#arjun mehra

The wedding had been covered extensively by every known and quite a few internationally accoladed magazines and media outlets, rivalling the popularity and coverage of some of the biggest celebrity weddings the state has ever seen. 

After all, it wasn't everyday that two of the country’s richest business families were joined in holy matrimony. 

The Gaurs had been big names in the construction business spanning three generations, having had extensive contracts from the Indian government and quite a few private clients spread worldwide. 

The Bannerjees came from aristocracy— their ancestors having started the silk and textile trade dating back to the time when the Mughals had outposts in ancient Bengal. Now their business interests had spread towards various concerns, the biggest being private shipping and transport. 

The wedding brought forth an alliance that would strengthen a hundred crore deal between the two corporate giants and thus had been the talk of the town and of financial experts and political analysts for weeks preceding the ceremony. 

And if that wasn’t reason for scrutiny enough, the bride and groom themselves have been in the crosshairs of tabloid gossip for years— if only for slightly differing reasons. 

Shauryaman Gaur— the heir to the Gaur millions had made headlines often, especially for all the wrong reasons. A notorious womanizer, infamous for his devil may care attitude, wild parties and lavishly excessive lifestyle was only tempered with a surprisingly brief stint as a lawyer in a well known law firm that has been celebrated for taking up a lot of pro bono work in addition to a few high profile patronage.

His disbarment had been quite a scandal, though no one knew what the charges brought had been, due to it being a closed court hearing and the records had been sealed.  

Meenakshi Bannerjee— the chief liaison officer, has been, since the time she debuted in her father’s company— Laconte, infamous in the business world for being recklessly ambitious and quite cutthroat. Under her direction, the company had tripled its profits in the last two quarters, if only through ruthless hostile takeovers and ingenious strategic overhauls. She was known to be razor mouthed and a firebrand. 

They had made quite the controversial, yet a pretty handsome couple— and aided with the added aesthetics that only an obscene amount of wealth could provide and a star studded guestlist that could rival the premiers of a few countries— what more was needed for the public to gush over them?

This sham of a marriage that had looked so gorgeous and dreamy on the papers whose bedrock was a contract signed by two old men seated in a boardroom was just as empty as the magnificent horizon of the city of dreams as it shielded its dirty underbelly from view. 

The sheer deception of the entire charade at playing happy families and newly wedded bliss for the cameras was as tiring as the heavy set crimson lehenga wrapped around her body. 

Meenakshi wouldn’t call herself particularly beautiful. 

But she wasn’t as modest as to not realise that she did turn quite a few heads when she wanted. Her body was a result of years of rigorous discipline and carefully crafted regimens and she had inherited her mother’s large hazel eyes and her wavy rich raven hair that reached her curved waist and her father’s aquiline nose on an oval face. 

She was fairly tall and her skin was the colour of milk stirred with honey. 

All the gold she had been layered with was pinching her uncomfortably and she wanted to get out of this jewellery induced torture trap yesterday and run her fingers through her itchy hair that had been set to almost stone with all that ridiculous hair spray. 

And didn’t anyone tell the stylist that she absolutely despised the scent of roses? 

The things one has to do to keep up appearances.

She could see her reflection on the glass in front,  a little of the vermillion staining the partition of her hair had fallen on her nose, that apparently no one had cared to clean off or even point out to her.

Tradition bespoke of how if the sindoor fell on your nose, it meant your husband would love you more.

Hah! 

Meenakshi wanted to balk. 

Who even writes all this bogus shit—

“Keep staring at the glass a little harder and I swear it will crack.”

Shauryaman Gaur had stepped inside the room and was now lounging on the other side of the decorated bed, hands folded behind his bed, posture laconic and unbothered like he was the pinnacle of nonchalance, his lithe ripped limbs were splayed like that of a big graceful cat on the white sheets. 

In this way, his cream sherwani was stretched across the surprising breadth of his shoulders and chest, exposing the clean lines of his trim waist and sharp hips. There was that annoying strand curled over his dark lustrous eyes, having escaped the confines of his styled inky hair. 

And that ever perennial smirk had marred his chiselled face, pulling his slim lips down in a half mocking, half amused way. 

Now Meenakshi would have considered her newly wedded husband to be quite a strikingly attractive man had he not made her want to punch him in that handsome face whenever he opened his mouth. 

She had had the privilege of meeting Shauryaman Gaur once before the wedding, for a measly two hours when the marriage contract had been finalised by their respective team of lawyers, and she had gritted her teeth throughout. 

“Heard you were in the military Major sahab, should I expect your daughter to be a drill sergeant?”, he had thrown at her father, an icy note hidden in the otherwise mockingly jocular tone of his surprisingly gravelly voice. 

She had barely held back from launching straight at the man swinging like a five year old on his chair, sassing everyone in sight every two seconds, with the cavalier arrogance of a God looking down on ants. 

But she had given just as good as she had got. 

“Heard you used to be a lawyer once, Gaur sahab, was your impeccable behaviour the reason they disbarred you?”, she had asked sweetly from behind her own gucci sunglasses. The hangover had been shitty, like a hammer drilling inside her head. 

She had drunk half her weight in vodka when her beloved mother had told her that she was getting married. 

Shauryaman had grinned at that, his eyes invisible under the chocolate colored glasses but there was something nasty in the curve of that mouth. He hadn’t seemed particularly bothered about what was being put in the papers, or that his marriage was being fixed right in front of him. 

Donned in a black shirt and dark jeans and dark brown aviators which definitely hid his own hangover from the previous night, he seemed too busy playing candy crush on his phone than focus on the prenup that was being signed. 

If not for his father, leveling a half disgusted look at his useless son, and their head lawyer— she could have easily taken him to the cleaners in case of a divorce. 

Meenakshi couldn’t figure out whether the man was so completely detached from any kind of seriousness or was he really that dumb— a typical rich spoiled brat. 

He had barely looked at her face, even when she had effectively poured salt over a visible wound. And yet he had successfully managed to rile her up enough to have her storm through everyone like a rampaging tornado for two days straight. 

Her father, bless the man, had actually considered not getting her married, but then, that decision had been out of his hands anyway. The board’s majority shares were held by her mother, a ruthless financial analyst and twice as ambitious as her daughter. 

Lata Bannerjee was a shark that even Major Riddhiman Bannerjee, famously monikered the Bengal tiger, a retired Indian Airforce officer himself and current business mogul, feared a healthy dose. 

“I mean, if you want to break the glass, be my guest, there is a hammer somewhere in the toolshed. I can ask the servants to fetch it for you—”

It was with a sisyphean effort that Meenakshi resisted the urge to turn around and throw the glass of half filled whiskey that she had been gripping for dear life, right on his stupid face. 

She was taught to be more civilized than that even if the person in front deserved a face full of shattered glass. 

Instead she downed the alcohol like a shot in one smooth gulp, enjoying the smooth burn of it sliding past her throat and turned around. He had raised a sculpted eyebrow at her less than ladylike behaviour but that irritating smirk hadn’t left his face. 

Well, if he was expecting a sweet servile tradwife he was in for a rude awakening. 

“Okay, ground rules”, she spat, ignoring the deliberate baiting while unhooking the million pins from her hair to pull off the veil. 

He raised both his eyebrows at that and fuck, how was his face so expressive anyway?

“I don’t give a damn about you—”

“Ouch”, he put a hand on his chest like she had shot him point blank even if his pupils had turned darker than those usual pits of volcanic ash— if that was even possible. 

“And you don’t give a damn about me—”, she continued unperturbed by his dramatic expressions. 

“Not true”, his smirk was disgustingly lascivious as he roved his eyes all over her body like he was appraising her and Meenakshi was debating the finer points of domestic violence. 

“Shut up and listen. I will lead my own life and you can carry on crawling through whichever gutter you find. I don’t care how many women you fuck as long as you don’t bring them to my home. You don’t question me ever and I won’t poke my nose in your business— understood?”

He was staring at her unreadably now. 

She wished she could crack his skull open and see if there was anything present between those ears or was he just existing on the mercy of his outer shell, no matter how lovely looking. 

How had the man even passed the bar examination? 

Maybe his daddy had lined some pockets somewhere along the way—

No wonder he got disbarred. 

“You don’t care if I fuck other women?”, he asked finally. 

“I don’t care period”, she had finally managed to unhook the heavy necklace from around her throat. 

“Does that mean, you will fuck other men?”, that damning eyebrow was back near that envious hairline. Meenakshi’s blood was already simmering and this was like striking a match against raw phosphorus. 

“Like I said, I won’t question you and you won’t question me”, she said between gritted teeth and tugged off her gold bangles viciously. 

“Does that mean, we will fuck?”, that smirk was back on his lips and she finally noticed his cheeks had a slight impression of dimples on either side. 

“I will cut off your dick if you bring it anywhere close to me”, Meenakshi warned, holding the hair pin like a blade towards him, kohl lined eyes pouring fire, “and is sex all you can think about?”

Shauryaman shrugged and leaned back down on the pillows as if it was a moot point. 

“You are undressing after all. I was just making sure.”

“I am undressing because this stupid dress is fucking suffocating, not because I want to be anywhere near you”, she sighed and opened her nose ring and kept it on the side table and eyed him skeptically, “I’m honestly suprised you even asked. I was expecting to have to fight you off…in fact I was almost waiting for it.”

The idea of knocking the daylights out of Shauryaman Gaur with an elbow to that sharp nose shouldn’t be as tempting as it was sounding. 

She had been expecting to see him smirk at her in that disgustingly attractive way again only to see his expression shuttering off. For the first time since they had met, he looked disgruntled. His eyes had hardened like chips of coal and for the first time, Meenakshi felt like there was something under that seemingly unbothered exterior after all. 

The scent of danger repressed so tightly under pretentious charm and feigned harmlessness that it was almost a static presence under her tongue. 

He was pissed. 

“No matter what you may have heard about me, wife— I don’t rape women. They fall at my feet consensually.”

There was a strange note in his voice that she couldn’t decipher and neither did she want to at the moment. Every playboy she had met had said the same thing. Only they mistook drunken and drugged disorientation as consent as well. 

Men will be men and disgusting pigs. 

She forcefully suppressed the urge to shiver at the dark cadence of his tone. She won't give him the satisfaction of seeing her squirm. 

“You know what, husband?”, she said brightly instead, “I don’t care. I need to sleep. Stay on your side”, she warned and started rummaging through the wardrobe for her night clothes that the housekeeping staff had mercifully arranged for her from her innumerable suitcases. 

Shauryaman peeled himself off the bed and seemingly took a few to steady himself. The sudden palpable tension in the air had vanished again. 

He was clearly drunk just like she had expected.

She wished she could drink herself to oblivion as well and just forget about everything for one night. 

“I will get out of your hair”, her husband mumbled discombobulated and surprisingly enough staggered out of their bedroom slowly. 

“Good riddance”, she muttered. 

“I heard that!”, he hollered from outside. 

“You were meant to!”, she snarled back and then smirked at the muffled curse she heard that echoed off the staircase. 

The bed was calling to her and Meenakshi Bannerjee Gaur decided she could figure out the semantics of living with an asshole for a husband without losing her sanity or committing murder, later. 

___________________

Meenakshi had adjusted to married life as well as can be expected. It also helped that Shauryaman seemed to have taken her conditions to heart and was happy enough to avoid her and continue with his whorish partying ways as usual. 

They barely saw each other, orbiting their shared life like two planets unwilling to collide lest the black hole created would suck them both in as a result. 

