my leaving him would be the best decision I could make for him. If he realised what the truth was, he'd detest me to the point where I may as well be dead.
"If I leave him..." I swallowed. "Will you promise nothing will hurt him? That he won't learn the truth after Dad does whatever he's planning to?"
His lips pursed, displeasure radiating off of him, either because of the disgust I'd said 'Dad' with or because of my concern for River. "It shouldn't matter to you what becomes of him, Ishwarya."
"What do you mean it doesn't matter? None of this is his fault. He's as innocent in all of this as I am. He had his entire childhood ripped away from him because of the selfish people in our life."
