Page 115 of Wicked Trap

Aryan was determined to have Tanvi stay in the penthouse until the old score with her father was settled.

But Aryan discovered that holding the woman he loved captive in his penthouse was like trying to trap a storm. Tanvi Shetty unleashed her fury on him and let her presence be known each and every moment. Not that he could ever forget her, even for a moment. Even when he was physically away from her over the last few weeks, she had been a constant presence in his mind.

Both his brothers were now married, and the women they chose as their wives were sweet and friendly. He couldn’t wait for his extended family to meet Tanvi, but that moment seemed quite far away.

If only his fiery she-devil didn’t glare at him with equal parts of fury and hurt.

“Mr. Varma, are you sure you don’t want me to come tomorrow?”

Aryan was on a call with Sameer. “Yes. I will be here from now on. I appreciate you agreeing to keep her company while I was gone.”

“You are welcome, Mr. Varma. I do consider Tanvi as a good friend, and I do hope things between the two of you get resolved soon.”

Aryan didn’t say anything. He knew Sameer meant well and did consider Tanvi as a friend. But Tanvi’s deliberate showdown where she tried to hint she was having an affair with Sameer was still annoying. The she-devil knew exactly how to push his buttons.

Thanking the other man again, Aryan ended the call. He then went to the master bedroom to ask Tanvi to join him for dinner when he noticed she wasn’t inside. He looked for her in the other bedrooms, and she wasn’t there as well.

Frowning, he went to the living room, half expecting the door to be open and her being gone. But he was taken aback when he saw her seated at the dining table.

She was already eating.

With a slight shake of his head and suppressing a smile, he joined her at the table.

She threw him a cold look that would freeze any other man. It made him all the more determined to break through her cold anger.

He placed a thin folder on the table next to her.

“Official order to stop the construction of the mall in the City Central Park. The mall has been relocated to an alternate place that does not involve disturbing the ecosystem.”

She froze, but a few moments later, she resumed eating.

He knew it wasn’t going to be easy for him to make her believe him. But nothing with Tanvi Shetty ever was. The woman was fiery, passionate and stubborn as a mule.

“It was never about the mall,” he once again told her. “The reason I came into your life was very personal. It involves our families.”

She glared at him then. “I looked you up. You are from New York. You became a billionaire at the age of twenty with your software company. Your brothers had their own businesses and were billionaires when you studied at Harvard at the age of sixteen. My father had never been to New York. Neither did my mother or I.”

He fell silent. He couldn’t tell her about what had transpired between their families fifteen years ago, not without risking everything.

Although he trusted her, the circumstances were too volatile to risk Girish Shetty finding out that the family he thought was dead was responsible for his complete ruination.

He looked at her. “When you know my brothers and I are already billionaires, why do you think I’d go to an extreme length to trap you for just the construction of a mall?”

There was a small frown on her face as though she had been having similar doubts. But her frown cleared, and she threw him a cool look. “Greed. For most corporates, nothing is ever enough.”

“Then why do you think I got the mall construction at the City Central Park halted?”

She shrugged. “Because you don’t want to risk a bad reputation for you or your company. Because I discovered your deception.”

He laughed. “Princess, I have never given a damn about my reputation or my company’s. And if it ever comes to a showdown, it’s my word against yours. I could easily say I don’t know who you are and that you are deliberately accusing me because of your cause.”

There was a small pause as doubt filled her mind.

“Yes, I deliberately trapped you. But it wasn’t for a mall or anything to do with money. It was personal. But after having met you and what we had between us, it was no longer pretense for me. What we have between us is real.”

She shook her head as though warding off his words. “I don’t believe you. You are a playboy. I saw your pictures with hundreds of women. This is just some kind of elaborate game you are playing for cheap thrills.”

He knew she was justified to feel that way because of his playboy reputation, but still anger shot up inside him. “Cheap thrills? So you think I stopped myself from sleeping with you at the beginning of our deal for cheap thrills? Even though I fucking craved you every damn second, I didn’t want to have sex under false pretenses. I wanted to wait until the truth came out. It was you who broke me.”

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