Sometimes they saw each other, mainly at the dining table, even then, they mostly ate in silence, her busy in her tablet, steeped in work and him, usually picking at his food like a bird. Meenakshi wondered whether that is how he maintained his girlish figure or did he have an eating disorder— not that she cared. 

It could very well be that he had already eaten outside with his friends. Or whatever he called that band of vain hooligans he went around with. 

She had had reservations about sleeping on the same bed, lest he tries something but that was soon negated as most of the times, their schedules barely matched to coincide lying on the bed together let alone sleeping. Meenakshi would sleep late and wake up really early, go for her morning run around the property, finish her workout in the gym, have her breakfast and then leave for her office. 

Shauryaman, she knew would come in, even later, long after she had already fallen asleep and sometimes he never even came back home, spending the night in someone else’s bed in all probability and would wake up really late, around noon and then get out of the house by evening. 

That was not to say that their paths never crossed. 

One day, Meenakshi had come panting from her morning run, wiping her neck with a microfibre towel as she barked the morning’s agenda to her PA on her wireless earbud, pushing open the glass double doors of the gym only to find her husband running on the treadmill. 

Shauryaman seemed lost to the world outside of his earphones, running with surprising form and the controlled power of trained athletes, his eyes fixed on the glass in front, overlooking the brilliant landscape of their posh locality in Malabar Hill. 

He had seemed very far away to her. 

And if the sudden and unexpected sight of seeing the other man awake at this hour, no less working out, was shocking, he was wearing nothing except a pair of grey sweats. He had a small towel, similar to her own, hung around his neck. 

His torso was completely bare. 

And for the life of her, Meenakshi couldn’t look away. She had stopped talking midway leaving her poor unaware assistant hanging on the other side. 

She knew Shauryaman was fit enough and had a lean build but she had never seen him without his clothes. The muscles stretched wiry and ripped all over his back and chest, mapping over taut, glistening and tanned skin were like a display of the most scandalous works of Michelangelo himself. 

The man was carved like fine chisel and not a hint of any alcohol induced puffiness was in sight. He had dark hair lining his chest muscles and abs and those long ripped archer’s arms. 

No wonder women kept throwing themselves at him, despite his rakish ways. 

She may have gawked at him for too long because she had missed the smirk that had painted his face in knowing vanity. 

“Like what you see?”

His voice had lowered three registers, almost feeling like a velvet purr against her skin and she had straightened like being electrocuted and turned around while closing the open line on her earbuds with a hasty tap. 

Her face was smoking and she would die before she let him see it. 

“Keep dreaming”, she spat and leaned back on the weights bench. 

Shauryaman had grinned at her, turning to face her finally, switching the machine off and patting the sweat collected on the hollow of his throat and collarbones with the towel. 

“You don't want to know my dreams”, he had drawled in that syrupy voice. 

“No. I don’t. Now if you will excuse me”, she had said, trying to block off his suddenly magnetic presence as she focussed on the burn of her muscles while lifting the weights. 

“Such a prude, Mrs. Gaur”, he had whispered mockingly and sauntered off and thank god for that or else he would have had the next weight flung at his face. 

If Meenakshi had surreptitiously tried to check him out as he had come back down, bathed and covered in a white shirt and grey suit pants, no one had to know except her own guilty mind.

She must have been on her cycle. 

____________________

It had taken Meenakshi not very long to fit into the hierarchy of the upper management in Gaur Constructions. The company board had welcomed her according to their deal and she now owned fifteen percent stakes in all their businesses as her husband did in Laconte. 

Her company name had come from the French multibillionaire who had partnered with her great grandfather to bring the textile giant into the international market in the early 1900s in British occupied India. 

Harshvardhan Gaur, her father in law was a hard taskmaster as she had understood but he was also quite a respected figure in the business world. His name meant something to the rich and affluent in Mumbai. He also had extensive political alliances and very deep pockets. 

And he seemed to like her well enough. 

He had introduced her to the top brass so to speak. 

“We pride ourselves on the quality of our service and our business relationships just as much, if not more than the profits. For generations, Gaur Constructions has been the face of reliability in the construction business as well as our innumerable real estate projects”, Harshvardhan had said, the pride for his company clear in his voice. 

“We appreciate your brand of ambition quite some bit too. I hope you will find working with us just as rewarding”, he had concluded as she had been ushered inside the glittering reception area of their chrome and glass tombed corporate headquarters. 

“Harsh is being a stuck-up, my dear. Don’t listen to him, we are essentially a family. Have you heard of the time your father in law and I had been suspended from college for throwing an illegal rave? His father had to beg the DIG to throw that case away—”

Prakhar Sahani, the CEO and Harshvardhan Gaur’s oldest friend and closest confidante was one of the majority shareholders of the company. He seemed diametrically opposite to the stern MD of the Gaur Constructions, indulging more in humour and jest and had an all rounding cheery personality. 

He had taken Meenakshi under his wing, educating her on the informal politics of the corporation and the day to day workings of their offices. He also had the best stories, one more ludicrous than the other making her laugh at his brilliant way of spinning a tale. 

Everyone liked him. 

Amongst her new family’s friends and business associates, Meenakshi liked Prakhar Sahani the best 

Harshvardhan seemed to open up around him the most too. 

“Don’t listen to the ridiculous tales he spins. It's grossly exaggerated—”, the older man had laughed and thrown an arm around his sniggering friend. 

“Lies and slander. I say the truth. Nothing but the truth, my lady”, Prakhar had guffawed. 

“You two seem close..”, Meenakshi had remarked later to her father in law. 

“He is my brother. The one man who has held me up in some very dark times”, Harshvardhan’s eyes were like his son’s. Dark and seemingly fathomless, his skin wrinkled from age but still tough along that sharp jawline hidden behind a shock of salt and pepper stubble. 

Harshvardhan Gaur must have been quite a handsome man in his prime. 

“And, Meenakshi”, he had opened the door of her car, very chivalrously. She could see why the media had such a kind opinion of the billionaire industrialist. He reminded her a little bit of her own father with those straight backed shoulders and severe yet gentle eyes. 

“Yes sir?”

“Call me Papa”

She had smiled at him. 

“Call me Akshi then…Papa”

Prakhar Sahani seemed to wield most of the company’s onsite operations with his team. He was also spectacularly well liked in the community, Meenakshi had observed. Involved in many philanthropic institutions, he seemed to live a very simple life himself. A modest apartment in Bandra— well as modest as it goes for the people of their economic stature. 

But his lifestyle was more understated than anyone would expect. 

There was also the matter of the fact that for some reason, he seemed like the only one in the entire board who seemed to actually care for Shauryaman. 

Or that could just be loyalty towards his friend— to look after his son’s interests even if Shauryaman himself didn’t seem all that interested in the company he might one day inherit. 

That is if the board doesn’t kick him out before. 

____________________

“He was supposed to be here today!”, one of the board member’s raged and Harshvardhan sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. 

“Javed, seriously, cut the man some slack. You know how Shaurya is— he will get here”, Prakhar tried smoothening over ruffled feathers but to no avail. 

“It is a shareholders’ meeting, Mr. Gaur. If your son ever wishes to take the reins of this organization, he has to learn the meaning of responsibility—”, another one had piped up. 

Meenakshi was feeling second hand embarrassment for her father in law. But before she could steer the conversation in her direction and hopefully appease the enraged investors, there was her husband, sliding inside the room, dressed in a polo shirt and slacks, his sunglasses hanging from the opening at his collar, completely unbothered about the tension gathering like storm clouds abovehead. 

The man couldn’t have dressed more casually even if he had wanted to. 

“Morning everyone… or is it afternoon? Sorry, I lost track of time”, he said and dropped on a seat beside his father. 

By the white knuckled grip Harshvardhan had on the table, Meenakshi knew he was two seconds away from blowing a gasket. Meenakshi could commiserate. She wanted to bang her head on the table, herself. 

“Shaurya! There you are! Where were you? The meeting was due to start an hour and a half ago!”, Prakhar exclaimed but sounded relieved. 

Shauryaman completely ignored the older man and put one leg over the other, like it was his living room and threw his hands around in a ‘what can you do’ gesture. It was inherently disrespectful and seemed completely on brand for him. 

Her father in law looked like he had sucked on a lemon. 

Which seemed to be his go to reaction whenever faced with his son. 

“The meeting has concluded. The vote is supposed to occur now”, one of them said with gritted teeth. 

“What vote?”

His eyes were already unfocused and trained behind on the glass, like he couldn’t even be bothered to look anyone in the face. He looked spectacularly bored. 

“The vote on whether to give the contract of our cement plants to Arcelor-Mittal— did you even read the documents we sent?”

Evidently he hadn’t, if one went by his clueless face. Meenakshi wanted to groan. 

“I vote that we should go with them solely because I hate the other guy…whasisname Jindal”, he concluded and then suddenly got up like he remembered he had to be somewhere else, post haste. 

“Well then, you have my vote gentlemen, adios”

“Shaurya wait. We have to discuss the financials and the—”

“I am sure you can do it on your own, Akshat. Or do you need me to hold your hand?”

Their CFO shut his mouth and scowled darkly as Shauryaman gallivanted off just like he had entered. The silence in the room was so painful in the aftermath that Meenakshi had to resist the urge to crack a joke if only to somehow bring the simmering tempers down. 

“That's it. I am out”

Javad Khosla, one of their biggest investors, proclaimed suddenly and left his seat. 

“Javed—”, Harshvardhan tried intervening but the older man was already storming away, face red with humiliated rage. 

“Your son cannot respect us enough to even give us the time of day and you expect me to invest in a company that would probably go to him!”

Meenakshi had heard the last vestiges of Harshvardhan trying to placate the man as they walked off followed by the rest of the board in a more sedate pace. 

The vote remained hanging as they couldn’t proceed without Khosla’s support. A good deal was squandered and she could mentally calculate a staggering five percent loss in the current project because of the now indefinite hiatus on the cement supply.  

All because her husband had been an arrogant ass. 

She wanted to kill someone. 

Prefarably, him. 

“He is..difficult, Akshi. But not a bad man”, Prakhar’s sudden whisper had brought her violently back from her homicidal thoughts. They had been standing in the main lobby. 

She had no idea when the older man had found her. 

“I— I just don’t understand why Papa tolerates his nonsense, Prakhar uncle. That was completely disgraceful”, she retorted, irritated. 

“Shaurya..has had a hard childhood”, the older man seemed thoughtful, “Harsh— I love that man like a brother but he has his own faults. And Shaurya..he wasn’t like this before, you know. He was quite a sweet child. Then his mother died and—”

The older man stopped himself as if overcome with some invisible force. 

Meenakshi turned and looked up at the wall as if on cue. There was an enlarged black and white picture of a woman hung artistically all over its expanse, visibly immediately to anyone entering the reception. 

It was quite a sentimental tribute Harshvardhan Gaur had given to his late wife. 

Theirs had been a love story for the ages. 

Pauravi had come from a very modest family, not belonging to the Gaurs’ social class at all. Harshvardhan’s father had been against the match, expecting to get his only son married to a girl from another business family but his son had fallen madly in love with Pauravi Khedkar— the daughter of a lowly government clerk. 

The story went that she had been performing for an inauguration ceremony at a school where she taught dance and music and Harshvardhan had been in attendance as the chief guest. He had been smitten at first sight. 

