Chapter 5: Lie To Dad

SAESHA POV

The ringtones slice through the room like a blade. I freeze against the desk. My palms are slick, my breath shredded. He’s braced behind me, heat and weight and power, his chest crowding my back, his hand tight at my hip as if I might run. I’m not running.

The screen lights up again on the polished wood. One name. Dad. Everything inside me trips. My whole body immediately go rigid my heart knocks so hard it hurts. The air feels thin. The house is too quiet for this kind of mistake.

Veeraj doesn’t panic. He never does and everyone knows that. He leans in until his mouth is at my ear, his voice is a command wrapped in velvet. “Answer.”

“I can’t,” I whisper. It comes out small and shredded. “He’ll know-”

“He’ll know you’re his good girl,” Veeraj murmurs, tone edged with something cruel and proud. “Unless you forget how to speak.”

The phone keeps ringing. My father does not like unanswered calls. He’ll call security or he’ll call the driver, maybe he’ll himself walk across the lawn. I reach with a shaking hand and swipe.

“Hello?” My voice comes out lighter than it should, too bright. I pray the speaker doesn’t catch the way my lungs stutter.

“Saesha?” Dad, sharp with worry. “Where are you? You dropped the file hours ago. You didn’t come home.”

I swallow hard, the desk edge bites into my hips. Veeraj’s fingers flex in warning: be sweet.

“I’m fine,” I say, and push sugar into it. “I’m at Levirena’s.”

There’s a beat of silence. “At this hour?”

“We were supposed to watch a movie and I lost track of time,” I say in a rush. “Her mom made food, we ended up talking, and I forgot to text. I’m sorry. I should have called.”

Veeraj’s breath ghosts my temple. His approval is a warm, dangerous thing. Dad exhales, some of the iron in his voice easing. “You can’t disappear like that. You’re not a kid. I worry.”

“I know,” I whisper like I do, like I always have. “I’ll text next time. Promise.”

“You’re staying there tonight?” he asks.

I glance at the dark window, the sleeping lawn, the mansion that already knows my name. “Yes.”

“Good,” he says. “Stay. Safer than home alone.”

Relief loosens something in my chest. I don’t trust it. Not with the way Veeraj’s hand tightens, reminding me he’s still here, still deciding how this conversation ends.

Dad clears his throat. “Listen. I was going to tell you in the morning, but it moved fast. I’m flying out. Tokyo. The collaboration finally locked. One, maybe two weeks.”

My head swims. Tokyo. Dad will be gone, the word hits like a door swinging open on its own. “When?” I ask.

“Tonight,” he says. “I’m at the office finishing paperwork. The driver will take me straight to the airport.”

I close my eyes for a second because I can feel Veeraj smile without seeing him. It’s in the way the room seems to shift around him. It’s in the way his thumb drags a slow line at my hip, claiming.

“I’ll be fine,” I say, forcing my voice steady. “Don’t worry.”

“I always worry,” Dad says, softer. “Tell Levirena’s mother I said thank you. Lock the doors. No late-night walks. Call me if you need anything.”

From anyone else, it would sound like rules. From him, it sounds like love and habit and a thousand nights he made sure every gate was closed, every light off, every window latched. The guilt is sudden and sharp and I press my nails into my palm just to hold it together.

“Okay,” I say. “I’ll be careful.”

A pause. “You dropped the file with Mr. Kapoor personally?” My throat tightens. Right behind me, his breath warms my skin like a dare.

“Yes,” I say, evenly. “He opened the door. I gave it to him. That’s all.”

“That’s all,” Dad repeats, and I hear the smile in his voice, tired and satisfied. “Good. He’s reliable. If anything urgent comes up while I’m gone, he can help.” I manage a sound that might be an agreement.

Another pause, longer this time, the kind he takes when he’s measuring a week in his head. “I’ll text when I land. Sleep at a decent hour if you can.”

“Have a safe flight,” I say. “Call me when you can.”

“I will.” A softer note. “Goodnight, beta.”

“Goodnight, Dad.”

The line clicks off. Silence drops thick and alive around us. The house hears it, my body hears it and even he hears everything.

I stay folded over the desk for a beat that feels like surrender. Then I push my palms flat, lift my head, and breathe deeply. The city is a smear of light beyond the glass. My reflection looks flushed and not sorry at all.

Veeraj doesn’t move away. He doesn’t give space. He slides his palm up my spine to the back of my neck and holds there, not rough, not gentle, just inevitable.

“You lied well,” he says, voice low.

“You told me to.”

“I told you to answer.” His thumb presses, a silent you-know-better. “You decided to lie.”

He’s right. It sits between us like a crown I didn’t know I wanted. “Tokyo,” he adds, almost idly, like he’s talking about the weather. “One week. Maybe two.”

