Page 37 of Reckless Dare

Her eyes prickled as she stepped out of the dean’s office. She blinked away the unshed tears trying to gather herself.

Why did it feel like everything was working against her? Like she didn’t deserve to be at a prestigious university like Simha?

She took in a deep breath and pulled herself together. She had no time to mope around. She had to check on the missing assignments. And if there was a technical glitch, she had to do the assignments again and resubmit them.

She had the answers memorized and she could finish the assignments during the lunch breaks and nights.

Deciding to get started, she made a quick stop at the cafeteria and picked up a water bottle and an apple for lunch. She then went to the library and sat in a corner.

When she opened the laptop, she was shocked to see that many of her submitted assignments were back to incomplete status.

How can it be possible?

She shook her head, not wanting to waste any more time thinking about what must have happened. She re-worked on the assignment.

She took up the entire lunch break and also the time between her classes to finish the one in pharmaceutical sciences. And once she was done with her work, she submitted it carefully and even took a photo of the screen as proof.

Much later that day, she went to the professor’s office and knocked on the door. The professor was not around, but one of her teaching assistants was there and called her in.

Ava smiled nervously at the teaching assistant. “Hi, I’m Avantika Patel. I… I’m here to check if my assignment has been received.”

Her heart was thudding. The professor’s assistant took her information and pulled up her online submission on the computer.

“Yeah, it looks good,” the teaching assistant said with a smile.

Ava let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you. Can you please make sure Dr. Rajpal is notified of my submission?”

The professor’s assistant looked puzzled. “Sure. Dr. Rajpal will review the assignment when she is back from her lectures.”

Ava nodded. “I understand. But the reason I ask you to send a note is because some of my submissions showed up as incomplete and I had to resubmit them.”

A small frown formed the assistant’s face. “That’s odd. Technical glitches never happen at Simha. I guess I have to ask Ved to take a look at the submission history to see what happened.”

Ava felt a spark of hope. “Who is Ved? I can follow up with him and ask for proof of my assignment being submitted on Saturday.”

The assistant nodded. “Sure. Vedant Simha is a third year student who interns at the system admin’s office.”

Ava’s heart froze. Ved Simha?

As the professor’s assistant continued to give details on how she could contact the guy, a suspicion grew inside her heart. It made her more nervous than angry.

There was no doubt in her mind that Abhiram Simha had everything to do with her missing assignments.

“T-thank you. I will check with him.”

Ava walked out of the professor’s office in a daze. Her heart was racing. She just could not comprehend why her tormentor would go to such lengths to disrupt her life at Simha.

Why? What was it about me that he hates so much?

It was beyond her imagination as to why anyone would want to mess her life so much.

She could confront him or blame him for messing up her assignments. But she had no proof that he had done it. Taking a deep breath, she pulled out her phone.

She stared at the phone before looking up for the student council board on the university website. Her heart thudded unevenly when her tormentor’s face came up marked as the president.

She saved the number on her cell phone. But instead of his name, she saved it as Tormentor.

She held her phone for a few more moments debating if she would make the situation worse by texting him. Maybe it was best to let it go?

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