The marriage had been the talk of the town at that time with A-listers from every field in attendance. She didn’t know what had happened to the woman after, but it seemed Pauravi Gaur had been battling clinical depression for a long time and one fine day Harshvardhan had come home to his wife overdosed on her sleeping pills. 

Shauryaman had been twelve. 

The media as usual, had been merciless vultures. 

Talks of the late Mrs.Gaur having an affair with a prominent bollywood producer had flown the rumour coop for a long time. 

Harshvardhan never remarried— seemingly completely heartbroken over his wife’s loss. And maybe that was the time he had distanced himself from his young son, as well. 

Her reverie broke when Prakhar started speaking again.

“Something changed him after…that. Harsh was inconsolable in his own grief and he shut us all out. By the time he opened the doors, his son was long gone. Too far out of our reach. And then all that scandal with his disbarment—”, his eyes had been trained on Pauravi’s face, a strange melancholy in those handsome features. 

“But I'm afraid I can’t protect him for long if he keeps self-destructing. The board just needs enough votes and they could kick him out and then nothing Harsh might want to do would work.”

It was a sobering thought. 

Meenakshi didn’t know exactly what had soured the relationship between Shauryaman and her father in law but it was an open secret— the discord between them. The house in Malabar Hills belonged to the family but Harshvardhan had apparently moved out years ago, letting his son live alone in the property. 

And then she came into the picture. It had seemed strange and a little sad to her— just one man living in a three storey behemoth of a house, alone, not counting the servants. Not that Shauryaman stayed in the house for too long at a stretch. 

While touring the house, she had come across a locked room. On asking, Vimmi tai, their housekeeper, had told her that it belonged to the late Mrs.Gaur and only Shauryaman had the keys to the room. He didn’t even let the servants inside.

She had seen her husband reacting quite viciously with his father on more than one occasion as only with the latter, Shauryaman seemed to lose that annoying uncaring attitude of his and get mercurial quite overtly. Harshvardhan on the other hand, seemed unwilling to rise to his son’s rage and simply countered him with the cold precision of an expert surgeon.

And maybe that was worse. 

He looked like he couldn’t be bothered to spend that much effort on being angry at the younger man. Like he was always treating him like a child— an adult humouring a rotten tantrum throwing kid. 

And that was one feeling Meenakshi had unfortunately been closely acquainted with herself. A parent being so aloof that it fucked you up completely— yes, she could commiserate with her husband, if only on this single thing. 

But it had specially come to head after the lost deal. 

Javed Khosla had left the board and joined their rivals and the partnership with the steel giant hadn’t fallen through because of the indecision of the board after Khosla’s exit and the votes falling short as a result. 

“You are a fucking disgrace to the Gaur name! Do you know how much revenue loss has happened because of your stupidity?”

“I don’t know why it should be my problem if some old geezer can’t handle his overinflated bruised ego. I came to the meeting and gave my vote—”

“You have no concept of respect! You didn’t even sit through five minutes! You humiliated a very powerful man and a good friend! You humiliated me!”

Harshvardhan had never been this enraged before. At least, Meenakshi hadn’t seen him like this before. He had come storming into their living room and started raging at Shauryaman who was still lounging on the sofa, fiddling with his phone, completely unbothered.

She had come running from her study hearing the uproar. 

“Akshi, I swear to God, one of these days, I will disown this worthless idiot!”, he had spat at her and Meenakshi had seen something flicker in her husband’s eyes before going out like a light. His expression hadn’t changed though. 

“Papa, calm down. The doctors had warned us before of your blood pressure..please”, she had tried appeasing her father in law. 

“Yes. We don’t want you to have a stoke because of a few bucks”

Sometimes, she really wished she could chuck something at this man’s head. Harshvardhan’s eyes became rounder on his pink face if that was even possible and he was huffing like a maddened bull.

She could see that vein beating against her father in law’s temple from ten feet away. 

“FEW! Five hundred crores feel ‘few’ to you! And keep your empty considerations to yourself. You will be the happiest if I have a stroke. I will have my fucking will altered before, mind you. I won’t leave you a single penny, you ungrateful piece of shit.”

And he had stormed off despite her protests. 

When she had turned to him, Shauryaman had looked just as uncaring as he had, throughout the entire fiasco. 

“Don’t start—”, he had waved her off before she could even open her mouth. 

“It is your company. You want to kick it down the drain, be my guest”, she had snapped and climbed up the staircase to their bedroom, hoping he would take it as a hint to go get drunk in some hole and leave her the hell alone. 

Thankfully she hadn’t seen him for a few days after. 

________________

It was a tepid evening when Meenakshi had finally found herself a little bit of downtime. 

She had taken a long shower, completed her meticulous twelve step skincare routine, poured a  Château Pétrus from the bar, cleared all her inboxes since the past two years and had switched on ‘The Great British Bakeoff’, a guilty pleasure of hers, which was weird because she knew nothing of baking or cooking in general.

She had been so engrossed as the participants on screen debated the finer points of using mascarpone in the white chocolate raspberry fondant that they were making that she hadn’t even seen him till he was right by her ear, standing behind the couch. 

“Cream cheese would cut the sourness of the raspberry better than mascarpone”

The sudden voice made her jump as she turned wide eyed at the supposed intruder. Shauryaman was frowning at the eighty four inch flat screen TV like he was trying to solve world hunger. He was still wearing the leather jacket from the club he had apparently come from. 

She could see the glitter on the sleeves from her seat. 

“What the hell are you doing home so early?”, she asked surprised. 

“That is a singular question I don’t think any wife has ever asked their husband. It is more often, ‘why the fuck are you so late’”, he smirked and then opened his jacket dropping it on the floor, giving her a good view of his maroon shirt stretched across those broad shoulders and defined chest and came and sat beside her. 

Strangely enough he didn’t smell of whiskey or cheap hooker perfume either. 

It was almost a musky stronger scent— cedar, pine and something smoky like flavoured tobacco with a hint of something citrusy. 

It was a disturbingly pleasant smell. 

“We are not a usual husband-wife either, are we?”, she challenged with a raised brow and sipped on the red wine from the round bottomed glass in her hand. 

She was wearing her midnight blue silk nightsuit, her recently shaved legs bare from her knees and crossed elegantly at the ankles as she lounged on the couch. Her hair was braided loose and a few unruly locks kissed her cheeks in the cool air of the hall. 

“Touche”, he smirked. 

“You didn’t answer my question”, she continued as the bakers had moved on from the fondant and were busy preparing the spongy base of the cake, on the screen. 

Shauryaman suddenly looked tired. The sharp lines of his face had dropped into a more softened base. The smirk loosened up till it was a half smile clinging on desperately. He ran a hand through his styled hair and messed up the strands till his locks looked more natural and somehow curlier. 

He had his mother’s hair. 

“I just… I was feeling a little under the weather, so I came back”, he said finally and for a startling second, Meenakshi realised that this might have been the most genuine statement that has ever left Shauryaman Gaur’s mouth till the day they had met. 

Has it been almost a year already?

She looked at his side profile for a long time, sipping her wine intermittently as he pretended to focus on the screen, head leaning back on the couch. 

“So..cream cheese huh?”, she said finally and saw a spark of gratitude flicker into those abyssal pits of his eyes. His unasked question was perhaps answered to his satisfaction. 

“If the flavor profile is all sour, it would numb you to the taste. Hence, something rich to balance the tartness”, he continued and Meenakshi found herself staring at him again, this time bemused. 

“How do you know about flavor profiling anyway?”

“I was in Paris for a summer and made friends with a pastry chef from the Ritz Carlton.”

“Friends..huh?”

He turned towards her finally and smirked like always, a hint of mischief flickering on that effervescent face. It made him look strangely young. 

“She had lovely legs and could bend in half like a pretzel—”

“Which she obviously demonstrated for you for strictly educational purposes.”

“Oh I was educated alright. What was the saying..they never do it like the French…”

Meenakshi had found herself chuckling at the salacious words and then later on, laughing quite some bit, hearing her husband’s quite hilarious commentary on the baking choices of the contestants on the screen. 

It was later when she was almost asleep, the other side of the bed still empty, that she had realised— it was the most time she had spent with her husband at one go since her wedding without wanting to take his head off. 

And Shauryaman Gaur apparently knew enough about pastry making to give their Michelin star approved chef a run for his money. 

The next morning she had seen white chocolate covered muffins topped with raspberry compote and crushed pistachios kept alongside her usual granola bowl, eggs and protein shake. She had bit into one skeptically and had to control a quite inappropriate moan from escaping her lips. 

Creme cheese definitely elevated the flavor profile. 

Not that she would tell her quietly gloating husband that, even if the wicked man had peeked his head from the kitchen door, winking at her lasciviously. 

Instead she had declared that if the board did kick him off then he could earn his keep by baking these exact same muffins for her every day. Shauryaman had looked at her incredulously for a few seconds and then against all expectations and to her great if not delighted surprise, burst out laughing. 

And if her heart had skipped a beat spotting the dimples blooming on his cheeks and the sudden boyish handsomeness that had peeked from behind that razor sharp darkness, no one had to know. 

_____________

It was like something had changed between them from that day. 

Yes, they still fought at times, at the most trivial of things and Shauryaman was still that ass who loved ragebaiting anything that moved and was for some reason hellbent on being a trainwreck on most days and she was still healthily wary about his intentions. 

But somehow they seemed to be spending more time together than she would have once expected. The viciousness from their arguments had tempered into an acerbic banter— could still leave them bleeding at the end but it was more playful pokes than jagged lacerations. 

“So, Rudra seems to have been eyeing you the entire night”, Shauryaman commented casually leaning back against the bar with a shot glass in one hand. 

It was one of those tiring afterparties of some bollywood celebrity’s birthday bash. Meenakshi was wearing a black sheath dress that hugged her curves and accentuated her height pretty nicely. Her hair had been swept at one side, letting everyone witness her creamy back held together by stringy straps. 

She smirked into her drink and gave Rudra Sinha— a spoiled nepo baby, a wink of her own. 

“Why, are you jealous?”, she drawled, hazel eyes twinkling in mirth. 

Shauryaman looked nonplussed but there was a hint of something dark in his eyes. In an all black ensemble, with his blazer opened and vest buttoned down to reveal a nice portion of his chest, inky hair splayed over his mischievous eyes, he was just as handsome if not more than the silver screen heroes milling about.

“Why should I be jealous?”, he muttered but slowly and very unsubtly angled his body in a way that clearly blocked Rudra’s direct sight to her. 

Meenakshi resisted the urge to giggle at the blatant way he was staking his territory. It would have irritated her at literally any other time, but tonight she was feeling particularly buzzed and her husband looked good enough to eat. 

So what if she was enjoying his uncharacteristic attention a little too much. She had legal rights to do so, fuck you good sense—

“What are you drinking?”, she said and snatched his glass, taking a sip and almost gagging at it. It tasted like an unholy concoction of sulphuric acid but went down her throat like liquid ice. So strong she had felt a little dizzy instantly. 

“My God, what the hell was that? Motor oil?”

The wicked man laughed at her and stroked a strand of her straightened hair off her cheek where the glitter from her highlighter had made that single lock stick to her skin. His touch ignited a fiery feeling inside her core that made her want to clamp her legs shut. 

Damn, she was really drunk wasn’t she?

“I call it, ‘the wife’. The way it pours like wildfire down your throat threatening to burn everything inside, but it also has a sweet aftertaste”, his voice had gone syrupy, heavy and dark and Meenakshi was turned towards him fully now, abandoning her pathetic attempts to look nonchalant. 

