I pulled out my phone and sent Spencer a text—

Deal on. You better hold up your end of the bargain.

He might have won this battle, but there was no fucking way I was letting him have access to my kingdom. I will win this war. It just might take a little longer than I thought.

29

KAAVI

Two Days before the Wedding

Now that I’d made up my mind to go through with the wedding, I had another fucking headache to deal with—Mr. Ananda. It turned out that Tehani was right and his wife was really sick. Who would have thought? She was so sick, in fact, that she’d passed away a week after her husband was let go. Talk about a rough patch, huh? I’d checked in with Danushka, who was usually up to date on all office gossip, and it turned out that Mr. Ananda had to transfer his wife from the private hospital she was in to a government one, since their medical insurance got canceled. It wasn’t technically my fault. I mean, she still did get medical care, right?

I felt bad, though, and sent him flowers and a note with my sympathies. I’d even stupidly offered to pay an extra month’s salary before I’d gotten an angry phone call from him blaming me for everything. The inadequate care she received at the government hospital, he claimed, resulted in his wife’s premature death.

I’d laughed then, perhaps insensitively, because grieving aside, that was a ridiculous thing to say. I’d politely told him that my offer of an extra month’s salary still stood, but if he wished to discuss anything further it would have to go through my lawyers. I’d thought he would have left me alone after that. That he was hysterical because of his loss, but would come to his senses after he calmed down. I’ve been waiting for him to calm down for weeks.

First, he had shown up at my house during the cocktail party, screaming that he wanted to see me. For what? I had no clue. Thank god the staff had the sense to get rid of him.

And this evening, when I’d hurriedly picked up a call from an unknown number thinking it was something wedding related, it had turned out to be him. I only managed to duck into the bathroom at the Mount Lavinia Hotel lobby in the nick of time, and it took me more than a minute to calm down before I made it out to my bridal shower. Given everything that was happening, I wasn’t really in the mood.

I used to love these events. It definitely gave me a ton of content for my Instagram, that’s for sure. And it was nice to see all the comments—Kaavi, you’re so beautiful! Kaavi, where did you get your dress from? Kaavi, tell us about your makeup routine? Seriously, everyone thought this shit was real. My makeup routine is three different types of foundation and fifteen minutes on the Facetune app, bitches. Calm the fuck down.