Page 16 of Wicked Trap

She broke off when her phone began ringing. Looking at the number flashing on the screen, she wanted to ignore it. But she knew the phone wouldn’t stop ringing until she took the call. Feeling irritated and resigned, she answered it.

“Miss Shetty,” her father’s secretary’s voice greeted with a hint of urgency. “Your father wants you to come home right now.”

Tanvi frowned. “Mr. Prasad. Please tell my father I am busy today, and—”

“Your father said it’s important since he wants to discuss the... recent incident.”

Tanvi knew the man meant the protest she led and her subsequent arrest. She knew she couldn’t avoid the discussion with her father. He wasn’t the kind who would let it go easily.

“Fine. Tell my father I’ll drop by later today.”

She planned to keep the discussion with her father very brief. “Thank you, Mr. Prasad.”

She ended the call.

“Will your father shout at you?” Divya’s voice sounded anxious.

Tanvi smiled. “Most likely, yes. But I’m not worried.”

“What will he say?”

Tanvi sighed. “Same old spiel about family honor and prestige, I guess.”

Divya’s eyes widened in fascination because Tanvi wasn’t scared or worried about her father’s scolding.

Rashmi shook her head with a laugh. “You know, one of these days, your father might hire a bodyguard to keep an eye on you.”

Tanvi smiled. “Oh. He can hire as many people as he wants. But he already knows that won’t help.”

Kavita and Rashmi laughed, knowing it was true.

Tanvi spent the next few hours enjoying her time with her friends. But when it was nearly evening time, she got up.

“All right, girls. I’ll see you all next week.”

“All the best for the meeting your father,” Rashmi teased.

Smiling, Tanvi waved them goodbye.

Rashmi was right. She did need all of her best behavior, patience and many other things for meeting her father.

***

“Good evening, Miss Shetty. Your father is waiting for you in his office.”

“Thank you, Mr. Prasad,” Tanvi said to her father’s secretary.

She walked along the long corridors of the huge house. The house was built nearly fifty years ago by a prominent family who used it as their city home where their children attended school. Although a few updates were made over the last fifteen years, it held most of its original décor.

She had always felt out of place in the house when her father purchased it fifteen years ago. It felt as though it still belonged to the family who had built it.

The previous house where she grew up during childhood was a different home. Her heart ached because she had beautiful memories of her mother in that home. It was also the place where her mother instilled the love of nature in her. They had to leave that home because her father’s law practice had picked up, and he was beginning to get into politics at that point.

“Good evening, Miss Shetty.”

She nodded and greeted a few of her father’s party workers, who were waiting outside her father’s office. During the mornings, a bigger crowd waited. As a prominent and powerful politician whose eyes were firmly on winning the top seat, Girish Shetty was always surrounded by people.

She knocked on the office door.

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