Page 79 of Married in Vengeance

“Tell me how,” she whispered.

“How what baby?” he asked, the words hopelessly soft and loving, tearing her heart apart, shredding her.

“Tell me how to stop loving you.”

Ram shut his eyes, the words seeming to break him. He shook his head in defeat.

“Now that I don’t know, sweetheart. Because I’m going to spend the rest of my life loving you. There is no one else for me. There never has been. And now there isn’t you either.”

This time when he went to leave, she didn’t stop him. There was love between them but there was no trust. And there was no relationship without trust.

Forty-Three

RAM

Sittingacross the grimy table at the police station, Ram watched the police officer laboriously write the complaint down. Every loop, every scrawl on that paper felt like it was being etched into his soul. Every word written down was a smear removed from Aadhya’s reputation.

Redemption. Shouldn’t he have felt at least an ounce of it? But all he could still feel was the swirling vortex of guilt and shame.

A stir outside the police station had all the constables and officers snapping to attention.

“Ram Babu. To what do we owe this pleasure?” His friend, IPS officer Mayank Sethi walked over and slapped him on the back. The officer writing Ram’s complaint almost dropped his pen as he stumbled to his feet to salute Mayank.

Ram got to his feet with a bit more grace and turned to smile at his friend. “Just filing a complaint.”

Mayank held his hand out for the form the other man had mostly filled and scanned it, his sharp eyes taking it all in at a glance. A low whistle escaped him.

“I’ve been following this case. Your wife is the defendant, isn’t she?”

Of course. Mayank had been at the wedding so he would have met Aadhya.

“She’s innocent,” Ram said with a tight smile.

Mayank made a noncommittal sound, enough of a cop not to commit to anything without having evidence laid out before him.

“Proof?” Mayank asked, holding a hand out, palm up. Ram dropped a pen drive into it.

“Give us a day,” Mayank told him, his palm closing around the pen drive. “And we’ll talk.”

Ram shook hands with Mayank and headed out, blinking as he stepped out of the dim police station and into the bright sunlight of the small courtyard. On the dusty, crowded road outside, traffic and pedestrians milled in typical, chaotic fashion. To one side of them stood Virat, smoking a cigarette and looking like he was contemplating the very secret of life itself.

“It’s done,” Ram told him. “We’ll know in a day.”

Virat dropped his cigarette butt on the road and stubbed it out with the sole of his shoe. “They’ll arrest him tomorrow.”

Ram nodded. The evidence they’d amassed was conclusive. There was no way Prasad was ever going to walk away from this mess.

They started to walk down the pavement towards the spot they’d parked Virat’s car at. Virat unlocked it, stopping with one hand on top of the dusty sedan and looked at Ram over it.

“How are we going to make it right?” he asked abruptly.

“We?” Ram asked, opening his car door and getting into the car. It was like a furnace after having been parked in the sun for over an hour.

“Yes. We.” Virat turned the air conditioning on to full blast and pulled out into traffic. “I fucked up too.”

“No.” Ram leaned back against the headrest and shut his eyes. “This one is all on me.”

“I-“

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