“Mr. Shauryaman Gaur…”, she hiccuped, a little giggly, “are you possibly flirting with me?”, and then gasped dramatically. 

“Mrs. Meenakshi Gaur, I would like to clear it right away that I am absolutely flirting with you”, he had whispered over her cheek, smelling of that irresistible combination of expensive cologne and something musky and virile, which seemed to be his natural scent. 

That voice would do her in one of these days. It felt like gravel over silk. Like velveteen chocolate over her skin, like a fucking hand in between her legs, stroking her damp heat with maddening rhythm and fuck it—

She grabbed the open lapels of his blazer and dragged him to a fierce kiss. It was wet and sloppy and completely uncoordinated thanks to both of them being drunk off their asses and it wasn’t the best kiss she had had by a long shot but the way it had made her insides self combust, had been novel indeed. 

His hands had encircled her waist and she had found herself plastered and hanging against him, his lips dominating her with practiced ease, licking into her mouth like a greedy monster and battling with her tongue and clashing against her teeth, tasting of hard liquor, blood and something uniquely him. 

She let out a tiny moan, rubbing herself against the very visible hardness of her husband’s interest when he suddenly separated from her, rubbing a hand over his face. 

“Wha..what happened?”, she tried catching his lips again but he held her apart. 

“Can’t do it like this..”, he sounded miserable. 

“Like what? We are not kids, Shaurya..I want this, you want this— we are married for god’s sake”, she grumbled placing a small kiss at the corner of his mouth and giggled at the tortured groan that had come out of him. 

“Sweetheart, we are so drunk we can barely see straight. You want this now, you will not want this in the morning so much..lets go..”, he practically picked her up and started walking towards the exit, her grumbling about him choosing to be a gentleman at the worst possible moment. 

The next morning saw her sprawled over the bed like a starfish, clothed and feeling like someone had poured cement down her brain and stuffed cotton inside her mouth. 

Her husband was sleeping beside her, hanging half off the bed from his knees, having only removed his jacket. 

He was still wearing his shoes. 

She remembered bits and pieces from the previous night and got increasingly alarmed till she realised that nothing had actually progressed beyond that kiss. The hint of relief had been overtaken by an unprecedented wave of disappointment. 

She could chase the taste of his mouth stuck to her lips still. 

Meenakshi had anticipated things to get awkward after that but strangely enough nothing much changed. Shauryaman still teased her mercilessly almost to the point of having a heel being chucked at his head and they had settled back in their previous routine almost seamlessly. 

If Meenakshi dreamt about that one drunken tussle of mouths and lay wondering in the dark about the things that could have followed, no one other than her own sick and twisted desires knew about it. 

_____________________

Shauryaman kept testing his board’s patience recklessly. 

He had thrown two more minor alliances away, by sheer unprofessionalism aided by his inherently incorrigible arrogance. A road reconstruction contract in Borivali and a mid-sized powerplant construction in Surat had gone to their rivals. 

Meenakshi was most sympathetic to her father in law and Prakhar uncle’s piling headaches. 

Yet another mystifying reason that she couldn’t figure out was why her husband seemed to detest Prakhar Sahani as much as the man was seemingly fond of him. The wizened CEO would try to engage him in the meetings only to get coldly rebuffed every time. 

Shauryaman refused to talk to him straight and snarled almost rabidly if he was forced. 

“You could be a little more respectful, you know. He is your only ally on the board. And for some godforsaken reason, seems to care about you”, she had said once. 

“No one cares about anyone in this world, Meenakshi. It's all one big play and we are the unwilling actors”, he had countered sharply. 

There was something unsettling in his voice. 

“That is quite cynical”

“It is the truth”

“It might be your truth. Doesn’t make it universal.”

“Tell me then sweetheart, who cares about you? Your parents who got you married to a loser? Your friends who would ditch you the day you step out of the boundaries of an acceptable societal status?”

The words had been nasty, the endearment dripping with condescendence and targeted to rile her up and even if she had understood that, it had still rankled. 

“Just because no one cares about you Shaurya, doesn’t mean no one cares about me. You know nothing about me”, she had snarled. 

He had chuckled meanly and walked off, not refuting her statement but not accepting it at the same time. The bitterness on his face had transformed into a strange flicker of hurt just for a second before it had smoothened out into that damning detached nonchalance. 

Meenakshi had twisted and turned on her bed for the whole night after that, unable to unhear those poisonous words. Shauryaman always brought out the worst in her. And she seemed all the more jubilant at duelling with him, no matter how vitriolic the arguments could turn. 

It was like countering fire with fire. 

They were much too alike in some ways. And so different, in many others. 

And yet Meenakshi couldn’t have anticipated just how low both of them could have fallen, if only to cut the other down. 

________________

It was a pleasant winter evening when the Sahanis came to their house. Meenakshi had wanted to host Prakhar and his wife, Leena for a long time. They had always been exceptionally kind and accepting of her. 

She didn’t know whether it had been just mere courtesy or that lingering yet childish need to get back at her husband, she hadn’t informed him of the dinner priorly— just saying she had guests over and if he did come home on time, to be decent. 

Shauryaman came back home on time alright, and surprisingly enough he also brought a wrapped bottle like a gift but none of that had mattered in the end because the moment he had seen Prakhar Sahani seated on the couch, laughing with Meenakshi, he had blown his top off like a missile being shot out. 

“Get the fuck out of my house!”, he growled at the older man, voice lowered four degrees in absolute chilling venom. 

“Shaurya what the hell are you saying”, Meenakshi tried intervening but to no avail. It was like he was seeing red, a loud uncontrollable rage that had transformed his so-called harmless persona into a pitfire of hellish doom. 

This wasn’t the lethargic, alcoholic playboy that the world knew Shauryaman Gaur to be. 

Meenakshi had been intimately conversant with violence in her life and she knew well enough how to spot danger, living with a former military personnel and for other reasons that she refused to admit even in the privacy of her own mind, she knew the exact moment when to anticipate it. 

And right now her husband was the most dangerous man standing in the room. 

His jaw had hardened enough to cut glass and his knuckles were so white around the wine bottle that they were almost bloodless. 

“Shaurya…please”, Prakhar tried placating him, hands hovering in the air but the younger man snarled so hard he had to take a step back. 

Shauryaman was like a wild animal, pouring murder from his eyes in a way that chilled Meenakshi’s blood. 

She had been wrong about him. 

There was nothing harmless about this man. He was a bored tiger who had been playing tag with his prey and now his fangs had been bared and she could see the blood stained on the gleaming enamel. 

But Meenakshi was no weakling, herself. 

Wrath had coloured her vision crimson too. 

“I will say it for the last time. Get. Out. Of. My. House. Right the fuck now before I call the cops”, he spat between gritted teeth and Prakhar sighed and ushered his shaken wife outside, throwing apologetic looks at Meenakshi whose face was burning with shame and rage. 

The moment the older couple had left, she felt the last string holding her temper snap audibly. 

“Have you lost your goddamned mind! What kind of disrespectful behaviour was that? Are you an illiterate savage?”, she yelled, eyes blazing, nails digging into her own palms. 

Shauryaman slammed the wine bottle down on the table with a mighty thud, almost shattering the glass and turned to her, his charcoal eyes spitting fire. 

“Why the fuck would you call that fucking pi—”

“Speak of him with respect! He is old enough to be your fucking father!”

“Shut the fuck up! As if age has anything to do with it!”

“You are right! Age has nothing to do with it. I would respect a five year old more than a tantrum throwing brat like you! What the fuck is wrong with you! I have never felt so ashamed in my entire life! I called them—”

She was pinching the bridge of her nose feeling the humiliation sizzle inside her veins. 

Her husband apparently wasn’t done. 

“You stay the fuck away from him!”, he spat which only made her blood boil harder. Her voice was icy like a stalactite when she spoke. 

“You do not order me, Shauryaman.”

“And you do not bring someone to my home without my permission.”

“This is my home too!”

He threw his hands up, almost in despair even if his handsome face was now almost ugly in its ferocity. She was faring no better and could practically feel her entire body thrum with repressed violence. 

“This is the reason!”, she growled pointing at him, “your father was right. They were all right. I thought there might be something everyone is missing. But it was just wishful thinking. You are a worthless piece of shit who can barely differentiate his ass from his nose on most days. Your ex dodged a fucking canon ball!”

His head snapped towards her with a dizzying force. 

“Yes, I know about Avantika”, she continued ruthlessly. 

“Meenakshi”, he warned, face paling slightly but she was on a roll and had no intention of stopping. Her endless well of patience had extinguished. 

“And your illegitimate daughter. Thank fuck, she had the good sense of leaving. You didn’t deserve her or that poor girl who unfortunately will have to carry your good for nothing genes for the rest of her life! A selfish monster like you knows nothing about love.”

Shauryaman went bone white and the anger was gone at the force of the sudden hurt that spread uninvited on his features. He looked like she had taken that massive swiss knife from the kitchen counter and rammed it inside his chest and twisted it for good measure. 

Good. 

Meenakshi knew she had always had a viciously mean streak but this man deserved worse. Someone who cannot respect anyone, had no regard whatsoever about anyone except himself, deserved no regard or consideration from anyone else. 

But then the shen pallor was gone and replaced with a cold vitriolic look of utter contempt. 

“You are standing here lecturing me about love? You? You think I don’t know about your past? What you did to your sibling—”

It was Meenakshi’s turn to pale and she could barely hear the rest of his words. Her head was spinning and the constant ringing inside her ears had overtaken her. His words were poison and slipped inside her ribs like cold steel, burning through all her flesh. 

“You stood and watched your sister drown. You have no right to say anything to me about being a selfish monster, Meenakshi Bannerjee. You killed an innocent baby because momma cared about her more than you—”

The slap turned his head to the side with vicious force and shocked both of them. Meenakshi could see the scratch marks her diamond rings had left on his clean shaven cheek. Her knees were jelly and she could barely breathe. 

She turned around and ran and somehow the world went black at the same time.  

Later their housekeeper, Vimmi tai had told her that she had locked herself in the bathroom and turned on the shower and had sat underneath the icy spray like a statue for hours. 

Apparently the servants had been banging at her door urging her to get out before Shauryaman had broken the door open himself and had carried her out in his arms. Then Vimmi had changed her into warm clothes and called the doctor. 

She did remember snippets of a loud thudding, a muffled curse, calls of her name going in and out from a fog but everything had felt like having come from under water. There was water in her lungs, pulling her down into an inky abyss. She had felt a warm touch around her too, for a brief second she remembered seeing Shauryaman’s panicked face, his arms around her. 

And then nothing again. 

Her husband was nowhere to be seen when she had woken up from the medicated sleep and Meenakshi had been quietly glad. 

It felt like she had been back at that moment again. Frozen stiff at the edge of the pool, unable to move a single muscle as her little sister gasped and screamed for help till the dark waters claimed her. 

All these years of therapy and clinical help and constant struggle against her own demons and it had taken just a few words to undo everything. 

But the words had been true. 

She had killed her sister. And she had no right to lecture anyone about anything because a mean insecure asshole Shauryaman maybe, he was still not a murderer. 

____________________

A year of progress seemed to have vanished under the weight of silence. 

Shauryaman and Meenakshi still managed to catch a glimpse of each other but they rarely interacted anymore. The words both had spat at the other seemed to have plunged into their bodies like daggers with their shining hilts sticking out like pincushions for anyone to see. 

And try as they might, they couldn’t pull them out. 

