Page 54 of Married in Vengeance

“You mean you won’t,” Aarush snapped at him. “You’re supposed to be the best lawyer in town but –“

“Karthik will.”

Aarush stared at him.

“Karthik will what?” Karthik asked from where he still stood, looking shell shocked.

Ram didn’t look anywhere but at Aarush. “Karthik will represent Aadhya and the company. But I will fight the case every step of the way.”

“Why does he have to front?” Aarush shoved his hands in his pockets and stared at him. “Why can’t you?”

“It’s a conflict of interest.”

Aarush just watched him steadily. “Try again.”

“Do you think she’d want me to fight her case once everything comes out?” When Aarush didn’t reply, the truth of his unspoken answer weighed on the room.

“Why are you helping us? Helping Aadhya? After what you’ve pulled, why would you? How do I know you’re not the one behind all her work shit too? Aren’t you the one trying to ruin her?”

“You really think I’m running around forging signatures and vanishing vital papers from your files?”

“What I think is that I don’t know you at all.”

Ram didn’t flinch though the words sliced through him.

“Even before you called to hire Virat, I’d already done the same and for the same reasons. I was the one who asked him to tell you everything.”

“Why?”

“Because when I heard about what was happening at her work, I knew there was a connection. And Virat is going to find it for us. Karthik will front but you have me, Aarush. Aadhya has me. You will get the best legal counsel this country has to offer. We’ll get the bastard who is trying to bring her down and then we’ll bury him six feet under.”

“I ask again, why?” Aarush wasn’t willing to give an inch, and Ram respected the shit out of him for it.

“Your sister asked me to choose. I’m choosing her.”

“When she finds out why you married her, it’s going to destroy her,” Aarush bit out.

Ram nodded, the words carving themselves into his heart. “Let’s work towards saving her before that happens,” he said.

Thirty

AADHYA

As Aadhya workedher way through her overflowing inbox, something niggled at her. She was missing something. She wasn’t sure what, but her brain knew something, and it wasn’t letting that fact float to the surface.

Fatigue dragged at her as she popped a paracetamol to stave off the fever she knew was coming on. She turned the air conditioner off when she started to shiver. The office boy appeared with a steaming mug of coffee which she took gratefully.

She sipped it as she clicked through the server looking for the relevant files. The project they were being targeted on was not saved on the current, active folders. She frowned as she clicked through to the archived ones. She found it buried at the back. It hadn’t been saved per the proper procedure. Which was odd, because Aadhya had worked on these files with the team and she knew exactly where it was saved. Or rather she’d known. But someone had moved it.

Her heart started to pound as she started to search for the document she was looking for. She kept searching, rifflingthrough endless drawings and cost estimates and coming up with nothing. That couldn’t be right.

She went back to her personal laptop and pulled up the folder of work documents she had there. It wasn’t on that. But she always backed up her completed projects on a hard drive. Something her paranoid brain had insisted on. A tiny, little fact she’d hidden from everyone because she hadn’t needed them making fun of her for being so anal about her work.

She unlocked her side cabinet and pulled out her stash of hard drives looking for the one with the right timeline on the label. She found it neatly catalogued in the middle of the pile and pulled it out, plugging it into her system.

Teeth worrying her lower lip, she scanned the documents saved on it. There! She opened up the excel sheet, her gaze running through the columns of numbers. Exhilaration coursed through her as she verified her hunch.

“Aadhya.”

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