PROLOGUE
Her heart barely moving in her chest, the air void of necessary oxygen, Eliza walked into the private hospital room.
Her best friend and the man she was supposed to marry one day, lay in the bed, broken and battered. He'd survived the accident that had killed Adhip uncle, but just barely. His parents sat in chairs near the bed, their focus entirely on the man fighting for his life.
Only according to the doctor, Dev was destined to lose that fight.
Neither Veeresh, nor Mayurika, even looked up when Eliza walked in.
She walked to the other side of the bed from where they sat, laying her hand gently on Dev's forearm, a small patch of skin that was unmarred by the accident and not covered in bandages. "Fight, Dev. Please fight."
The only person she'd let have even a little piece of her heart since the death of her own family, Dev was necessary.
Silky black lashes fluttered and Dev's eyes opened only a slit. "Eliza?"
"I'm here." Tears choked her voice, but she didn't let them fall.
Eliza hadn't cried since she was ten years old. None of her tears then had brought back her family and tears wouldn't help Dev now.
His mother cried out his name, but Dev's head did not move, his gaze fixed on Eliza. "Take care…" His voice trailed off into gasping breaths.
Eliza said nothing, waiting for Dev to finish his thought. She would not risk talking over any word he might manage to get out.
"My family. Promise."
His mother made a terrible sound of grief. Dev's father, Veeresh, touched his son's brow, oh so gently. "All will be well."
But Dev's focus was still on Eliza.
"I promise, Dev. I'll take care of your family."
"Find…" His breathing grew even more labored. "Love…" Now he was looking at his mother.
And Mayurika auntie knew what he meant. She told him how much she loved him, how proud she was of him, the litany continuing even as Dev's breathing stopped and his heartbeat flatlined.
The doctors and nurses came running. Eliza got pushed out of the room. She didn't know how long she stood out in the hallway, but the sound of a Mayurika's wail told Eliza she had just lost her best friend.
At some point, Dev's parents came out. Veeresh had his arm around a sobbing Mayurika. Eliza stood dry-eyed, her grief a cement block inside her heart.
The only thing she had to cling to was her promise to Dev to take care of his family and she knew what she had to do.
They'd talked about it many times over the years. Dev wanted his cousin brought into the family. He wanted the firstborn cousin, the one who should have been made heir to the Mahrajah, to come home to the palace.
He'd told Eliza that his cousin would have run their business interests with so much more acumen than Dev's father, or even the current Maharajah, the man Eliza called grandfather. Only one man could save the Singh family and the Mahapatras Dynasty.
Rajvinder Acharya.
The time had come to reunite the heir with his family.
CHAPTER ONE
Vin looked down at the reminder for his next appointment, shock coursing through him and coming right out his mouth. In a bellow. "Jansen!"
The usually supremely efficient woman in her forties came rushing into the room, panic clear in his grey eyes. "Is something wrong? Are you all right?" She looked around his office as if expecting a gun wielding madman to jump out. "You shouted. You never shout."
"My next appointment."
"Oh, yes." She seemed to relax, back on familiar territory. "Mr. Singh is already here." She said it like that should be good news.
It wasn't.
In fact, it had been his plan to live out the entire rest of his life without once laying eyes on another Singh from the Mahapatras dynastic family.
"You did not think to ask me before giving part of my very busy day to Trisanu Singh?" he demanded, imparting all the loathing he felt toward his biological father's family into his grandfather's name.
"You do not want to meet with him?" Ms. Jansen asked, sounding scandalized. "He is a potential investor in the Asia clean energy project. He has far reaching contacts in India."
She'd done her job running background on Trisanu Singh's company, but she'd been unaware of the one connection that Vin never wanted to use. And that was the one between himself and that family.
"If that is what he told you to gain this appointment, he was lying." Even if the grandfather who had refused to acknowledge Vin at birth, or again seventeen years ago, wanted to invest, there was less than a snowball's chance in hell of Vin allowing it.
"I assure you, Mahapatras Enterprises is quite interested in the moves your country wants to make bringing clean and renewable energy technology to India." The upper crust Indian accent spoken in that even tone sent shards of disquiet running down Vin's spine.
He turned his body so he faced the man now standing just inside the impressive oversized double door entrance to his San Diego high rise business office. "Is it your habit to barge into another man's office?" Vin asked of the older man with disdain, cutting at the supposed adherence to etiquette of those who called themselves royalty, even those of the deposed Indian royal families.
Trisanu grimaced, stepping further onto the antique Armistar carpet. "Had I waited for an invitation, I suspected it would never have come."
"And that is an excuse for dismissing common courtesy?"
His grandfather sighed, suddenly looking older, his perfect posture slumping infinitesimally. "Forgive me. My grief has left me less than my usual self."
"I am sorry for your loss," Vin said automatically, as his mother had drilled in him to do, though he had no idea what he was expressing sorrow for.
Whatever dismissals of courtesy Trisanu might feel comfortable with, Vin refused to allow himself such luxuries. His loss of control moments ago was entirely out of character and he would not continue to give the older man any reason to believe his presence was anything but a minor annoyance to Vin.
"So, you have heard the news?" Trisanu asked.
"What news?"
"About your father's death."
Vin felt nothing. No grief. No what might have been. He was a thirty-five-year-old man with a life much too full, to worry about the biological father who had never offered anything beyond his DNA contribution. "My father is alive and well in his office down the hall."
Vin's stepfather, Jamison Latham, and Vin had become official partners, merging their two companies together nearly ten years previous, keeping their headquarters in San Diego.
Trisanu winced. "I am aware you are not happy to claim our family, but Mr. Latham is not your father."
"In every way that matters, he is."
"All but one."
Vin went back around to his chair and indicated his grandfather should sit before doing so himself. "The sperm donation is of no consequence."
Again, the wince, this time in clear distaste. "It is to our family."
"It wasn't seventeen years ago when I wanted to meet Adhip." Vin used his biological father's first name as a purposeful indication of his lack of respect, or familial ties.
Trisanu merely shook his head and sighed. "Adhip is dead."