Page 44 of Married in Vengeance

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Ram sounded utterly flummoxed. “She’s fucking sick!”

Aadhya winced, holding her head as it pounded in tune to Ram’s raised voice.

“Put her on, Ram.” Aarush sounded livid. “I want to talk to my sister.”

Aadhya held her hand out. “Please?” she rasped. Ram shook his head in annoyance but handed the phone over.

“How are you Chinna?” Aarush asked, his voice gentling.

“I feel like I’ve been run over by a truck with sandpaper on its tires.”

“Fuck!” Aarush muttered. “Aadhya, we have a problem.”

Aadhya stiffened, her brother’s furious urgency sending unease swimming through her. “What happened?”

“The Nava villas were demolished this morning by the government for flouting building norms.”

A dull roaring filled her ears as his words penetrated the sick fugue she’d been living in. “What?” she whispered. “How?”

“They’re claiming we didn’t file the required paperwork.”

“But we did. I did!” Her voice rose on the last two words. “I closed the gateway out myself.”

“Okay,” he said grimly. “Prasad Garu is with me. I’ll do damage control with him. We’ll fix the mistake. You focus on getting better.”

The line went dead in her ear. Focus on getting better? She stared at the phone disbelievingly. Her world was collapsing around her and she was supposed to lie in bed and focus on getting better?

“Aadhya?” Ram’s voice drew her gaze to him. He’d heard every word of that damning conversation.

We’ll fix the mistake.

Unspoken were the words, we’ll fix the mistakeyou made.

But she hadn’t made a mistake. She hadn’t! Had she?

Twenty-Five

RAM

Aadhya had curledup in a fetal position again, her back to him and shut her eyes. At some point in her self-imposed exile, she’d fallen asleep. He touched her forehead again relieved to find it was cool. She seemed to be resting more peacefully.

His brow furrowed as he watched her. Clearly, things weren’t going well at work for Aadhya. He was surprised to overhear that conversation. Aadhya had always come across as confident and extremely sure of her place in life. He’d always assumed that that surety of self had come from her professional space. God knew, her family was almost as dysfunctional as his.

But then again, this was the same woman who was blackmailing him to unknown ends. Was it even blackmail if your blackmailer didn’t make any specific demands? Did weird, vaguely threatening mails qualify as blackmail?

A film of sweat sheened Ram’s forehead as he watched Aadhya sleep. What was her endgame? It was a question that kept him up most nights. And he was no closer to the answer.

His phone vibrated in his pocket disturbing his already disturbed train of thought. Karthik. He stepped out of the room and into the corridor so he didn’t disturb Aadhya’s sleep.

“Dude, you’re not in court?” Karthik shouted, clearly pitching his voice over the cacophony around him.

“I didn’t have any cases coming up today.” Ram shifted to lean against the wall. “And Aadhya’s sick. So, I stayed home.”

“Anant’s appeal got kicked out of court.” The words were a little garbled and drowned out by background noise, but the meaning came through clearly.

A fierce exultation flooded through him. “Excellent!” Now, they had that rat bastard!

“Thought you’d want to know. I heard through the grapevine.”

---