When the hysteria from the ptsd and the rage from earlier had cleared off, Meenakshi had been forced to admit that she too may have jumped the gun this time. 

She may know about the breakup, thanks to the tabloids running their mouths loose, especially because Avantika had gone right up and married Arjun Mehra, her boss who was not only a celebrity in law circles himself but had also been the one to disbar Shauryaman when he had been interning under him. 

The daughter being Shauryaman’s wasn’t something she had learned from the tabloids, that had been hidden quite well— thus the hasty marriage, she figured. It had been a fixer who had been employed by Arjun to help him investigate a high profile client. He had accidentally happened upon the truth and had revealed it to her later in a party, in a drunken state. 

She knew nothing of why Avantika had broken up with her husband. 

She didn’t even know if Shauryaman had ever wanted to meet the girl. But it was clear from his expression that he still harboured some feelings for the woman who had once famously trapped the most sought after bachelor in town and a certified playboy and then had apparently broken his heart. 

Meenakshi had later met up with Prakhar, inviting him to lunch in the Laconte headquarters and had called up a famous celebrity chef from Bandra to provide for them and apologized for her husband’s deplorable behaviour. 

“It's okay, Akshi. Don’t be stressed. I am used to it. I had hoped he would have softened a little by now but—”, the older man had smiled but there had been pain in the lines of his face. 

“I am still sorry, Prakhar uncle. It was tremendously ungracious and..oh god your wife, I hope aunty isn’t too mad at me?”

“Nonsense. Leena understands, just as well. Come to our house once, both of you— we’ll make everything alright.”

At least her relationship with the CEO of Gaur Constructions hadn’t soured yet. The man must either really love her husband or have the patience of a saint. 

Meenakshi on the other hand, had no idea how to get out of this strangely depressing limbo she had fallen into. 

_____________

It was pretty late when Meenakshi’s silver Audi entered the gates of their house in Malabar Hills. The property was a good few acres, surrounded by a garden which had a gravel path layered around the road to the front porch, for the cars. 

Ravi, their valet had been dutifully waiting at the front doors of the three story building to take her car to the parking garage in the basement. Meenakshi exited from the driver’s seat and her tired eyes suddenly caught the light reflecting off the young valet’s wrist. 

“Ravi, where did you get that watch?”, she asked curiously. The nineteen year old blushed crimson under his dark skin but held out his wrist proudly for her to see. 

“Shauryaman sir, gave it to me. I am writing the test for the police constable post next year and I asked for leave from sir and he said to have this. He said, ‘it is a good luck charm’ and helped him pass his lawyer examination”, the boy declared with a mixture of shyness and clear adoration. 

Meenakshi’s eyes climbed her forehead involuntarily. 

She was sure poor Ravi had no idea that it was a fifty lakh worth limited edition Patek Philippe. Anyway the boy just seemed happy to have been given a gift which had someone’s well wishes.

What was a price tag in front of good natured blessings?

“Oh, all the best, Ravi. You will do great. Remember to come and have dahi cheeni from me before going to the exam center.”

“Aww madam. Thank you”, the boy blushed even harder and scurried off. She knew he was an orphan and lived alone in the chawl. This was the least she could do for him. 

Her mind was scattered as she entered the hall. The more she unearthed her husband, the more perplexed she became. 

How can one person be simultaneously so cruel and so kind?

As if on cue she caught sight of the man in question and froze. 

Shauryaman was slumped on their massive twelve seater dining table, half of which was covered with books and papers and varied other paraphernalia. She came closer and caught sight of the titles. They were all law books, opened at various pages and marked over and over again with sticky notes and highlighters. There were pencil markings at the edges, covered in a sharp and spiky handwriting she was intimately familiar with. 

There were various musty old documents and freshly printed photos of undecipherable objects and what looked like court transcripts and witness testimonies and old police records and newspaper cuttings dating back a decade. It was like the department of legal studies or an advocate’s homework had exploded on the table. 

Shauryaman was fast asleep, his eyes hidden by a shock of surprisingly product free hair, head nestled in between the spine of a very heavy leather bound book. His back would not thank him when he invariably woke up. 

He had been typing something on his laptop, the screen saver preventing her from taking a peek. It was a chillingly impersonal photo of the summer sky and she felt unsettled just looking at it for too long, like she was staring at something intimate, something impermissible. 

She was slowly backing off from the table top, when she saw a single photo stuck in the spine of the book, half hidden by Shauryaman’s hair. 

The face of Avantika Mehra, well she used to go by Bhatt then, greeted her from its glossy creased surface. It seemed like the photo had been folded and unfolded a lot from the spiky creases made over it in abundance. 

Shauryaman’s face was turned towards Avantika and he looked so damned young in it, it was almost heartbreaking. The joy in her smile was infectious and Meenakshi found herself mirroring it almost involuntarily. But what had caught her sight more was the look in her husband’s face as he seemingly watched his then girlfriend. 

The love painted over his handsome features was so naked, so unmarred by life and fate yet, that it felt like a hot iron inside her stomach. It was too much exposure and she felt the ridiculous urge to go back in time and shield him retrospectively. 

It was with a slightly sickening jolt that Meenakshi realised that despite what he might have become later, Shauryaman had loved Avantika with as much sincerity as he could have managed at that age— maybe even beyond. 

The existence of the photograph was evidence enough. 

And suddenly, Meenakshi didn’t want to know why Shauryaman was sleeping on his law books on the dining table of all places. The desire to unearth the mystery behind her husband’s increasingly strange activities had dampened under the force of his past. 

‘Why is it bothering you? So what if he is still in love with his ex? You had made it clear you wanted nothing to do with him. This marriage is a contract anyway, a business deal. At least this proves the man used to have a heart somewhere hidden beneath that detached cavalier exterior.’

She had still been arguing with herself later, inside their bedroom when a sudden shriek came from downstairs, piercing the air like a nail against a chalkboard. The fear in that scream was so potent that it automatically made her run out in panic. 

“What happened?”

Meenakshi screamed back, holding her red soled Louboutin in her right hand, poised to launch at the unknown intruders with military precision. 

Only to see Vimmi tai and two other man servants searching the heap of books, utterly hassled while her husband was standing on the couch of all things, clutching desperately to what appeared to be a rather fat volume on criminal law, eyes wide on his sleep-creased face. 

“Shauryaman, did you scream?”, she poked at him lightly, having climbed down the stairs near the couch over which he was still posed like the statue of liberty. 

“Yaa! What..fuck! Oh it's you”, he had almost taken her head off with the book that he was still brandishing like a shield in front of him or an impromptu weapon for invisible enemies about to charge at him. 

“What the hell is happening here and who the hell shrieked like that?”

“It wasn’t a shriek. It was a very manly scream”, Shauryaman countered, frowning even as he backed away from the table slowly. 

“It's a cockroach madam”, Vimmi tai answered her instead, looking hilariously exasperated at her terrified employer.

“Just a cockroach? Just. That thing was fatter than a dung beetle and it has wings and do you know how many diseases spread from cockroaches and why the hell are there bugs in the house! Don’t I pay you guys enough to deal with shit like this!”, the man retorted slightly hysterically. 

Meenakshi was staring baffled at Shauryaman when he finally met her gaze. She couldn’t help the sudden bubbling laugh that had opened up like a can of soda inside her stomach. 

He was shooting her a warning look but it was too late. 

She had already doubled over. 

“You are scared of a bug? A poor little arthropod?”

She was gasping for breath, tears rolling down her face while her husband had turned an endearing shade of pink, trying and failing miserably to glare her into submission. 

“Shut up! I am not scared of cockroaches. I just don’t like them. It must have crawled back home from the evidence lockup. Fucking policemen can’t keep their stuff clean—”

He would have continued his rant had Vimmi not found their little troublemaker and held it up triumphantly by a wing. 

“Found it!”, she declared like a general having won a war and Shauryaman looked like he would pass out with how colorless his face looked. 

Meenakshi stifled her giggles with an herculean effort and ordered their victorious housekeeper to let it out in the garden. 

“So, my brave and mighty husband, may I ask, what were you rifling about in evidence lockups?”, she asked carefully and saw him stiffening. It was as if he had just realised that she had seen everything scattered on the table. 

He seemed to debate internally whether to disclose anything before sighing. The book was kept back on the table and he picked up a single sheet from the court transcripts. 

“Nothing. It was just an old case. Someone said something and I had to check it out for myself. I had forgotten how much work lawyering actually took—”

There was something wistful in his voice that called out to her gently. The man wasn’t as unaffected as he usually liked to pretend and that was a fact that she had come to realize time and again, after all these months of forced proximity. 

He missed being a lawyer and that was evident. 

Meenakshi suppressed the desire to ask what had happened leading to his disbarment. 

She would not scrape at old wounds anymore. The rebound from her own, if only intentional cruelty, had been quite gruesome. She wasn’t sure she could take another round and survive in one piece. 

At least not anytime soon.

Suddenly she had to change the subject. 

“Did you eat dinner?”

Shauryaman stared at her a little bewildered at the sudden non sequitur. She hadn’t talked to him straight since their fight nearly a month ago. He hadn’t approached her and she had left him to his devices as well. 

Maybe the silence had been a little painful to him too because he seemed to brighten up immediately.

“No. Have you?”

She shook her head. 

“I think Vimmi tai could spare us some if we ask her nicely”, he offered hesitantly. 

“I don’t know….you did just ask her to catch a roach—”, she pointed out, the mirth coming back to her voice in spades and by his irritated look, she knew he knew that she was having way too much fun with this. 

“You are never going to let me forget this one, will you?”

“Never.”

He smiled at her and suddenly the world felt a little less darker than it had an hour ago. 

They had eaten dinner like college kids on the island table in the kitchen, engaging in a surprisingly not awkward conversation about the most trivial happenings of their day. 

There was a little unease in the background, like they were too master sportsmen having been out of the game for years and were just relearning to sync again, one unsteady step at a time. It seemed like the elephant in the room would remain invisible for the time being— the topics and their individual reactions to them were too painful to breach anytime soon. 

The wounds were still fresh and both Meenakshi and Shauryaman were too proud to admit to their fallacies. 

___________________

“That looks…expensive”

Meenakshi was staring at the small colorful concoction on her plate with mild disgust. Shauryaman, seated opposite to her, swallowed the entire thing in one go, made a face and then drank a little of the sparkling water kept beside.

“I was told, this place was going to get a Michelin star.”

Meenakshi sighed morosely at the piece of whatever raw fish and truffle and artichoke and orange slice mini monstrosity on her plate and muttered a disheartened, ‘figures’. Her lunch partner sipped on the white wine and then sighed heavily, wiping his mouth with the white cloth kept over the white oval table.

“I knew this would be a disaster but my father insisted I take you out somewhere fancy. Apparently I couldn’t be trusted to make an informed choice about your particular taste and so he reserved a table for us.”

Meenakshi sighed and drank the rest of the wine in her glass in one gulp. She had been more than a little surprised when Shauryaman had come one afternoon to her office and insisted she accompany him to lunch. 

She had been ready to bat him away but he had looked strangely hopeful, trying to hide it behind his usual panache, but there had been something sweetly hesitant about his expression. 

And she had been hungry anyway. 

“Come with me then, daddy dearest’s option sucked, let's try mine—”, he held out his hand and she rolled her eyes but took it anyway. 

“Shaurya if you take me to a pub, I swear to god—”, she threatened as they walked, strangely hand in hand, to his parked convertible. 

