"I'm not doing it."
My voice sounded thin, even to my own ears. Pathetic. I stood by the window, watching the rain smear the streetlights into blurry yellow bruises. Behind me, the tea on the table had gone cold, a film of oil settling on the surface.
"Aarav Oberoi doesn't even know what I look like, Dad. And I don't know him. I've seen the articles—the ones about the 'hostile takeovers' and the string of models. He's a shark. You're asking me to walk into a shark tank because you... because the business..."
I couldn't even finish the sentence. The shame of it felt like a physical weight in the room.
My father didn't look up from his hands. He was picking at a loose thread on his cuff, over and over, until the silk started to fray. "It isn't a merger, Maya," he said. His voice wasn't even or commanding; it just sounded tired. Old. "It's a rescue. He's offering a way out that doesn't involve us losing the roof over our heads."
"And the gallery?" I snapped, turning around. "Is that part of the 'rescue' too? Or is that just the sweetener to make sure I don't run away?"
"Maya, please," my mother whispered. She was hovering near the door, her knuckles white where she gripped the back of a chair.
"The bank... they called again this morning. They aren't giving us another extension. Your brother's useless and, the mortgage... if we don't do this, we're on the street by next month. Do you want to see your father in a courtroom?"
"So I'm the collateral," I said. It came out sharper than I intended. A bit too loud. "I'm just a line item on a balance sheet you're handing over to the Oberois."
"Don't say that," she gasped, her eyes welling up. It was that look—the one she used whenever she wanted to end an argument. The 'look at how much I'm suffering' face. "We love you. We just... we don't have any other cards left to play."
The silence that followed wasn't dramatic. It was just awkward and suffocating. I looked at the sketches on my desk—the floor plans for the space I'd dreamed of opening since I was nineteen. It felt hollow now. Dirty.
"If you don't do this," my mother said, her voice dropping to a flat, scary level of calm, "then we can't keep pretending. You want your independence? Fine. But we can't support you anymore. We can't even support ourselves. If you walk out of this deal, you're walking out on this family. Because there won't be a family left to come back to."
I felt a sudden, sharp sting in my chest. Not a 'surgical' pain—just a dull, sick ache in my stomach.
"You're kicking me out?"
"We aren't doing anything," Dad muttered, finally looking at me. His eyes were bloodshot. "The world is doing it to us. We're just trying to survive, Maya. Please.."
I looked at them both. They looked like strangers. They looked like people drowning, reaching out and grabbing my neck to stay afloat.
"Okay," I whispered. My throat felt like it was full of sand. "Okay."
I wasn't a golden ticket. I wasn't a hero. I was just tired of fighting a debt I hadn't even signed for.