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Chapter Four

“It’sabout damn time the two of you showed up.” The acid-laced words slapped us in the face the second the doors opened, washing the confusion I felt from Ashur’s statement out in one swift blow.

God, I despised that man, father-in-law or not. He’d turned my life upside down. Because of him, my father had lost his job and had to move to a different state to find work. Because of him, I’d lost the one man who meant more to me than anything else on earth.

Yeah, I was officially marrying the very man in a few days, but it wasn’t the way I’d dreamed it would have been. Instead of laughter and happiness, it was all business and end gains.

“Lord, help me not to kill him,” I whispered, sending my wishful prayer up to heaven.

Ashur released a deep breath and responded, “You and me both.”

“I mean it, Ashur. If he crosses the line, I won’t hold back anymore.”

“Go right ahead. After all, you are the first lady.”

I shot him an annoyed glare, but he ignored me and moved into the room.

“Mummy,” Ashur said, ignoring his father’s curt words, and walked over to Anya Kumar, a beautiful Indian woman with soft golden skin and loving light brown eyes in the exact shade of her son’s. He enveloped her in his large arms. “I missed you.”

“You look tired, betta.” She ran a thumb down his cheek. “This job is making you age.”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry so much.”

“It is my job as your mummy.”

I smiled at the love the two of them shared. For such a hard man, who’d spend a decade serving in the military, he was complete mush for his mom.

I couldn’t blame him. I absolutely adored my future mother-in-law. She was everything and anything a girl could hope for in a mother-in-law: sweet, considerate, loving, and welcoming. It was the other half of the duo I dreaded seeing.

Ashur and Anya held each other for a moment longer and then Ashur stepped back and inclined his head to his father. “Papa.”

A scowl crossed Minesh Kumar’s face. “I left my business to attend your wedding.” Then his gaze turned to me. “The least either of you could do is be here when we arrived.”

I clenched my jaw. Yes, the President of the United States had nothing better to do than cater to his grumpy-ass father. And now my job as the first lady was to be at his beck and call.

Fuck that shit.

Minesh Kumar, technology billionaire and all-around elitist asshole viewed anyone who hadn’t grown up in his social circle as beneath him. And, as the daughter of an ICU nurse and a lowly computer programmer in his empire, I was an ant to step on. He thought of me as an opportunistic gold digger and hadn’t hidden his feelings.

He couldn’t care less about all my degrees or that I was a world-renowned attorney who’d made a success of herself. All he saw was my pedigree.

Then there was the fact I ran an internationally successful law practice with his daughter, Samina Kumar-Camden. Never mind, that was a bad example.

He’d disowned Sam long ago. She’d chosen her own path in life and not the one her father had set out for her to follow. She’d become a celebrity attorney, joined forces with me to start our firm, married a conservative judge, and then decided to throw her hat into politics and became the junior senator from Washington State.

Most fathers would be overjoyed to have a child make a success of their careers, in politics or not. This wasn’t the case for Minesh. He viewed it as a blow to his family name, more so now that both of his children had chosen a path in different realms than the one he envisioned them following.

I’d been Ashur’s fiancée for over eighteen months and the man could barely look at me, much less welcome me as a future daughter-in-law.

I sighed and shrugged my shoulders. At least I had my parents. Anyone would have to be a moron not to like them.

Deciding to let Ashur deal with his father, I stepped around them and headed to the couch where my mom and dad stood.

“Daddy.” Amir Zain picked me up and twirled me in a hug. “I’m so glad you made it safely.”

“It is good to be here,” he said as he set me on my feet.

My dad was a big, burly man with salt-and-pepper hair. I barely came up to his shoulder and in his arms, it always felt like home. Not a single day since the moment I could remember had he made me think I was anything less than amazing.