“Oh ye of little faith…”, he said in a sing-song voice, opening the car door for her, again, being uncharacteristically chivalrous. 

But Meenakshi didn’t complain. This has been a nice change. His usually abrasive jeering nature had softened as weeks had turned into months and in turn she could feel the ice around her heart melt slowly. 

“Where are we going?”, she asked, feeling the wind whip her loose wavy curls and the Juhu beach hugged the other end of the road under their wheels. 

“Patience woman..”, her husband muttered and stopped in front of a rocky expanse of the beach which opened into the sands a few metres away. He asked her to go sit on a rock and said he would be back in a few. 

Climbing up a rock in her grey pencil skirt and Valentino heels was probably not a good idea, so she ditched the shoes and walked barefoot on the sand. It had been so long since she had been on the beach. The salty sea air was probably making a mess of her blowout but she didn’t care. 

Not when she could feel the cold water foaming in between her manicured nails. 

“Here you go, watch the heat”, Shauryaman appeared out of nowhere beside her. She had been so lost in the scenery in front she hadn’t even realised when he had come back. 

“Vada pav?”, she laughed in pleasant surprise but took her share. The spicy scent of the favourite street snack of the Mumbaikars wafted in the air making her mouth water almost immediately. 

“The best vada pav in the city”, her husband responded seriously and bit into his own. 

She saw he had pulled his slacks over his shins and left his socks in the car as well, sinking barefoot in the sand like her. His hair was free of product and fluttered over his dark eyes and the late afternoon sun fell golden over his olive toned skin. 

He looked carefree. 

She felt carefree. 

It was like both of them had been thrust into a strange bubble of comfort and something whimsical. She wolfed down on the vada pav hungrily and had to concede to his claim— it had perhaps been the best she had ever eaten in a long while. 

“My mother used to bring me here when I was just a kid”, he said, suddenly breaking the comfortable silence between them, “it was my favourite spot. She would ask the driver to park the car somewhere far and we would walk down this strip of the beach and she would buy vada pav for both of us and we would sink our feet into the sea”.

His voice was light. 

Empty. 

Like that of a hollowed out tin vessel rattling in the air. 

He never spoke of his mother. 

At least, he hadn’t, not before this. 

Meenakshi slipped her slimmer fingers inside his bigger ones before she even knew what she was doing. It was like her envious control had slipped in face of a grief like that and she had no words to offer except her silence. 

So she said nothing but kept holding onto his larger hand in a firm grip. 

Both the Bannerjees were alive. 

Even if sometimes she felt like her mother had died with her youngest sibling that horrible day, but still she could see her everyday, feel her warmth as she brushed past her in the office, and watch the light blaze behind her topaz gaze. 

She didn’t know how it would have felt to lose her when she was just a child. 

She had lost track of how long they stood in silence, till Shauryaman broke it, that teasing cheer back in his voice and the bubble burst finally. 

“God, it's so late. I promised your dad, I will have you back before your client meeting this evening. Let’s go. I don’t want to test a tiger’s patience”

Meenakshi had rolled her eyes all the way to heaven. 

She had only realised it quite late, when she had been busy peering into her laptop and mentally apologizing to her chiropractor, that they hadn’t left each other’s hands long after the beach had hidden behind the glass domed office buildings. 

“Thank you for the lunch”, she had said softly while he had opened the door for her at the front porch leading to the building’s lobby. 

“Anything for my lovely lady”, he had smirked but the curve had reached his eyes for the first time and she had elbowed him gently in the ribs as payback. 

The flush hadn’t left her windblown cheeks for hours. 

Meenakshi could still feel the shape and the weight of her husband’s hand inside her own, long after the day had already passed— like a tattoo branded against her skin, oddly soothing in all its mystifying glory. 

______________________

Life had been so good lately that Meenakshi had started becoming distrustful of it. The idyllic habits she had unknowingly developed, had somehow blanketed her in a secure bubble, not letting the bitter reality of existence touch her. 

Shauryaman had not instigated a major boardroom breakdown recently, her father in law had not needed to visit his personal doctor as a result and Laconte had secured a multi crore deal with a French company to extend their shipping business off the Amalfi coast. 

Her personal life had improved a great deal too. 

There had been some arguments here and there but it had all been essentially in good faith. And if she wasn’t imagining stuff, her husband seemed to have lowered going out to the clubs and partying all his nights away. 

She saw him more and more, seemingly buried in some of his old cases, law books scattered on the couch and the dining table during quiet evenings and she had finally pushed him to make a personal study room to stuff his books in, like her own.  

Some mornings saw them both in the gym, working out in comfortable silence and sometimes on a few shared beats of music. 

Shauryaman had commandeered the kitchen one day and baked the entire afternoon away. It had smelled like a sweet lover’s paradise when she had come back home that evening. In her husband’s defense, he had quoted that he stress-baked sometimes, though he had flat out diverted all her attempts to figure out what had stressed him so. 

She would deny it till she is blue in the face but she would kill for the oatmeal cookies with caramel crust and chocolate chips. 

And somewhere along the way, they had somehow started a fierce competition of solving the crossword puzzle that came out in the digital version of the NY Times. They would compete on who could finish it first. It was incredibly silly but she enjoyed the mental exercise. 

Meenakshi had always been a beast in puzzles and solving riddles, but she had to admit that Shauryaman was just as good. It had blown all her initial reservations about him being dumb right off the water. 

The man could be cunning as the devil when it suited him. 

It made her wonder, how many other things she had missed or rather how many secrets did the man hide behind his cocky sex addicted superiority complex and mile wide daddy issues. 

The physical barrier between them had also been loosening by leaps and bounds, since that day on the beach. 

She would often find herself having rolled over to his side of the bed, comfortably throwing an arm or leg over his slumbering body even if he did keep his hands religiously to himself. The man had an iron control even when asleep and it sure did give credence to his offense at her accusations against his character, at their wedding night. 

But one night, Meenakshi had found herself completely shattering even that little illusion of distance. 

It had not been her fault. There weren't many things that scared Meenakshi Gaur. But thunder and lightning came at the top of the list. She was terrified of thunderstorms. 

And one rainy night, when the world outside was drenched from the relentless monsoon downpour and thunder had lashed dazzling white against the inky sky, she had sat up straight on the bed, heart hammering hard enough to beat out of her chest. 

Shauryaman seemed dead to the world beside her. 

She tried meditating, distracting herself on her mobile, putting noise cancelling headphones but nothing could stop the relentless shaking in her limbs and the soft whimpers leaving her lips. 

Finally it had been a rather loud bolt of thunder and Meenakshi not being able to hold in a small cry of despair that had woken her husband up. The man had grappled for an invisible enemy in the dark and then had looked up at her with groggy eyes. 

“Akshi?”, his sleep drenched voice had been a broken rasp. 

“Its…nothing..go to sleep…”, she had said, chattering all the while, her own arms wrapped around herself. 

“Are you cold? Do you want me to increase the AC temp?”, he had gotten up slowly but she had backed away, shaking her head. As if on cue lightning had flashed, throwing their dark room into a streak of light for a split second through the heavy blinds. 

It had been followed by a splitting boom and Meenakshi had jumped out of her skin. 

Shauryaman’s voice had been strangely gentle when he had spoken next. 

“Is it the thunder, darling?”

Her terrified brain hadn’t even registered the endearment, only that his voice had sounded softer than the mayhem reigning outside. She had nodded hesitantly and had almost startled when he had tugged at her hand gently. 

“Come here a moment…”, he had whispered and she had inched closer. 

The warmth of his body had been very inviting against the chill in the room and she had burrowed at his side instinctively. A heavy and large arm had wrapped around her shaking shoulders, bringing them down from her around her ears and had scooped her inside a warm chest. 

The material of his sleep shirt had been soft against her wet cheek and had smelled like clean detergent infused with that smoky undertones of his natural scent and the faint fragrance of his cologne. The rain had lashed harder against the insulated glass and she had buried her face inside his chest like a scared kitten. 

“Mama had taught me a trick. Try to count the seconds between one thunder strike and the next. You will see how the time increases between each pair. That signals that the storm is moving away”. 

He had whispered inside her hair and she had found her mind being strangely attuned to the instructions. No one had ever given her such a simple yet logical solution to counter her fear, irrational be it. 

His other arm had come and wrapped around her waist by then, keeping the back of her head to his chest steady and in place. There was something strangely tender in the way he was holding her. Like she was made out of spun glass. 

It was so uncharacteristic that had Meenakshi been in her full capabilities, she would have been completely befuddled. But right now her hind brain had become activated and it was signaling to her body that she was finally safe. 

The way Shauryaman had pressed her to himself, almost curving his bigger, heavier frame around her like a human shield, it made her primitive senses calm down immediately. She could feel the anxiety rocking her heart tune out slowly with his loud and rhythmic heart beats drumming against her smaller body. 

She whined a little, clutching the back of his t-shirt tight and there was an answering rumble which seemed to come deep from within his chest and settled the last vestiges of her frayed nerves. 

Meenakshi had no idea when she had fallen asleep and whether she had dreamt up the barely there press of lips on the crown of her head. 

She had woken up alone on the bed the next morning and Shauryaman had not said anything when she had met him later for breakfast. She had expected him to tease her mercilessly considering how much shit she had given him for his scare that day with that cockroach, but he hadn’t even broached the topic. 

It was almost like last night had been a dream conjured up by her delirious brain. 

Had it not been for her lying bundled under his blanket on his side of the bed, curled into the shape left by the press of his body on the mattress and the lingering scent of his aftershave on her clothes, she would have believed nothing had happened at all. 

Meenakshi didn’t know how to handle this kind of unfathomable kindness from a man she hadn’t even given the benefit of doubt the first time they had met. Not that he had made it any easier with his following actions.  

She had considered him for a long moment and then had just squeezed his loose fingers on the table top in silent gratitude and had left for work. 

There might have been a barely there smile on his face. 

______________________

It was their first wedding anniversary. 

The building had been glammed up to resemble the likes of the Udaipur palace. The guests milling about the hall had a collective net worth more than the GDP of a small country. Champagne flew through swarovski crystal flutes and mild chatter and clinging of expensive jewels echoed from the glittering corners. 

Meenakshi had already completed her rounds. 

Shauryaman had accompanied her for some bit, shaking hands and levying everyone with a smirk that kept on turning more plastic as the evening progressed. She could practically feel the coiled tension in his body even as he kept a warm and surprisingly possessive hand on her waist. 

She had chosen to wear a saree of a deep forest green color that complimented her fair skin and matched the green pocket square inside her husband’s pinstriped slate suit. The blouse was in the same monochrome shade and had a low back and quarter sleeves. 

Her hair was in a bun letting a few styled curls frame her oval face, the partition of it filled neatly with sindoor and she had opted for a simple gold choker and her mangalsutra. There were tiny gold framed emerald studs in her ears. 

The earrings had been a gift from her husband. 

He had come inside her room when she had been busy trying to keep all the pins in her saree from falling off while simultaneously instructing her hapless housestaff on the phone to keep memorising the guestlist and their personal food preferences and dietary restrictions to relay to the private chefs later.

She had seen his reflection on the dressing mirror. 

Shauryaman had a clear look of awe on his face and Meenakshi had had to resist the urge to duck like an idiotic blushing maiden on her first night. Of late, her body seemed to be betraying her just as much as her mind. Especially when he would be near. 

It was like a switch inside of her, had been pressed that she could no longer reach to shut off.

It was maddening. 

And strangely thrilling. 

