For a long time I had mistaken that stillness for strength. I had thought it meant I was composed, hard to shake, a woman who could survive anything if she kept her face arranged correctly. But now I recognized it for what it was: the body’s way of stepping back from a ledge.
He reached out and touched the side of my wrist, just there, where the pulse betrayed the whole performance.
“Tell me the truth,” he said softly.
I almost laughed again. Truth, from a man like Khanna, was not a moral request. It was a demand for compliance. The truth he wanted was not information. It was submission dressed up as confession.
And then I understood, with a clarity that was almost vulgar in its simplicity, that his jealousy was never about love. It was about inventory. About knowing what belonged to him, where it had gone, and whether it had the audacity to move without permission.
When Khanna asked where she had been for the third time in one evening, Nisha understood that a rich man’s jealousy was just ownership with better packaging.