Page 100 of Obsession

“Why should I have told the woman who sent me to die that I was alive?” he lashed out. “You didn’t deserve to know. You didn’t deserve to find me or speak to me again.”

“Do you know why I named my magazine Noir?”

He kept silent.

“Noir comme la nuit—as black as the night,” she said. After losing you, my days had gone dark. Noir represented a precious moment in time shared with you—one that had brought us together. It also represented the darkness in my life because you had taken all the light with you.”

She continued, “The easiest thing you could have done was to have confronted me all those years ago. Perhaps at that time, I could have even proved my innocence to you. Now, seven years later, I can’t even remember the time before and after losing you clearly. My grief during that time has blurred my memories.”

“Confronted you?” His throat was tight as he spoke. “I was barely conscious for days after my attack. My brothers flew me to Moscow as soon as I was stable. Even when I was back on my feet, I couldn’t function normally. I was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. I couldn’t sleep for nights, and when I did fall asleep, I was haunted by nightmares. I woke up anxious and panicking. That morning in the gym, I could understand your symptoms clearly, because I had gone through that phase. It took months of therapy to cure me. Even after that, I stayed out of social circles. I hated any attention on me. Apart from my brothers and father, I had trouble maintaining relationships with anyone, all because the woman I loved had betrayed me; she’d sent me to die.”

“If you hate me so much, then why did you sleep with me again?” she asked. “You should have stayed the fuck away from me.”

“Unfortunately, when it comes to you, I keep repeating the same mistakes over and over. I never learn, it seems.”

She lifted her jaw. “I swear on the lives of every single person I have ever loved that I’d never met your cousin before last night.”

Mihir shook his head. “My father tried hunting for the men who had attacked me. He looked everywhere, used all his contacts, but he couldn’t find them. He begged me to think about the attack, to try and remember a clue that could lead him to those men. Imagine how much it must’ve broken my father to ask me to remember something he knew triggered me as hell. But there was no way he was going to let those men go scot-free, because that’s what you do when someone you love has been so brutally attacked. Unfortunately, I couldn’t tell him about your involvement in the whole thing. If I had, then even I wouldn’t have been able to stop him from destroying you.”

“Why didn’t you then? You were so mad at me; you should have let him come after me. Why did you protect me from his wrath?”

“Because I loved you, Anna,” he yelled. “I loved you despite everything. I couldn’t let him hurt you. I couldn’t bear to live in a world where you didn’t exist. It was only post our encounter on the yacht that I finally told Armaan and Vedant that you were the reason I was hurt that night.”

A tense silence filled the air after his outburst.

“I see that you’re not going to believe anything I say,” she said, her expression sad and defeated. “In your head, you have painted me to be this big villainess in your life. A witch who trapped you and destroyed you. But guess what? I’m setting you free now. Thank you for telling me your side of that time. After the yacht incident, I racked my brain trying to understand what I had done wrong for you to be so cold with me, with yourwife. At least now, I can live the rest of my life knowing that I didn’t hurt you.”

She paused to exhale a heavy breath. “For years, I hardly went out with other men because of you. I never gave anyone else a chance. But now, I’m done. I’m done pretending that I stopped loving you when I have always loved you. Even when you hurt me, ignored me, and were nasty to me, I told myself that I hated you, but I never did. Like a fool, I kept loving you, never moving on. That’s why I let you in again. But now, Iwillmove on. You don’t deserve me or my love. I absolve you of your deal with me. I’m going to sign the divorce papers, so you no longer need to be in the same room as me. But for the sake of our siblings, and until they do marry, if you choose to be in the same place as I am, then I will be civil to you. But I swear that once they are married, I will never see you again.”

She turned to leave, and then spun around to face him again. “One last thing. I’ll send you a copy of the interview we’ve done for Noir. I assume you still want me to publish it for Karina’s sake. If that still holds true, then I will send you the final version for your go-ahead soon.”

He lowered his chin a fraction. She stared at him for a long moment. Finally, she shook her head and left his study. He stared after her, his heart heavy and aching. Fuck. He couldn’t believe that despite finally putting everything out in the open and seeing the proof, she continued to deny her role in what had happened to him.

He switched on his laptop, but he couldn’t concentrate on his work. An hour passed, but his mind was still all over the place. No, it was firmly onher. Anna. All the happy moments he’d spent with her in the past and now, rushed to him, reminding him how happy he’d been with her once, and how happy she’d made him again.

No matter how much he told himself that her leaving was for the best, that ending everything with her was for the best, his heart wouldn’t listen. It objected fiercely to that voice in his head and wanted him to go to her. To stop her from leaving. But he stayed in his study.

Even after Dmitri informed him that Anna was leaving, he remained in his study, trying to work.

Hours later, there was a knock on his door, and Chekov entered.

“Sir, I have an update on Ivan’s whereabouts,” Chekov said.

Mihir frowned. “You were looking into him?”

“Last night, Miss Ananya texted Anton, telling him that Ivan was at the party and to keep a watch on him, to ensure someone followed him when he left, just in case that information came in handy. I assumed you knew.”

Why would Ananya ask one of his men to keep a watch on Ivan if she was working with him? It didn’t make sense. Fuck.

“What have you found?” Mihir asked.

“Ivan left the embassy with his date an hour after your exit,” Chekov began. “She dropped him at the Ritz. But as soon as she left, he exited the hotel and took a cab to the train station. He boarded a train to Zvenigorod. Our guy kept following him, and Ivan used only public transport everywhere.”

“He probably knows he’s safer if he’s in public. Fucking asshole.”

“Our guy followed him to the airport in Zvenigorod, where he took a private jet. We don’t know where to yet.”

“We need to find out. Bribe whoever you can, but we need that information.”

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