“You look…”, he had cleared his throat and a faint blush had stained the tips of his ears and it had been annoyingly sweet, “..good. You look good”, he had repeated a little more confidently, as if reorienting himself to their reality just a split second later. 

“You look good too”, she had said immediately and turned to face him, if only to reduce the sudden awkwardness in the air that none of them were used to. He had thrust the small box in her hands then. 

“Happy anniversary, Meenakshi. Congratulations, you have survived me for a year”, he had winked at her, back to his salacious coy self and she had rolled her eyes but couldn’t stop her lips from breaking into a smile. 

“Happy anniversary, Shauryaman. Congratulations, you have managed to not get yourself killed by your wife”, she had retorted back, opening the box. 

He had chuckled and ducked away from the door before she could thank him for the gift. 

Her husband was a strange man indeed. 

But his dark eyes had twinkled when he had seen her come out, wearing the studs and he had offered her his elbow, reminiscent of that day on the beach, all those weeks ago. 

“You look beautiful, my dear”, Harshvardhan had commented, kissing the air by her cheek and she had chuckled and let the photographers snap away. 

Her own parents had pulled her in while she had been playing the perfect hostess. Shauryaman had excused himself after an hour, probably making a beeline for the bar. She only hoped he wouldn’t create a scene today of all days. He had been pretty gracious so far. 

“I know you didn’t want to get married”, her mother had begun, holding her hand and Meenakshi had squirmed at the sheer intensity of her gaze on her, “but I see it has been good for you.”

What a preposterous conclusion—

“I don’t know, Lata. I heard Shauryaman was the reason Gaur lost that deal with AMNS and the Surat Plant went to the Jindals. The man is spoiled rotten”, her father had whispered, kissing her cheeks and she had sighed. 

“I don’t know, baba. He…he is difficult to read on most days and impossible to understand. He hasn’t been bad to me. He does the most stupid reckless irresponsible things and then turns around and does the kindest things possible. At this rate I'm surprised I haven’t gotten whiplash.”

She confided in her father as her mother had already left them to greet other people, losing interest the moment more emotional topics had been delved into. 

This, she was used to, at least. 

Riddhiman looked considerately at her. 

“You know Meenu, people aren’t binomial. You can’t categorize them into two broad labels, good or bad, black or white, sane or insane, kind or cruel— they exist in spectrums, they have so many layers, so many secrets…so many facets.”

Her father had always been the wiser one amongst her parents. 

“Thank you, baba”, she squeezed her father’s hands. 

Meenakshi had excused herself after some time. 

It was strange, she couldn’t see Prakhar uncle anywhere. She had already talked to his wife, Leena. And apologized for her husband’s atrocious behavior all those months ago which the older woman had very kindly brushed off. 

The party was in full swing now and Meenakshi was getting stopped every two minutes by people, known and unknown and she had yet to find Prakhar or incidentally, her husband. She had searched the bar but Shauryaman was nowhere to be seen. 

A sudden noise made Meenakshi turn towards the kitchen, having left the hubbub of the hall behind. It sounded like someone had smashed a dinner plate on the ground. 

“....will destroy you!”

The gravelly rasp was unmistakable. Even in its uncharacteristic yet terrible fury. 

Meenakshi entered the kitchen and gasped, hands flying to her mouth in horror. 

Shauryaman, eyes wild and clothes slightly dishevelled, had that gigantic swiss knife gripped so tight in his hand that his knuckles were white and there was this manic look on his face, like he was a cornered predator about to pounce. His entire body was trembling with barely contained rage. 

He looked mad enough to murder. 

And Prakhar Sahani looked terrified, leaning back from where he was standing close to the former. 

They were both half hidden by the island table in the kitchen. 

“Shaurya!”, Meenakshi cried out and her husband whipped his head so fast it almost looked cartoonish. His eyes had gone unfocused in a scary way before recognition bloomed on his face. 

“What are you— drop the knife!”, she came around the table, fear strangling her throat but hands steady enough to snatch the makeshift weapon away from him, if required. 

“Meenakshi, please. Be careful”, Prakhar yelped from the other side, backing away to almost plaster himself against the opposite wall. 

“Shaurya, please, drop the knife. You are hurting yourself”, she ignored the older man and tugged at her husband’s sleeve and as if breaking from a trance, Shauryaman dropped the knife at last, the sharp blade slicing the skin of his palm in a streak of crimson. 

“Shit!”, she and Prakhar seemed to echo together. 

“Prakhar uncle, please go back to the guests and make some excuse. I will get him some first aid and—”

Meenakshi stopped as Shauryaman suddenly propelled into action, slinked away from the door and practically fled upstairs, leaving a macabre pattern of blood on the marble flooring as the only witness to what had happened. 

“My dear, he is unstable right now, are you sure, you’ll be safe?”, the older man asked worriedly. 

“I will be fine. The guests please—”, she implored him and turned and followed her errant husband up the staircase leaving Prakhar standing confused in the corridor entrance to the hall, beneath. 

What the fuck had even happened?

____________________

The guests were cheerfully tipsy. 

The Gaurs knew how to throw a party and it was evident by the sheer grandeur of the event. 

Harshvardhan Gaur was drinking with the Ruia patriarch. He had already fixed a rudimentary meeting with the business giant and was now laughing at the colorful recounting of his college days that his best friend and the CEO of his company, Prakhar Sahani was regaling the guests with. 

He hadn’t seen either Shauryaman or Meenakshi in a good while now and there was a little concern sparking at the edge of his pleasantly buzzed brain. 

It was then when a loud ominous crash reverberated so piercingly through the hall that everyone immediately shut up at the same time, in absolute jarring shock. 

Everyone had turned as one towards the source of the sound. 

There was his daughter in law—

Meenakshi Gaur, standing by the balustrade above, still resplendent in her dark green saree and glittering gold jewellery but the strangest change had been the sheer apoplectic wrath that had colored her hazel eyes a brilliant fiery amber. 

Her red lips were stretched in a snarl that would have looked macabre and ugly on anyone else but on her, just somehow looked like divine rage. 

“Meenu?”

Major Bannerjee’s whisper went unheard as his daughter descended from the staircase like a goddess on a warpath. 

She made a straight beeline for where Harshvardhan was standing and had the older man not been so completely baffled he would have felt a spark of genuine fear. His daughter in law had shed the graceful, dutiful and elegant skin of the Gaur family and had wrapped herself in the brutal violence of her ancestral heritage. 

Anger had never looked so righteous and so fearsome on anyone before. 

“Akshi, what—”, Harshvardhan began but couldn't finish. 

Because Meenakshi Gaur had walked past him, ignoring him completely and stopped in front of Prakhar.

And before anyone could even figure what was about to happen, she had dug her Jimmy Choos inside the carpet, leaned and angled her body back, assuming the posture of an MMA fighter perfectly, pulled her right arm in a fist, dragging it back against her own ear and punched the other man so hard and so blindingly fast that they had heard the terrible noise of bone crunching under bone and skin, much later than the man had already hit the bartop behind and crumpled on the ground. 

The loud horrified gasps ringing almost in tandem from their gobsmacked spectators, seemed to brush past her like oil over wax. 

She hadn’t even broken a breath or noticed that her knuckles had split under the terrible pressure and deadly force. 

Her voice had been ice when she had spat the words through gritted teeth.  

“Get the hell out of my house.”

The girl was so small, she barely reached his waist. There was a massive sun hat over her curly head, creating an umbrella-esque shade over her tiny body and she was donned in a bright denim dress with sunflowers stitched into the frilly skirt. 

Her hand was small enough to fit between two of his fingers. 

“Papa! The sea is eating me!”, she shrieked in part delight and part alarm, as the sand pulled beneath her chubby feet making the girl gurgle in joy and jump. 

He felt a laugh burst out of him and he bent swiftly and caught her, pulling her up, till the squirming toddler was wrapped in his arms. Her sunhat was hanging around her neck now and he could smell the soft powdery scent of her shampoo as her inky curls brushed his jaw. 

“The sea isn’t eating you, sweetheart. The waves pull back rhythmically against the shore because of the gravitational pull of the moon.”

The girl stared at him with round baffled eyes and he sighed, internally debating the finer points of teaching sixth standard geography to a five year old. 

He brushed a lock of her hair off that miniscule cherubic face which made his daughter giggle again and then sneeze. His heart had ballooned inside his chest like it would explode with all the love that seemed to travel like lightning through his veins. 

He covered her cheeks with kisses, much to the toddler’s delight and breathless protests. 

“Papa..papa stop..it tickles..hihihi”, she patted his face away with soft hands. 

He chuckled and pressed his nose on the crown of her hair, inhaling the sweet milky scent of pure innocence, so unmarred from the filth of the world and the wickedness of men. He wished he could bubble wrap her and keep her locked inside his ribcage forever.  

His mother’s music had reached a soothing crescendo behind and he wondered where she had put up her mat to sit and play the instrument. 

Why were they on the beach anyway?

He couldn’t remember. 

The sun was setting, having turned the horizon into shades of mauve and light orange. The air was turning chilly and his daughter was almost asleep, drowsy and blinking those large lashed eyes, little face tucked inside the crook of his neck. 

“Where is your grandmother?”, he asked, absent minded and tried searching for the source of the music. 

He couldn’t see her. 

That ever familiar small dainty figure with a thick curly braid reaching till her knees, always wrapped in the softest of pastel hued chiffon sarees that he loved to bury his face against whilst hugging her, the scent of her english rose perfume and the fragrance of vanilla had misted in the air 

There was sand and rocks everywhere. 

The music seemed to get fainter and fainter and a slow tension had started simmering inside him. 

“Maa?”

He called out but there was only the waves and the dying music and his own echoes answering him. Then his arms felt empty, the comfortable weight limp against his chest and shoulder was gone and he realised with a start that his daughter had vanished into thin air. 

Panic clawed into his throat viciously and he couldn’t breathe. He looked around desperately and there was not a single person in sight. The air inside his lungs was lead and a sudden, sharp and rank odor made him almost gag. 

There was a body spread almost eagle shaped on the ground, a few feet in front. 

The dark blood soaking the sand around in a macabre pool was visible even in the dim light of dusk. He didn’t want to go there but it was like his body was being controlled by someone else. He couldn’t stop his feet from moving. 

His heart was hammering so hard, he could keel over any moment. 

It was a woman. 

Not his mother. 

Not his daughter. 

A young woman, mutilated and violated, the scraps of her white saree barely clinging onto her bluish tinged ashen skin. Her eyes were turned towards him, as if boring into his soul, accusation bright and clear in their watery depths. 

He felt his knees buckle and something grip his throat with brutal force. 

He couldn’t breathe. 

He knew her. 

She was saying something. The dead body. Her mouth was bloody and open and illegible words fell from her lips like dribbling poison. He raised a shaking hand towards her but couldn’t reach her, his strength failing midway. 

He would drown on dry earth. 

Drown beneath the sand and the sea and the music playing like the summoning of death in his ears. 

There was no respite for him, no retribution, no redemption— only a reckoning. 

A loud crash brought him back to reality. 

Shauryaman hissed and almost fell off the bartop as he straightened from his painful slouch on the table. There was a bull playing banjo inside his head and he could feel the individual throb agony shoot down his spine. 

His mouth felt like someone had poured acid and cement down his throat, in that order. 

The dim lighting of the nightclub felt fortunately easy on his eyes as he slapped his own face a few times, trying to hit the oncoming lethargy and spike of nausea away. Someone had forgotten to put out the music and it kept on playing on a horrible loop of some nineties bollywood number in the background. 