I turn my head enough to catch him in the glass. He looks like sin without his suit and I hate the way my stomach flips at the thought of an empty house and nothing to stop him.

“You think that means you get me every night,” I say.

He smiles at my reflection, a slow, dark curve that knows the answer. “It means you don’t pretend anymore.”

“I wasn’t pretending.”

“You were pretending you could leave.”

I push off the desk and face him fully. If he wants true, he can have it. “You’re not subtle,” I say. “You don’t believe in love. You don’t ask permission. You take. Everyone knows that.”

“Not everyone,” he says. “You.”

“I knew it before I rang your bell.”

He steps closer. “And you still rang.”

“Midnight is a good time to make mistakes.”

He laughs once, soft and ruthless. “You didn’t make a mistake.”

“No?” I lift my chin. “What did I make?”

“History,” he says. “And a habit.”

I hate how the word settles in my bones like it was already there.

“Say it,” he adds.

“What?”

“That you liked it. The lying. The way your voice went sweet for your dad while you did exactly what I told you.” His gaze rakes me like he’s memorizing the admission before it exists. “Say it and I’ll decide whether I ruin you slow or ruin you fast.”

Heat climbs my neck. The humiliation is a sparkler in my throat. I swallow it and it leaves sugar and ash.

“I liked it,” I say, clean. “I liked how wrong it was. I liked how you made me do it.”

His eyes darken in a way I’m going to dream about. “Good girl.”

“Don’t call me a girl,” I shoot back, but it doesn’t have teeth. Not with the way my pulse trips at the praise.

He studies me for a heartbeat, then nods like a private deal just cleared. “Bed,” he says, already turning me with a hand at my jaw. “You don’t fall asleep on a desk like some intern.”

“I’m not sleeping.”

“You will,” he says. “After.”

“After what?”

He doesn’t answer with words. He tilts my face and looks at my mouth like he owns the next ten times I’ll speak. The hand on my neck tightens just enough to remind me I asked for this the second I came to his door.

“Say his name,” he orders.

“My dad’s?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I want your mouth to remember the difference,” he says, almost kind, which is somehow worse. “Dad is Dad. I’m the one who teaches you how to lie to him.”

The floor shifts under me. The line braids itself into my spine. I say it once, softer than a prayer. “Dad.”

“And who am I?”

“You know who you are.”

“Say it.”

I hold his eyes because if I look away it’s surrender. If I look away it’s fear. I don’t want either.

“My daddy,” I say, and the room tilts on a hinge. He exhales like the word fed him. “Again.”

“My daddy.”

“Good girl.” He releases my jaw, but not my neck. “Now you understand the address.”

I should tell him that’s insane. I should tell him I don’t belong to anyone, but my mouth doesn’t get the message. It curves like I’ve been waiting to be claimed and just didn’t have the language.

He points to the phone still on the desk. “Text Levirena.”

“What?”

“Tell her you’re coming over for two days,” he says, simple as a calendar entry. “Pack a bag in the morning, drop it at her place. Then you come back here.”

“That’s not how staying at a best friend’s works.”

“It is tonight,” he says. “Your dad trusts me. He said it himself, If anyone asks where you are, you’re wherever I say you are.”

I should hate how that sounds, the part of me that loves rules does. The part of me that came at midnight because I wanted to be seen hums like a live wire.

“And if I say no?” I ask.

He steps in so close the answer is breath-warm. “You won’t.”

I don’t. He takes my wrist and lifts my hand to his shoulder, then uses that same hand to pull me after him. The office lights cast us long and sinful across the hallway. The house is still, the world is small, just floor, doors and bed. A future I didn’t mean to pick and am already wearing like perfume.

At his bedroom threshold, he stops and turns to face me. Something in his gaze softens, not sweet, not gentle, just less weaponized. It knocks me off balance in a different way.

“Last chance to run,” he says, even though we both know it’s not a chance at all.

“I’m not leaving,” I answer, and it rolls easy now, like a sentence I was born to say. He nods once, decided and final.

“Lights off,” he says. “Phone on do not disturb, except for Dad. When he calls from Tokyo, you answer.”

“With you here,” I say.

“With me here,” he confirms. “You’ll need the practice.”

I should ask practice for what but I don’t because I already know. He guides me inside and I go without protest, my head is light, my spine buzzing with anticipation, my mouth tingling with the word I gave him and the name I kept for my father. The house settles around us, satisfied.

Somewhere across the lawn, papers are signed. A driver waits, a flight opens its mouth. Here, a different trip begins.

“On the bed,” he says, and this time I don’t argue. He follows me down, covers the world around us with his shadow, and makes a promise I feel, not hear: Now that your dad is flying out, you’re done pretending.

End of Chapter 5