Page 80 of Married in Vengeance

“You gave me preliminary information and I ran with it. I made irrational, vengeful decisions off the back of it.” Ram pressed a thumb against his aching temple in a vain bid to alleviate the pain. “This isn’t on you, Virat. It’s all me. I should never have gone off halfcocked like that.”

Silence fell in the car for a while, broken only by the passing cars honking irately as road rage engulfed their drivers.

“Why did you?” Virat asked. “I never understood that. You’re the most rational human being I know. What the hell happened to you?”

Ram laughed mirthlessly. “Aadhya happened to me.” The car rolled to a halt at a traffic light. A beggar walked up and banged on Ram’s window. He rolled it down and handed him some money, his gaze following the man’s shuffling gait to the next car.

“I told myself she wasn’t my type but from the first moment I saw Aadhya, no type existed for me. It was, always, only her. I fell so hard, so fast…I kept telling myself it was only physical. Just a fling.” He shook his head. “But I was so fucked. It hadn’t been a fling from the first moment I touched her.”

Virat overtook a bus, his gaze on the road ahead, his entire demeanor calm and detached. He offered no judgements and served no platitudes.

“I was going to ask her out. I wanted us to stop meeting in the shadows and to step out into the sun. And then you brought that email to me.”

Virat brought the car to a slow halt in front of the main gates of Gadde Mansion. The gates opened and they drove through. Virat parked in the driveway and they sat in silence.

“It broke something inside me. I couldn’t lose her. And if I confronted her with it, I would have.”

“And so you tied her to you permanently,” Virat mused. “Dude that’s-“

“Fucked up. I know.”

“I was going to say some twisted love shit but yeah that too.”

Ram snorted. With a heavy sigh, he opened the car door in preparation of getting out. “And I lost her anyway.”

“You can still get her back.”

“No.” Ram shook his head. He closed the door and leaned down to look in through the window. “There is no coming back from this.”

“Never say never,” Virat said, a small smile tugging at his lips. “We can come back from the end of the world itself. We just need to want it badly enough.”

“I signed the divorce papers,” Ram told him and Virat’s smile vanished.

“What the fuck did you do that for?” Virat groaned. “Dude, you need to find your legendary self-control? Stop shooting off at a tangent like a hamster on steroids.”

“She asked for a divorce, Virat,” Ram told his friend.

“And you’re just going to give it to her.”

“I’ve come to realise that I will give Aadhya anything she asks for.”

“No questions asked? No wars waged?” Virat demanded.

“None.” Ram knocked on the top of the car in farewell. “I have no fight left in me. I’m done, Virat.”

“A divorce is going to harm your chances at a Supreme Court judgeship,” Virat warned.

“My judgeship went up in smoke the day I got married,” Ram laughed, a bark of sound that had the guard at the gate startling. “I always knew that video was out there. And with that Damoclessword hanging over my head, a seat on the bench was a dream I had to let go off.”

“Giving up on that was easy. Giving up on Aadhya? The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. But if it makes her happy, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Every single time.”

Forty-Four

AADHYA

They arrestedhim in the middle of a workday. Aadhya watched, along with hordes of her colleagues as the cops led Prasad Garu out of the office. He kept his head down, not meeting anybody’s eyes as he was marched out of the place he’d worked at for over thirty years.

She watched the top of his graying head with its wispy hair disappear through the front doors of the building, her heart pounding like a runaway train. To her right, Aarush stood, flinty eyed, his arms crossed over his chest. On her other side, her father towered over her, his hands on his hips as he watched his friend and right-hand man be put in the backseat of a police van.

---