Page 55 of Born in Sin (Phoenix #3)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

CARA

The minute she stepped into her penthouse, Cara switched on the little gadget Virat had given her and swept the space for bugs. She went room to room, checking them all. There were none.

Her mother was in her bedroom, the door closed. She raised her eyebrows when Cara stepped in and shut the door behind her, locking it. Maria placed a bookmark between the pages of the book she was reading to mark her spot and placed it on the bedside table.

Cara watched, wondering if this moment would forever be bookmarked in her life too.

“Is there a problem?” Maria asked, her hands folded neatly on the bedspread.

“Why do you think there would be?”

A familiar fatigue crested through her, one she hadn’t felt in ages. But then she hadn’t had all the players present on this familiar stage in ages too, had she?

“You’re here, in my room,” her mother replied, no emotion showing on her face. But that could also be the excessive Botox. “You wouldn’t seek me out unless there was a problem.”

“Do you love me?” Cara asked, taking Maria by surprise.

“I beg your pardon.”

“It’s a simple question, Mom. Do you love me?”

“Well,” Maria floundered. “All mothers love their children.”

“No Mom. No more deflecting.”

Maria sat up, letting her feet come to rest on the floor, her hands pressing into the side of the bed, her shoulders rounding and stooping, her age seeming to bear down on her.

“Yes, Celina. I love you,” she told the floor she was staring at. “I have always loved you.”

It had been years since her mother had called her Celina. Years since either of them had acknowledged the fact that Celina had existed. She felt the ground beneath her feet quake a little.

“You’re back in touch with that boy again, aren’t you?” Maria asked, still looking at the marble flooring.

Cara went to sit beside her mother, keeping her own gaze on the flooring too. Had there always been this many grains in the marble?

“I know you are,” Maria continued. “I’ve been watching you the last few days, you know. And I can see it.”

“See what?” Cara asked, closing her eyes.

“You glow when he’s in your life, Celi,” her mother said quietly.

Tears pressed against the back of Cara’s eyelids.

“Tell me,” she said, forcing her voice to stay calm, opening her eyes and turning to face her mother. “Tell me everything.”

Maria exhaled, a quavering sound. “I don’t remember when I fell in love with Mohan. Your father was away, I was lonely, and he…he was there. He was good to me, loved me even. And I was desperate, Celi, so desperate to be loved, to have someone who loved me in my life.”

I loved you, Cara thought, but she kept the thought to herself, not voicing it. Clearly, she hadn’t been enough.

“One day, the day you joined school, that boy caught Mohan and I…” Maria’s voice trailed off. “He caught us,” she finished finally. “Together. He walked in on us by mistake.”

Cara could only imagine. “His name is Virat,” she said, her voice quiet but steely. “Use it.”

“Virat saw us together. Mohan was furious. We would have both lost our jobs if it had come to the school management’s knowledge. So, Mohan did what he could to ensure that boy,” her voice faltered, “I mean Virat, stayed quiet.”

“You mean he abused and tortured him to force his silence.”

“He…” Maria’s voice quavered. “Yes,” she said after a second.

“This was the man you loved, Mom? The man you left Dad for?”

“When I saw what Mohan was doing to V-Virat, I started to fear him. But I was in so deep at that point, I didn’t know how to get out. So, I stayed quiet. I let it happen. I thought…better him than me.”

Cara’s eyes closed, pain swelling like a tsunami within her.

“And then you befriended him. I wasn’t the only one who watched you get closer to him. Mohan did too. He knew that you were important to Virat and…”

“And?” Cara’s voice was hard as granite. No more secrets, she thought, but God their reveal threatened to drown her, pull her under in a riptide she couldn’t fight.

“Mohan used you to keep him quiet. He told Virat that if he didn’t keep his silence and endure the…” her mother’s voice faltered before trailing into uneasy quiet.

“Endure the?” Cara asked, forcing her to put what she’d been culpable for into words.

“The whippings,” Maria whispered. “Mohan told Virat that if he allowed anyone to find out about us or about the beatings, then he would do to you what he did to him and that even I wouldn’t be able to stop him. And so, Virat kept quiet. He took it. For years.”

For years. For her.

Cara’s heart cracked, a million lines of anguish snaking through it. The tremors that filtered through her body had her struggling to stay upright.

“After the tenth-grade exams, Virat found proof that Mohan had been selling board exam papers to some of the students. He emailed it to not only to the Head of School but also all the members of the school board, ensuring Mohan was sacked. It was a release for him, and for me.”

Silence fell between them for a microsecond and then her mother sighed, sounding every day of her sixty-five years.

“Mohan wasn’t the only one who noticed the way Virat and you looked at each other. Those boys, Varun and his friends, the ones who…” Her mother’s voice failed, tears quavering in them. “They noticed too. Did you never wonder why they took you that night?”

“No, I didn’t wonder.” Cara’s voice sounded like it came from far away. “I knew. They told me, over and over again. Exactly why they took me. I knew but he never did.”

“He did,” her mother corrected her. “He knew because I told him. At the hospital, I told him.”

The roaring in her ears was deafening.

“What did you tell him?” Cara asked, her voice deathly quiet.

“I told him that he was responsible for your ruin. The only reason those boys targeted you was because of your connection to him. I told him he had killed Celina Fernandez that day because she could never survive this scandal. I told him Chandrashekhar Sir was threatening to expel you from school, to write to the board and strike your roll number from the school rolls and that the only way I could mitigate all of that was by making you disappear from there. If you didn’t exist, the scandal didn’t exist. And for you to cease existing, he had to disappear from your life.

Those boys were never going to be punished.

Only you and the boys who tried to save you would.

And he couldn’t save himself and his friends, but he could save you. ”

“You convinced him to leave me.”

“Yes, because you would never have left him. He had to leave you. And he knew it too.”

The air that filled her lungs felt too thick, too noxious to exhale as she struggled to process her mother’s words.

“The minute you were discharged, I left with you for Dubai. Your father might have hated me by then, but he loved you. He took us in and helped get you back on your feet. And when we finally came back to India, you emerged to the world as Cara Ferns. Celina Fernandez had finally ceased to exist. It was the only way, Celi. The only way to save you.”

Her mother reached for her hand tentatively. Cara flinched away from her. Maria’s hand froze on the bedspread.

“If the two of you had stayed together, Cara Ferns would never have had a chance to come alive. And look at you now. Just look at you!”

“Yes, Mom. Look at me. Look at the daughter you, along with everyone else, destroyed.”

Maria shrunk under her gaze.

“All these years,” Cara whispered. “All these years, you allowed me to live in ignorance of all that he’s sacrificed for me, for you even. How could you?”

She got to her feet, every bone in her body aching. She needed to get out of here. She needed to get out of her life. Celina Fernandez no longer existed, and she didn’t know if she could stand to be Cara Ferns anymore.

Who, then, was she? And where did she go from here?