Page 101 of Modern Romance November 2024 5-8

‘Good for you.’

‘Sahir!’ His father called him back. ‘Clearly you cannot leave now.’

‘You don’t get to play the emotions card when you have none,’ Sahir said. ‘The only way I stay is if I can marry the woman I love.’

‘The elders would never accept her.’

‘Then see that they do. If Violet is to return, I won’t keep her hidden. One day, shewillbe Queen...’

‘Sahir—’

He wasn’t listening. He was walking out. But then he heard the crack in his father’s voice.

‘Do not walk out...please...’

Sahir heard that ever-steady voice tremble, and on a day he had not thought could get any worse it simply did.

‘How can I fear dying when I will be with my beloved Anousheh once again?’

‘Father...?’

And then he watched as his father beat himself with the same stick Sahir had beaten himself with for decades.

‘She had bruises... I should have insisted she get checked out.’

‘No,’ Sahir said, a little awkwardly putting an arm around his father.

‘I did love her—and she loved me.’

‘What are you saying?’

‘Ask Violet...’ his father sobbed. ‘She knows your mother was loved.’

‘Are you having another episode?’ Sahir asked, in all seriousness. ‘How on earth can she know?’

‘She’s so easy to talk to...’

Oh, she was.

And never had Sahir missed her more.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

YOU’VEBEENTHROUGHWORSE.

Violet repeated this to herself over and over.

The world wasn’t scary without Sahir.

It wasn’t impossible either.

She just didn’t like it as much.

She refused to limp through the week. She smiled and chatted with the regulars at the library, and told everyone about Grace’s incredible wedding—oh, and although she didn’t share the location, or the company she’d kept, she told them about her horse-riding lessons and made her colleagues laugh,

She’d changed her mobile number at Heathrow and regretted it already, but it was done.

She checked online all the time. To see if there was any gossip from Janana...anything...

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