Page 86 of Since the Night We Met
‘Sixty,’ Shyamlal announced after stealing a glance at Kartik. His eyes kept shifting between Kartik and Abhay before every bid, and she caught that he was artificially inflating the bids.
All around her, the room felt like a furnace. Her fingers dug deeper into her thigh as she said, ‘Abhay, I’m begging you. Stop! Just stop.’
He didn’t even look at her when he raised his paddle and declared, ‘Seventy.’
She snapped at him. ‘You’re being ridiculous!’
Finally, he turned to her, and the fury in her was mirrored in his eyes. ‘You can tell me to stop a thousand times, Siya, but I know this ring means something to you, which is why he is using it against you. I’m not going to sit here and watch you lose another piece of your mother just because Kartik wants to prove his dominance.’
‘Abhay, no please. This is too much, way too much for me,’ she said, desperation making her bones shiver.
Neena, who had been quiet until now, her gaze locked on Shyamlal as he raised the bid to eighty crores, leaned closer to Abhay.
Fury burned in her eyes and seeing that Siya thought,this is it. Finally, her mother-in-law had had enough and would stop him from indulging in this madness.
Instead, her heart nearly stopped when Neena whispered, ‘Raise it to one fifty crores.’
Abhay announced it immediately. There was an audible gasp somewhere in the back of the room. Shyamlal faltered, and looked back at Kartik, whose jaw was so tense she could see the muscle throb in his cheek.
Shyamlal didn’t raise his paddle again, refusing to look at Kartik who was staring daggers at him.
The auctioneer’s voice rang out, cracking the fragile silence. ‘One fifty crore going once. One fifty crore going twice. One fifty crore going thrice. Sold to Mr Abhay Agrawal for one fifty crores. Congratulations!’
The gavel banged loudly as the auction came to an end. Siya was still stuck on Neena. Why had her mother-in-law, the woman who’d looked at her with thinly veiled contempt the first time they’d met, supported Abhay to win the ring for her?
Siya tried to build walls of anger and indifference, but each bid had torn at them until her heart bled through.
She desperately tried to glue shut the gaps with anger. ‘You’ve gone insane,’ she threw at him.
‘I know,’ Abhay said, the light from the chandelier catching his eyes, making them shine with raw vulnerability. ‘And I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I may be a flawed man, but I do learn from my mistakes, and letting you go without a fight is my biggest. I willnotrepeat it.’
Her throat constricted the instant a representative placed the cheque before Abhay. The numbers on that cheque glinted obscenely, and was ten times more than she had ever saved in her account. She looked away.
She wanted to snatch the cheque from him, sign it herself, but she knew in the pit of her stomach that it was impossible. Kartik had taken every penny of her massive inheritance, and only gave her a modest salary that she spent majorly on Kashvi’s studies.
Her heart splintered deeply and she looked away, not wanting to see him sign his name on the cheque. She’d spent years believing Abhay never truly cared about her, that he saw her only as a pawn to be used in this rivalry war, and that the love he portrayed was a performance and a calculated choice. But she had no excuse for this gesture.
The auction stage lights dimmed as the last applause died, and guests began gathering away. Laughter and conversation fading as they moved on to the dining room. Mihit and Neena stepped away to chat with a few guests.
Siya decided to leave immediately, feeling quite at the edge. As soon as they got up, the PR head motioned at them to stay for pictures. Abhay wound his arm around her waist as he stepped to stand half behind her. She forced a smile, acting on autopilot.
Kartik cleared his throat and spoke in a hushed tone. ‘Siya, you’ve crossed every limit of disrespecting your family. I’m so ashamed of you that I can barely look at you.’
Anger burned like hot iron in her chest and her blood ran cold. He wanted to talk about family after he had used her mother’s memory to punish her? It was a difficult feat to maintain her smile. She refused to take his bait and make a public spectacle of herself.
Abhay stiffened, then shifted closer and despite how his actions had scrambled her mind, she was grateful to have his looming, steady presence behind her.
‘I should’ve known better than to expect you to be anything other than the naive, hysterical woman that you are,’ Kartik taunted.
She felt cold sweat on her back, every camera flash a pinprick in her eyes. Dhruv caught her gaze, and she saw sympathy reflected in them. She hated that more than anything.
She gave Kartik a sharp, fierce look, but kept her smile firmly in place. ‘If you are auctioning off my mother’s gift to me, then don’t you dare use words like family to try to justify your cruelty.’
Abhay scoffed in agreement. Anger blazed in Kartik’s eyes when he turned to answer her. ‘Before you demand respect, you should learn what it means to be a good daughter and wife, who bends and honours the men’s needs, not her own whims.’
Abhay couldn’t hold back anymore. He softly said, ‘You do not get to dictate Siya’s role as my wife. It’s up to her to decide. Besides, if you judge respect by obedience, then you do not understand love at all.’
Kartik turned to look at Abhay and when the world saw his warm smile and pat on Abhay’s shoulder, Siya heard the rage in his words. ‘You’re going about this the wrong way, son. You must honour the code of marriage and teach your wife some manners and gratitude, not rebellion.’
