Billionaire's Complicated Pyaar

Seven years of devotion can be erased in a single heartbeat. For Avantika, it took exactly ten hours to realize that the life she had built was nothing more than an elaborate lie. Standing in the middle of a chaotic cruise terminal, surrounded by couples eagerly awaiting a romantic getaway, she held a ticket for a ghost. Her boyfriend was gone. Her best friend was gone. All that remained was a suitcase full of broken dreams and a fierce, burning vow: Never again.

Love....

Avantika once believed love was the most beautiful thing in the world. Now, she knew better. To her, it was a cruel, foolish trap, and she had vowed never to fall into it again. She simply refused to believe that a girl like her was even worthy of love.

Clutching her suitcase, her heart utterly shattered, she stood at the cruise ticketing booth, waiting for her turn. They were supposed to spend a long vacation together on this ship. Perhaps it was just fate that brought her here alone, but if she hadn’t been so impossibly naive, she wouldn’t have been hurt like this. Had she done something terrible in a past life to suffer such a punishment today?

Seven years wasted. Good God, she had thrown away seven years of her life with Rohan, only to discover he was a cheap cheat who was sleeping with someone else behind her back.

She couldn’t fathom how he had managed to fool her for so long. Why hadn’t she noticed the signs earlier? Why had she been so blind and gullible? Whenever they lacked time for each other, she had foolishly assumed they were just buried in their respective careers. They had stopped having dinners together because he claimed he had no time. He always came home late, blaming it on overtime. How incredibly wrong she had been to trust his every lie. He didn’t lack time; he just didn’t have time for her because he was busy with someone else. He was busy taking another woman out to dinner while Avantika spent her nights entirely alone, and he came home late because he was spending those nights in another bed.

A wave of suffocating grief washed over her; she felt an overwhelming urge to weep, and a part of her simply wanted to die. They had known each other since childhood, yet he had betrayed her trust with her absolute best friend—a girl Avantika had loved like a sister. How could they both do this to her? It was Radhika who had initially pushed her to date Rohan in the first place. The realization felt like a vicious slap across the face. For seven years, her boyfriend had been sleeping with her best friend.

Just ten hours earlier, before setting off for her week-long vacation, Avantika had specially requested a day off from work to surprise her boyfriend. She never expected that upon returning home, she would be the one caught completely off guard.

The moment she stepped into their shared apartment, the sound of a woman’s voice calling out her boyfriend’s name made her freeze in her tracks. Terrified and trembling from what she heard, she quietly walked up the stairs and turned the doorknob to their bedroom.

There, right in front of her eyes, she saw her boyfriend and her best friend wrapped in each other’s arms. Their playful, happy voices instantly twisted into horrified shrieks the moment they looked up and saw her standing at the door. To shield herself from any further agony, Avantika slammed the door shut and ran downstairs. Grabbing her pre-packed suitcase, she rushed out of the apartment and hailed a passing cab. She could hear him screaming for her to stop, but why should she bother? To listen to more lies?

That was out of the question. She had seen enough, and there was absolutely nothing left to discuss. There was no explanation that could erase what she witnessed. She wasn’t blind, and she wasn’t dreaming; she had seen Rohan in their bed with her best friend.

“Miss, it’s your turn,” the woman standing behind her said, jolting Avantika out of her memories.

Avantika nodded in gratitude, stepped up to the counter, and handed over the pass. “I would like to return this ticket, please. Is it possible? I accidentally bought two.”

After returning the ticket that was originally meant for her treacherous ex-boyfriend, Avantika made her way onto the cruise ship and found her cabin. As she was unpacking her luggage, her phone began to ring once more. She glanced at the screen before turning the device completely off and tossing it back into the suitcase.

It was Rohan, calling for the ninth time. She wondered for a fleeting second if she should answer just to hear what he had to say, but the visual of the betrayal was etched too deeply into her mind. Trusting his lies ever again would be impossible.

“I swear, I will never fall in love again,” Avantika vowed to herself, unable to endure the thought of her heart being broken a second time.

The tears she had spent the last several hours fighting back finally streamed down her face the moment she lay down on the bed. She wept quietly, mourning her own foolishness. It truly felt as though fate was against her and that her life would never improve. Orphaned at the age of eight and raised by various relatives after her parents’ death, she had never truly known what real love felt like. Furthermore, she had no doubt that once this journey ended, she would be left both homeless and jobless.

The apartment they shared belonged to Rohan, and Radhika was her senior manager at the office. Without them, she had no idea how she would even begin to build a new life.

She was at zero, but as the ship began to move, she realized she had no choice but to keep sailing.