Chapter 2: chapter 2

Chapter TwoYash Malhotra was pissed. All he wanted, at this moment, was to finish this meeting so he could go home and confront his mother about her ridiculous matchmaking ploys. Who in their ever loving mind arranged for you to meet someone at a freaking memorial service? Not that he wanted to meet anyone, anywhere but for the sake of all that was holy, a memorial service!“You’re muttering to yourself,” Vaishnav, his marketing manager and friend smiled sardonically. “Signs of age, old man.” “Shut up,” Yash growled and re-focused on the intern presenting at the head of the table. The boy quivered under his attention. His gaze strayed to the phone again and his mind to the last annoying message from his mother. “Are there any questions?” the intern quavered. Yash was already on his feet and sweeping out of the room before the boy had even finished his question. As Chief Marketing Officer, he had another hundred things on his to do list to attend to before he could get home and inform his mother he was petitioning the courts to disown his family or be disowned by them. Whatever gave him the chance to breathe freely, away from their meddling. “Sir, the User Experience team are here with the focus group results.” One of the junior marketing executives popped his head into his cabin to inform him.Yash grunted. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.” He scanned his emails, replying to the ones that needed urgent attention and then pushed himself to haul ass and get to the User Experience meeting on time. As the head of marketing for a fast moving consumer goods company, his work was dynamic and challenging. It was also exhausting, on days like today with back to back mind-numbing meetings. His phone pinged again in the middle of the User Experience meeting. This time his mother had sent him a picture. Yash growled to himself but refused to open the image. His mother could just stew till he got home. “Is all the negative feedback related to the colour of the packaging?” he asked the marketing executive talking to him.“Yes Sir.” The girl, Mariam, looked uncomfortable to be the center of attention. That was unfortunate because marketing wasn’t a field for wilting lilies. “What specifically is the problem with yellow as a colour? We are talking about a cereal with honey coating.” “It looks like vomit,” Mariam, said, shuffling her feet and looking down. Vomit? Yash took another look at the packet of cereal in the center of the table. Damn, she was right! And the unfortunate image of heaped cereal in the center looked like regurgitated muck. “How did they go so wrong?” he asked, amazed. Mariam shrugged. “Sometimes you look at something for too long, you miss the flaws.” For all her shuffling and shrugging, Mariam was pretty incisive. He’d missed the flaws too. He’d been staring at the beauty for too long. Once, at a very important time in his life, he’d made that mistake and he was still paying for it. Her pretty face flashed in front of his eyes and he tried to blink the image away. Five bloody years. He shouldn’t be thinking of that gold-digging witch anymore. She sure as hell didn’t remember him or the way she’d tossed him aside like yesterday’s garbage.He shoved her out of his head and dictated notes and action items to the team who frantically scribbled it down. His phone dinged again. A vein in his head started to throb. His mother really didn’t know when to stop pushing.The tip of his pen tore a hole in the paper he was writing on. He stared at it and at the white knuckled grip he had on the pen. He was losing it and it wasn’t even two in the afternoon. Yash took a deep breath. He needed to get a grip. And he needed to do it now. He worked like a demon through the rest of the day, ruthlessly keeping his temper under control and completing everything he needed to do. Because when Yash Malhotra went home tonight, work would not be on his mind. He was going to sit his family down and tell them where they got off. There would be no more emotional blackmail, no more melodrama and no more crocodile tears. He’d given in to them once before and had his ass handed to him thanks to it. No more. This time, Yash would do only what Yash wanted. He groaned and leaned back in his chair, grabbing his hair in his hands. He was talking about himself in the third person. That’s what his family had driven him to. As he thought it, a flash of kohl lined eyes, slanting at the tip framed in flawless, dusky skin speared through his brain and his hands fisted in the paper. His family might have driven him to the edge of insanity, but she had been the one to push him over. Maya. Five years and the pain of her betrayal was as fresh as it had been the day his mother had broken the news to him. Five years and his heart still throbbed like an open wound. And all that had been hurt had been his pride, hadn’t it? Then why the fuck did it still hurt so much?Â