A thought that had been nudging at the back of his mind suddenly pushed forward. “I do need a new project. I just don’t think I need to go away to find it this time.” Helping Yash had shown him something. “I think my country and my family need me, and I’ve been ignoring them and chasing butterflies for far too long.”

Chapter Two

Naina Kohli didn’t like too many people. Liking people and being liked in return was a childish and shortsighted endeavor. It worked for those interested in transient happiness induced by dopamine hits and instant gratification. It had little to do with real life, which was a long, weary road.

Her parents, for instance, pretty much loathed each other.

Her father’s loathing was more obvious, of course, because the patriarchy was a many-splendored thing. Men got to be honest. With their loathing for inferior spouses, with their disdain for their inferiorly gendered offspring. Men didn’t have to fear loss, especially not the men who carefully constructed and inculcated dependency on them in their loathed ones.

“Naina beta!” Naina’s mother threw a look over her shoulder, undoubtedly to make sure her husband wasn’t watching, before rushing over to her only child across the throng of guests celebrating Yash’s win on the Raje estate.

Naina and her father, the illustrious Dr. Kohli, were no longer on speaking terms after she’d told her parents that Yash was not interested in marrying her and that he was in love with someone else, who was not her.

So a yoga instructor with unknown parentage could trap him in a few months but you couldn’t keep him after having ten years to do it?

Yes, Dr. Kohli was a delight. Not having to deal with him any longer was the most fortuitous thing that had ever happened to Naina.

The sheer enormity of the relief Naina felt at the fact that Vansh had gone off to mingle and she was blessedly alone when her mother found her should have been embarrassing, but Naina no longer let embarrassment and her mother mix in her mind.

Despite Naina’s best efforts, her mother’s presence, her smell, her voice—it all fell like precision cuts on the ice that usually covered her like impenetrable armor.

“You good, Mummy?” she said with a casualness that made her mother’s hand tremble at her throat, where her string of solitaires caught every one of the million decorative lights brightening the Raje estate.

Naina had no doubt her father had ordered her mother to don the bling. Wear your biggest diamonds . . . That thing you had made in India to replicate Tiffany.

High-priced gems set to knock off even higher-priced gems was apparently the perfect way of announcing to the world that the Rajes had lost a precious alliance, while also making sure everyone knew that the Kohlis were just as good as the Rajes.

They weren’t.