Page 77 of Married in Vengeance

“I did.”

She grabbed the handles of her suitcases and walked to the door. He shut his eyes, not turning to look. Ram didn’t have it in him to watch her walk out of his life. He heard her footsteps stop and the doorhandle turn.

And then she spoke.

“Do you know whyImarried you Ram Gadde?”

His heart vised in his chest at the soft words.

“I married you because I loved you.”

His head dropped to his chest, silent tears breaking through his iron control as the door shut behind him with a soft click.

And then she was gone.

Forty-Two

AADHYA

The days passed in a blur.Endless meetings, strategy sessions, anxious closed door discussions that ended in shouting matches…and then there were the legal conversations.

If there was a prize for being able to sit across the table, with perfect poise, from the man who’d broken your heart, exploded your life and crushed the debris from that explosion beneath the sole of his perfectly polished shoes, then Aadhya was competing in the Olympics.

She didn’t want to dwell too long on the fact that she kept running to the toilet to throw up or locked herself in conference rooms and breakout spaces to get her frantic breathing and anxiety attacks under control. She definitely didn’t focus on the fact that she cried herself to sleep every night.

What mattered was that she sat down at a table with Ram Gadde, held his gaze and made intelligent, controlled conversation. And she did it without a single tear in sight.

She ignored the fact that his haunted eyes traced her face at every opportunity and tracked her every move. She didn’t acknowledge the fact that he did everything possible to not touch her, not even a finger grazed her even when he held outpapers for her to review and handed her a pen to sign on court documents.

“Even if we find proof that Prasad is behind all this,” Aarush was saying. “It doesn’t take away from the fact that our clients are suing us.”

“There is a huge difference between the owners defrauding them,” Ram replied, his deep voice sending an involuntary shiver down her spine. “And a disgruntled employee sabotaging the company. Once we have proof, we’ll haul that bastard’s ass to court on criminal charges and work out a financial compromise with the disgruntled clients.”

Once we have proof, notifwe have proof. She wished she shared his confidence, but she’d been watching Virat’s legendary control fray at the edges, and it didn’t do much for her hopes.

Almost like she’d conjured him up, Virat shoved the doors to Aarush’s office open and stormed in. That by itself had her straightening from her slouch. Virat did not storm. He was far too controlled for that.

“Got the bastard,” he announced.

“Yes!” Aarush got to his feet, adrenalin clearly doing a number on him.

Ram on the other hand did nothing more than lean forward, his laser like focus on Virat. Aadhya’s pen started tapping against the table, a frantic tap-tap-tap.

“Dickhead has a nephew who graduated from IIT Kharagpur. A tech genius who works on the shadow web. He was an ethical hacker who went rogue.”

“He’s behind all the tech stuff, the shadow emails from Aadhya’s account, the document tampering on your server, all of it. We finally picked up his trail and have his digital fingerprint all over this mess.”

“What happens now?” Aadhya’s tapping grew frantic. Ram glanced down at her hand, his gaze softening and her handslowed automatically. She clenched her hand around the pen, but she stopped tapping.

“We play it one of two ways. We take it to the cops, or we confront the asshole.” Virat shoved his hands through his hair, his victory high still jittering through his nerves.

“We take it to the cops and we confront the assholeafterhe’s arrested,” Ram said.

“I want to confront him now,” Aadhya said immediately, feeling contrary.

“We can’t afford to have him skip town,” Aarush said. “For now, we don’t let him know we know.”

They hadn’t let him know they know in the past few weeks. It had been a new level of hell for Aadhya who’d had to keep working with the man. He’d once been an avuncular figure in her life, a mentor of sorts. To think he’d tried to destroy her like this was something that still boggled her mind. Her pen started to tap again as the bitter, angry thoughts flooded her brain. He’d attended her cradle ceremony and then, years later, sent a sex tape of her out into the world! Who was that man?

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