Page 87 of Mine

Prishna’s presence doesn’t even startle me as she steps onto the patio. My emotions are too drained to care about much.

“I could hear you crying.” She leans against the railing, watching the headlights in the distance.

“Sorry for disturbing you.” I roll my eyes.

She glances at the picture of Valerie I’ve put on the railing in front of me. The wife between Astor and me.

“You’re in love with him,” she says coolly.

“Yes.”

“You need to stop.”

“I can’t.”

I drop my head back and focus on the one star that is visible through the thick cloud cover. We stay like that for a few minutes, just her and me, with only the dim glow from a lamp somewhere inside illuminating the patio. Cillian must have turned it on for me. How nice of him.

Finally, she speaks—and it isn’t at all what I expect.

“Valerie’s family adopted me when I was twelve years old. Before then, I spent my entire childhood in an orphanage in Mumbai, after my mother discarded me at birth for not being a boy. When Valerie and Astor married, I was in my third attempt at rehab. While there, one of the patients set the building on fire. I barely made it out alive.”

I recall Astor’s words. She was on a downward spiral and was having some major health issues when Valerie and I married.

“When I got out of the hospital, Astor opened his home to me, in return for helping Valerie through her depression. A few weeks later, I learned that Astor had paid my medical bills and wiped my debt clean. He offered me a job, a new identity, a fresh start at life, and I’ve been working for him ever since.”

“That’s where you got your scars?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Astor is a good man but very troubled. His need for control extends beyond rational thought. He locked up my sister like an animal. All her decisions were made by him. She couldn’t make a move without his approval. He completely isolated her from the world, even from me most of the time. He drove her mad.”

“After he moved her into the beach house, why didn’t you move in with her?”

“Astor didn’t allow it,” Prishna says, her tone sharp. “By then, I’d become so engrained in his business that he said I was indispensable. Everything I own is in his name, everything I do is under his watch, every penny I spend is the money I earn from him ... You once asked me if I was being held captive by Astor.”

She takes a long look at me.

“Being captive isn’t always as simple as being kidnapped. There are ways to hold someone captive that doesn’t involve a lock and key. If you’d stop being so blinded by your own desire, you’d see that there lies a dangerous darkness within him, and also that his heart is already taken—and always will be. While you’re busy snooping through the house, you’re missing things that are right in front of you. Tonight, go look at his bed. Every night, he picks a daffodil, her favorite flower, and lays it on her pillow. He lies down next to it, staring at it, until he eventually gives in to the insomnia, and he gets up and paces for hours. He is still, and always will be, in love with Valerie.”

“You’re a liar.”

“You’re dangerously naive.”

“Tell me then, if he is still so in love with his wife, why hasn’t he kicked me out? Why does he tell me that you are lying when you say he gave you his wife’s clothes for me to wear? Why does he kiss me? Why does he look at me the way he does? Tell me—tell me, Prishna.”

“I don’t owe you anything.”

“You owe me common courtesy, woman to woman.”

“This from the woman manipulating a grieving widower.”

“I’m manipulating him? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“Astor is confused. He’s grieving, and you’re taking advantage of a man who has lost his mother, his daughter, and his wife.” She turns away from the railing and looks at me with disgust. “You are poison, Sabine Hart.”

She slams the patio door so hard that Valerie’s picture falls from the railing and shatters at my feet.

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