"I was unaware, but again, I offer condolences on your loss."
"How could you not know? His accident was not unremarked in the press."
"I do not read that kind of press." He, in fact, made sure his daily newsfeed was curated in such a way as to exclude any mention of his paternal genetic family.
Trisanu adjusted his designer suit jacket, no traditional Indian clothing for him, but then that was usually reserved for the men of his mother's birth country only at special events and ceremonies. "You have no interest in the lives of the family of your birth?"
"Birth?" Vin asked with emphasis. "Adhip rejected my mother long before I was born and rejected me again eighteen years later."
Suddenly he realized his Executive Assistant was watching this exchange in goggle-eyed wonder. It was a testament to how shocked he was to have the head of the Mahapatras dynasty in his office that Vin had just noticed.
"You may go, Jansen," he dismissed briskly.
"Perhaps she could fetch me a cup of tea?"
Vin wanted to bark a denial, but again, that would indicate that the other man's presence bothered him. And his mother had raised him better than that, even if he hadn't grown up in a palace.
He inclined his head. "Of course. See to it, Jansen."
"Any particular type of tea, Mr. Singh?" Jansen asked, giving the older man a look filled with nothing but professional interest.
Finally. She remembered one of the reasons he'd hired her. She had a reputation for maintaining professional decorum during the biggest crises. And thus far, she had not let him down, her inadvertent eavesdropping on his private life notwithstanding.
"Perhaps my companion might be allowed in?" Trisanu asked.
Vin frowned. Who would have accompanied the dynastic head? "Your companion?"
Trisanu nodded, but didn't offer a name.
It couldn't be Vin's father, presuming Trisanu had not lied. Adhip Trisanu Singh was dead. Vin refused to express any false sentiment of grief at what, for him, was no loss. He'd never had an Indian father.
Only an American one.
And Jamison Latham had come into Vin's life too late for Vin to accept him fully in that capacity, regardless of what claims he made to Trisanu.
"By all means, bring your companion in. You have twenty more minutes of our scheduled meeting."
By his expression, Vin's biological grandfather didn't like the reminder of their time limit, but he did not balk. He merely went to the door and beckoned someone inside.
It was a woman. Though she wore an Indian salwar kameez with European influence in its styling, she was clearly a western woman. With blonde hair and blue eyes that glowed like sapphires with emotion Vin did not understand, she looked at him expectantly.
"Miss…?" She looked familiar, but he wasn't sure why. And then it hit him. She had been there on that fateful day, when he'd gone seeking connections that did not want to be made.
She'd been a child then. She was definitely a grown woman now.
"Worthington-Smythe," she offered her hand. "My name is Eliza, I would be very happy if you used it."
He squeezed a hand soft and small in his, shaking gently and then finding himself loathe to release. "We have met?" he asked, despite knowing the answer very well. He'd learned early in life that giving away information was never as beneficial as drawing it out of others.
"We have." She tugged at her hand, her lovely oval face tingeing pink. "I saw you in India nearly two decades ago. You were kind to me."
He remembered the shy, tow-headed child. Even dealing with his own fury at how the visit had turned out for him, Vin had not been able to dismiss the sadness in the young girl's eyes. He had been gentle in tone and manner with her when all he'd felt was rage at the family that could dismiss one of their own so easily.
"I am glad you thought so. You seemed to need kindness at the time."
His grandfather made a sound, though Vin was unsure what it signified.
Eliza inclined her head in acknowledgement of Vin's words, her expression briefly shadowed by grief. He now knew that she had lost her parents not long before and come to live as ward to Adhip and his wife.
Images from their last meeting played through Vin's brain. By some gallows sense of humor, Eliza had been there to witness his ignominious rejection by the Mahapatras Singhs. His biological family.
Biologically related? Yes. Family? Not so much.
No longer rulers in India, as none of the royal families were, they nevertheless were incredibly impressed with their own importance and had had no place in their giant palace for a bastard son of the heir.
Using his hold on her hand, Vin led Eliza to a chair, waiting to let go until she was sitting down. "You were there."
"And you were kind," she said again. "Despite what you were dealing with." She smiled, those blue eyes glowing brightly in her lovely face.
Why did this beautiful and intriguing woman have to be with the despised Trisanu Singh? In other circumstances, Vin would have enjoyed getting to know the woman the girl had become.
"Why?" he asked as he settled against his desk.
Were it just his grandfather there, he would have returned to his chair, but he felt a strange loathing to put more distance between himself and Eliza.
"I do not know. You don't have a reputation, now, for being a kind man."
He dismissed her words with a flick of his hand. "That is not what I meant. Why are you here?"
"My parents were killed in an accident similar to the one that has taken Adhip uncle from us."
"I know, and I am sorry." And he meant the words in a visceral way he had not with his grandfather. He'd felt sorry for her then and understood her grief would always be a part of her now. "But I still do not understand what you are doing here?"
Even more confusing was how strongly his body was reacting to her. Vin's sex was growing hard just from her presence and, in spite of, that of his grandfather’s.
Vin wanted Eliza like he hadn't wanted another woman in a very long time, if ever.
Trisanu cleared his throat. "I will explain." He gave Eliza a look. "We have only a few minutes to explain to Rajvinder the change in his circumstances."
Vin's instincts went on high alert, even as annoyance flared through him at the use of the name he only ever answered to with his mother. "My circumstances have not changed."
"Indeed, they have. You are the only surviving male heir to the title of Prince of the Mahapatras."
"I am not an heir. I was denied." He allowed his condemnation to narrow his gaze. "I am Acharya, not Singh." Not that his Acharya relatives had wanted to claim him either, at least not until his mother had managed respectability through marriage.
"That will have to change, of course."
Fury filled Vin, unlike anything he had known since that fateful trip to India, when he still had some stars in his eyes at eighteen. He had kept a tight lid on his emotions since, but right now he was in danger of blowing his top.
Standing, he let his voice go arctic cold. "Leave."
"Calm yourself. You have a responsibility to the family, to the dynasty. This is bigger than your singular life. We all have a responsibility now to let go of past prejudices and do what is needed for the sake of the family."