Page 58 of Married in Vengeance

“I want you,” he told her. “Even when I don’t want to.” Fuck! He was making a mess of this!

“Well, that’s flattering!” Aadhya drawled.

“What I mean is-“ Ram began only for Aadhya to cut him off.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said, waving a hand in the air and turning away from him. “I should have known better than to expect more from you.”

“But I want to give you more, Aadhya,” he grabbed her hand, stopping her from storming off.

“And what does that ‘more’ mean to you?” she asked, her eyes daring him to say it, to finally say the words.

But the words wouldn’t come, stuck somewhere between his brain and heart. Ram didn’t come from a family that openly expressed affection or had deep chats about their feelings. He loved people but he preferred to show them with his actions, the words were always difficult to come by.

“I want us to be better,” he said finally, knowing it was a cop out. But until they put all their cards on the table, he couldn’t say more.

“Define better.” Aadhya’s lips trembled as she waited for his answer. “More and better mean different things to different people. What does it mean to you?”

But Ram had no answer. He had no benchmark for a healthy, happy, well-adjusted relationship. What was better? He didn’t know.

What did he want? He was fast realizing the only answer to that was ‘Aadhya.’ He wanted Aadhya.

“Right,” Aadhya said finally, her voice defeated. “We’ll have this talk when you know what ‘better’ means to you.”

She went into the bathroom, shutting the door behind her with a definitive click. Ram stared at the shut door.

Did they have a hope of a ‘better’ in their future? As he stood there, precariously balanced on the debris of their past and the thin ice floe of their present, he didn’t see any sign of it.

Thirty-Two

AADHYA

Aadhya watchedVirat and his team pore over reams and reams of documents. He’d arrived this morning with four of his employees and they’d taken over one of the conference rooms with their gadgets and files.

She sat to one side with her laptop, occasionally answering queries they had for her but mostly being ignored. She watched them tear apart every inch of her work life and analyse it, looking for a clue to who was sabotaging her and the company.

The door opened and she looked up to see Aarush Anna walk in with Karthik. “Will that be enough?” Anna asked.

“Will what be enough?” Aadhya piped up, not waiting for Karthik to respond.

“All we have at the moment is the documents on your hard drive and the difference between those and the ones submitted at the municipality,” Karthik replied. “It’s not enough to prove that the documents on the hard drive were the ones meant to be submitted. Especially since the submission had your COA stamp and signature on it.”

“My COA stamp is in my desk drawer. Anyone could reach it,” Aadhya commented.

Aarush glared at her. “Why would you leave it lying around like that?”

“It was in my cabin!” she protested. “I keep it there for convenience. How was I to know someone was going to screw me over like this?”

“Still doesn’t explain your signature,” Karthik interjected hastily before the fight between the siblings got worse.

“I can explain that.” Virat strode over to where they were huddled. “Every single signature on every document is identical.”

All three of them stared at Virat blankly. “Identical,” he repeated. “Right down to the last flourish and the swirl in the y.”

When they still said nothing, he prompted, “When is the last time you’ve signed everything exactly the same?”

Aadhya frowned. “I’m guessing, from your expression, the answer would be never?”

“You’d be right,” Virat confirmed. “It’s been traced or a template has been made but there is no way in hell every single document has been signed by a human hand, especially Aadhya’s human hand.”

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