Page 5 of Married in Vengeance

And Ram got out.

Her breath caught in her chest as she saw him in his crisp, simple pancha, angavastram draped over his bare shoulders, his devastating abs on full display.

“Aadhya? Are you coming?” Aarush asked again.

“Yes.” The word came out hoarsely, a parched throat desperate for a sip of water. She cleared her throat and said, “Yes, I’m coming.”

Aarush tipped her chin up, his perceptive gaze studying her tight face.

“Are you okay, Chinna? This is what you want right?”

Aadhya nodded, for once in her life, words failing her. Aarush didn’t look convinced by whatever he saw in her face.

“All of this has happened too fast,” he muttered. “I told Nanna to slow it down, but he wouldn’t listen.”

No, their father rarely listened to anyone. He did what he wanted and when the Gaddes insisted on a quick wedding with no engagement or any extra rituals, he’d agreed. So, Aadhya and Ram’s wedding had been arranged within a month and she’d been swept up in a whirlwind of shopping and manic wedding preparations.

She’d seen Ram twice in this one month, both times surrounded by their families. She’d found a moment alone with him when the families had met to discuss the wedding.

“What changed your mind about us?” she’d asked.

“You did.” His voice had been cold and level, but his eyes had burned bright with an indecipherable emotion, one that had her own exultation flaring. Finally! Finally, he saw in them what she always had.

Since then, they hadn’t really had a moment to connect. They’d texted each other infrequently and she’d tried not to read too much or too little into his terse replies.

“You can change your mind if you want to,” Aarush told her, a glint of battle in his eyes.

Their mother squeaked in alarm behind them. “What rubbish are you telling her? It’s the wedding day. She can’t call anything off. Our family reputation will never recover.”

“She can call it off even in the moment he’s tying the thaali around her neck or putting the jilakarbelum on her head. She can call it off anytime she wants,” Aarush said, his voice ringing like cold steel through the room. “Before or after, Aadhya can do whatever she wants.”

Aadhya almost wept. She loved her brother for his unconditional support and unwavering faith in her. But she was doing what she wanted.

She wanted to marry Ram. She was going to make him love her the way she loved him. And then they were going to live happily ever after.

Aadhya Reddy would accept nothing less.

Three

RAM

It was unseasonably hot today.Sweat trickled down his face and neck and ran in little rivulets down his body. Whose bright idea had it been to have an open air wedding? The huge pedestal fans that were spitting water and air at them were completely ineffective and now, Ram was drowning.

In his sweat, in his anger, in his shame.

Was he really going to do this? Marry Aadhya for Vengeance? He’d spent his life on the straight and narrow, fighting for justice, standing for the underdog… And one woman’s betrayal had brought him to this? Was this whom he was going to be? Whom he wanted to be? Was this whom he was going to allow her to turn him into.

He laughed under his breath, a humourless sound. He’d been turned into this person from the moment he’d first kissed her. One taste of that witch and he’d lost his mind. They’d, of course, known each other for years. Hyderabad’s social circles were small and when it came to the movers and shakers, even smaller. But they’d met and interacted closely, for the very first time, at Priyanka and Aarush’s wedding.

He still remembered her wicked grin, and the toss of those glorious curls as she teased him about being too uptight. They’d kissed for the first time at Veda and Agastya’s wedding reception. His slow descent into this madness that consumed him had begun then. He’d spiraled further with each consecutive meeting, with each stolen kiss, each fervent caress, and finally with each time he held her in his arms, losing his mind in the pleasure he found with her.

He'd fought it. He’d fought his attraction to her, every step of the way. And he’d lost every single battle. She was everything he should never have wanted. Everything he’d told himself he couldn’t have.

He needed someone calm, composed, a partner with an unimpeachable reputation to stand by him when he sat on the bench of the Supreme Court. Aadhya was a wild cannon. She rampaged through her life like an out-of-control comet, blazing bright and with little regard for the consequences of the fires she started with barely a thought.

If there was one thing Ram was, it was always in control. Until her.

Every time he met her, he fell a bit more. Until one day, he’d fallen all the way. He’d been waiting to finish with the case on Anant and then he’d planned to ask her out. He’d wanted to see if they could make it work.

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