Page 75 of The Billionaire’s Fake Fiancée
I know my face wears the emotions I'm feeling inside. I can't put it off, not any more.
The last week has been about Anja, about spending as much time as I could with her, knowing I was going to lose her and yet trying to peer through her to see if I could glimpse the image of the mother she must have been in her younger years.
In the few days I had with my mother, she'd told me a little bit about having lost me when I was young. Now I ask Neil the inevitable questions about my past.
"You were taken," he says. "Kidnapped from school. Part of a wave of extortions taking place at that time. Your father was a powerful man. He worked for the police and was instrumental in breaking a ring of terrorists. He foiled what could have been a second 26/11 in the city."
He's referring to 2008 when terrorists had carried out a series of bombing attacks across the city. It had left many dead, and injured hundreds.
"So I was kidnapped as a way of getting back at him?"
Neil nods. "Your father refused to pay them off and your mother never forgave him for that. He was clear that he had to set an example by not bowing to their pressure. And he was confident that he would be able to track down the kidnappers, which he did—"
"But it was too late," I say, my voice soft. "I remember parts of it. Voices, images that have grown stronger in the last week. The men who took me, they kept me locked in a room for a few weeks. They..." I swallow. "They kept me drugged. So, the memories of those days are hazy. But I get flavors of what happened then, do you understand?"
"Do you remember how you escaped?"
Coming to Bombay and seeing my mother helped in at least one way. Over the last few nights some more of the memories have revealed themselves. "One of the kidnappers let me go. He told me I reminded him of his daughter. The next thing I remember is almost meeting with an accident."
Screech of vehicles?
Screams?
"My adoptive father pulling me out of the path of an oncoming car."
"I'm glad we found you in time. At least you got to spend a few days with her," Neil says.
Yeah.
Thinking about Anja is still difficult. It feels unfair that I got to meet her only to have her taken away from me so soon. My breathing goes shallow. It's difficult to draw air into my lungs, let alone speak.
"Your mother had this uncanny confidence, even after all these years, that she was going to find you." Neil's voice cuts through the emotions swirling in my head.
"Fate," he says, "can be cruel and yet sometimes we are all at its mercy. Pieces of a puzzle waiting to be put together, and the pattern that emerges always surprises."
"We ran checks on you," Neil says, his voice apologetic. "There's more," he says, his voice gentle, but with a thread of steel running through it, one I hadn't heard earlier. "Your mother left a will. She left everything to you. Your father was careful with his investments. Enough to leave your mother well taken care of. All of it, and this house, which is on some of the most expensive real estate in the world, it all goes to you."
I hear him, but my brain is still not able to process what he means by it.
"You are a very rich woman, Sienna."
I start.
My blood family is gone, but they've left me money. A lot of it, by the sounds of it.
"I don't deserve the money," I say, looking around the room again. The space is heavy with memories.
The ghosts of my parents still live here. The ghosts I have carried in my head for so long that they seem more real than the pictures on the mantelpiece.
Neil walks around the desk and sits down in the chair next to me. He grips my hand and I feel the affection, the sympathy, bleed into me from his touch.
"She'd want you to have it." he says. "They'd both have wanted you to have it."
I stay quiet, then finally ask, "My name. What is it?"
"Tara," he says. "You are Tara Deol."
I smile at that, a weight lifts off my chest. I don't recognize the name. But I like it. It sounds… "Pretty," I say.
