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“Diya, you don’t look too well. Are you okay?” he asked, reaching out to stroke my face.
“I have a headache,” I replied, my voice hoarse from the exertion of holding in my screams.
“Try and catch some sleep. I’ll be working in the other cabin because I’ll be on calls for a while,” he said, dropping a gentle kiss to my forehead before he walked over to the other side and drew the sliding door shut.
The cabin crew made up the bed for me and I asked them to draw the privacy screen before I threw myself on it because all the tears I had dammed up last night were starting to seep out of my eyes. My heartbreak of nine years ago seemed like a child’s temper tantrum when compared to the grief I felt now.
I wept silently, great sobs shaking my body until there were no more tears left. I was wracked by dry sobs, and after a while, even those subsided. I must have fallen into an exhausted stupor because the next thing I knew, the cabin crew was shaking me awake gently. I didn’t know what she saw in my face, but she shot me a sympathetic look as she handed me cold towels and informed me that we were landing in an hour, in case I wanted to freshen up before I came out.
“I can bring you some cold teabags if you like, Your Highness,” she said gesturing to her eyes.
I took that to mean that my eyes were red and swollen.
I thanked her and spent the next hour making myself presentable again, and apart from a slightly red nose, there were no signs that I had spent most of the flight crying my heart out for our failed marriage.
When I joined Dheer in the adjoining cabin, he was shutting down his laptop. He shot me a wide grin.
“Nice of you to join me, Sleeping Beauty.
“Uh-huh,” I replied dully.
“You’re needed at the police station again after we land.”
My heart leapt into my mouth. This was good. The sooner we brought Ayush to justice, the sooner I could end this farce of a marriage.
CHAPTER 24
DHEER
Diya looked unwell. I knew she said she had a headache, but could a headache make you look so lifeless? It was scaring me.
“Hey, have you eaten anything? I’m such a brute for not checking on you earlier. I’m sorry, baby,” I said softly.
But she brushed it off.
“I’m fine. So what happens next?”
“You have to give a formal statement. Are you sure you’re okay, Diya? Because you don’t look fine.”
“Oh, give it a rest. I said I’m fine,” she snapped.
I clenched my jaw to resist retorting in kind. Maybe she was tired. She hadn’t had enough sleep in Milan, and maybe she was stressed about the whole mess with Ayush Goel. Unless we got a warrant to search their premises, it was going to be her word against his because the husband was liable to change his statement if Ayush so much as cracked his knuckles.
I picked up a bottle of mango milkshake from the spread on the side table and gave it to Diya.
“Drink this,” I ordered in a tone that brooked no argument.
She drained the small bottle and set it aside without even looking at me.
I didn’t know what it was, but she was pissed at me for something. Was this about her diet?
I knew I had strong opinions about women starving themselves because I had seen Isha go through far too many fad diets and extreme workouts just to look skinny, and I didn’t want Diya to be forced to conform to such unhealthy standards of beauty. But if it was the norm in her line of work, there wasn’t much I could do about it. And sabotaging her diet even unintentionally was only going to cause friction between us. I didn’t want to be responsible for destroying her career.
“Look, I know I might have been slightly harsh about the no-carbs thing yesterday, but that’s only because I… care about you. I know you’re an adult, and I promise I will not interfere in your diet ever again.”
I had to catch myself before I told her I loved her because I didn’t want to blurt that out in the middle of what was definitely a fight even if it was one-sided, and in full hearing of the cabin crew.
“Dheer, can we focus on the case, please? That’s my biggest priority right now because as soon as Ayush goes to jail for her murder, I can get back to my old life and we can end our marriage,” said Diya coldly.