The bartender was snoring on his seat. 

Shauryaman debated kicking him off his chair and then resisted the urge and gingerly climbed down the stool. His legs took some time to steady beneath him and his head felt like a thousand kilos atop his neck. 

A quick squint at his watch told him that it was near dawn. 

Some of his drinking companions were sprawled over the couches in the back, completely hammered and out like the light. The scent of alcohol, perfume and heavy tobacco was cloying and felt like solid smoke as he neared the bunch, silently. 

The high end escort that the ring leader had hired was nowhere to be seen. If the fools were lucky, they might still have their expensive watches and wallets intact. But then, prostitutes who worked the clients in this particular club knew better than to rob their regular patrons. 

No one wanted to get in the crosshairs of the club owner. 

Or rather, the man who was the face, at the least. 

“Fuck! Hey richie rich— what the hell did you feed us man?”, a growl from the pile of bodies startled him bad enough to almost step back. He had been inspecting the white residue left on the black center table kept in front. 

The smell was distinctive enough. 

“Ambrosia, Rags. What— don’t like the downside that much, do you?”

Shauryaman grinned and surreptitiously slipped the mobile phone that had been lying on the table inside the hidden pocket of his leather jacket. 

‘Rags’, was the name the Mumbai underworld had given Raghav Chotan— drug kingpin and the supposed right hand man of the most dangerous mob boss in the city. His distribution network ran most of the street trash circulated in the more underprivileged localities in town. 

He was a paranoid man and for good reason. 

The police had been on his scent for many high profile contract killings for years. 

Rags coughed and grimaced, sitting up from his perch and caught the bottle of water that Shauryaman had chucked at him. He finished half of it and was seemingly about to say something when a loud ringing shattered the otherwise quiet of the club. 

“Fucker! Switch it off!”, some drunkard yelled from the other corner. 

“You fuck off fucker! Do you know who I am—”, Rags yelled back, tried to stand up and then promptly fell back down on his ass. 

Shauryaman stifled a groan and tapped at the man’s pocket that had been vibrating for the past one minute. 

“It's your phone idiot, pick it up!”

The other man grumbled but acquiesced, putting the phone to his ear and spitting curses in Marathi, seemingly before the other person could have even spoken. But suddenly he straightened and started nodding, saying, ‘yes boss, sorry boss’ rapidly for the next one minute. 

Shauryaman raised an eyebrow questioningly and Raghav grinned at him. 

“Today’s your lucky day, rich boy. My boss wants to meet you. Get ready by eleven. I’ll send you the address—”, he said, trying to slap his back but missed it by one centimeter and almost fell on his face on the table. 

Shauryaman had to resist the urge to vibrate out of his skin in sheer adrenaline. 

Fucking finally!

______________________

It was almost eleven when Shauryaman pulled inside the driveway of one of the most dangerous men in the city. 

If one wanted to stay in power in Maharashtra, it was imminent that they built a relationship with Tony Braganza. 

The multibillionaire business tycoon had risen the ranks of the Mumbai underworld through every organized crime possible. The brothels in the red light district, the drugs being sold to both the celebrities in tinsel town and the seediest underbelly of the city, the smuggling racket in the ports, extortion, murder, contract killing— you name it and Braganza has done it.

He has his fat fingers in every pie, has business dealings with media giants and industrialists, has been called to bollywood celebrities’ houses and has ties with both the sitting government and the opposition. 

It was also nigh impossible to get close to the gangster on your own volition. 

You don’t call Tony Braganza, he calls you. 

And thus, Shauryaman had to wait, for an excruciating amount of time, to even get close to the so-called mafia leader. 

The arched gateway of the ostentatious mansion of the supposed king of the Mumbai underworld was guarded better than Fort Knox, itself. The rotating shift of armed security kept a tight vigil and there were three entry checks on the main gate before his car had even been allowed inside. 

Shauryaman had chosen the red corvette today— one of the most expensive and fancy cars he owned. He was wearing a white shirt, opened scandalously at the collar and blue jeans, a casual fit, not too much effort but the watch on his wrist could buy the entire showroom full of sports cars and his shoes were custom made Givenchy. The black Prada sunglasses were strategically placed to hide his eyes.

He had wrapped himself in obscene wealth— the gait deliberate of a rich smug-ass brat who had more money than sense. There was that cavalier arrogance befitting a vain prince in the quirk of his lips and the attitude with which he had slammed the door of the car after skidding to the front porch at high speed and thrown the keys to the valet. 

A master performance. 

Like sheep skin stretched over his body— white, fluffy and completely vulnerable to the wolves inside.

‘Look a baby clown’, they would say, ‘look the stupid spoiled heir to the Gaur billions’, they would laugh in sadistic glee, ‘look at the puppet we have caught’, they would cheer. 

And he would play along, smile his lazy, self satisfied smiles and open up his wallet to the crooks. 

He had waited a decade for this. 

Ten long years. 

Four years to just get in contact with Rags and through his extensive list of contacts and indulging his gruesome gang of goons and the rest six to befriend the man enough so that he would lead him straight to his next step. 

Yes, Tony Braganza was a big fish.

For some, perhaps the don was the biggest fish in the sea, but not for him. 

Shauryaman wanted the fisherman. 

And the first step towards catching the fisherman was to find the biggest fucking fish in the sea. 

The receptionist ushered him inside the house and they walked out of the big French windows on the other side to the perfectly mowed lawn. There were shaded groves along the outer boundary and trimmed hedges with exotic flowers and was that a fucking peacock?

The entire property had been sealed with signal jammers. No weapons or electronic devices were allowed inside. 

“Hey! Shaurya— over here!”

Raghav ‘Rags’ Chotan hollered and Shauryaman turned to the right and almost dropped his facade being face to face with the notorious gangster of Mumbai.  

Tony Braganza looked exactly how he looked in the photos. Somehow managing to resemble both the celebrity coverage in Filmfare done a month prior and the mugshot photos taken more than two decades ago, when the former had still been an enforcer for Haji Mastan. 

Seated on a lounge chair, a Cuban cigar clenched in one hand, bedecked in his signature all-white look and gold rimmed glasses, Braganza was a behemoth of a man with a scar cutting diagonally through his stern face. 

The man was staring at Shauryaman like he could visually dissect him into seven layers and inspect his molecules. 

It was unnerving to be pinned like that. 

Shauryaman gave a lazy wave and sauntered towards them in a practiced unhurried gait. He was walking towards a mountain bear with the countenance of a man strolling inside his garden. 

“Mr. Braganza, delighted!”, he extended his hand for a shake. 

Tony did not even glance at his hand, not bothering to take it. Just gestured with his eyes to the seat in front. Shauryaman shrugged and sat down, stretching his legs in an angular fashion and waited, hands atop his belly. 

“Uhh boss.. This was the man I was talking about— Shauryaman Gaur he—”, Rags stuttered but a single hand from his employer had him shutting up. 

“I know who you are, kid. Many years ago, I had offered your father power beyond imagination but he had refused. Something about his company’s ideals and never associating with the likes of me. So imagine my surprise when his son started hanging around my boys.”

Those beady eyes were trained almost eerily on his face. 

Shauryaman gave the most disgustingly empty headed smile he could possibly conjure. 

“My father..lets just say he has the typical yesteryear ideas of doing business. The man has no concept of how to move with the times—”, he drawled. 

“And you do?”, the kingpin raised an eyebrow. 

“I know the importance of building the correct alliance.”

“Indeed. I heard you got married. So tell me, how is married life treating the infamous rake of Malabar Hills?”

It was with a Herculean effort that Shauryaman had to stop himself from stilling. There was a contemplative look on the other man’s face. He was testing him— he knew that. Yet the words had prodded at a door he had firmly slammed shut while coming here. He couldn’t let the mobster peek through that. 

Never. 

Not..her. 

Shauryaman grinned and hooked one of his legs over the other. 

“She is a sweet little thing. A bit dumb if you ask me. But I am quite certain that I own a percentage of Laconte now”, he finished. 

Tony stared at him for a good long minute before cracking a golden toothed smile. It looked remarkably ugly on his hairless face. 

The man could play a live action mountain troll. 

“Good for you”, the big man suddenly gestured for the attendant that the younger man hadn’t even noticed had come up to stand beside his chair.

The woman couldn’t have been older than twenty. 

She was beautiful. 

The kind of prettiness that was more girlish but somehow had been enhanced through makeup and accessories. 

She bent down beside him and poured the tea into the cup for him in all probability. In this way, the girl’s thighs were visible from the slit of her pencil skirt. Her hair was pinned in a professional bun and Shauryaman could see the pink cats she had drawn on her nails. 

He felt his stomach drop to his knees. 

Tony Braganza was leering at him. He could feel the gaze of the older man over his skin like pepper over a hot pan. He knew what was expected. His heart slid off his knees and dropped to his feet. 

Shauryaman braced himself internally and stared lecherously at the bare skin exposed on the girl’s legs and ran a hand over her clothed hip in a very provocative way. The worst part was instead of flinching back and snarling at him, the girl turned and gave him a sweet smile. 

As if it was expected. 

Normal. 

The gangster was appraising him still and Shauryaman swallowed the bile back inside his throat, apologized to the poor girl profusely in his mind and smacked the girl’s ass. She gasped and gave him another sickly saccharine smile but there was no light in her eyes. 

Tony Braganza laughed aloud and swatted the girl away like she was an insignificant fly hovering over his fruit basket and that flicker of suspicion in his dark eyes had finally extinguished. 

“You were right, he is a little perve, isn’t he?”, the older man told his right hand man who laughed at the joke in his typical raunchy fashion. 

“I prefer the word connoisseur, sir”, Shauryaman layered on the slick a little thicker. 

The gag reflex should have been non-existent at this point. 

“Okay, back to business, then. Chotan tells me that you can help with the building permit plans of the new string of clubs I want to open in Andheri?”

Finally—

Shauryaman tilted his head and gave him a nasty smile. 

“I might know a man who knows a man…”

Hook.

The old mobster leaned in front, blowing a ring of smoke right on his face. Shauryaman didn’t even bat the cloud of expensive tobacco away. 

“And what do you want in return, little prince?”, the older man asked, teeth bared more like a predator about to sink its fangs into a hapless prey than a businessman sealing a deal. 

Shauryaman smirked and seemingly observed the gold wedding band glinting in the sunshine on his finger before taking a sip of the tea offered to him. 

“I want a seat at the table. I want to meet the..benefactors”

Line. 

There was a chilling silence following his words and Shauryaman wondered whether he had accidentally shown his hand. The mafia leader was as unreadable as a sphinx. Rags was shifting on his seat, looking uncomfortable with the sudden seriousness that had descended in the atmosphere.

“You want to play in the big leagues..huh?”, Tony said finally. 

Shauryaman cocked his head to the other side and pouted slightly which he knew made him look childishly pretty sometimes and pretty idiotic, at other times. 

It may have worked because Braganza licked his lips slightly and then leaned back more comfortably. 

“Tell you what, Mr. Gaur. You get me those permit plans and I will personally accompany you to the big boys’ table.”

Shauryaman’s smirk stretched till it split his face in two, the naked delight on his handsome features were reminiscent of a child being promised his favourite toy. 

Tony Braganza watched him for some seconds and then mirrored his smile, if only, on the older man’s scarred face it looked somehow ghastly. 

Sinker. 

_______________________

Shauryaman had made a beeline for the bathroom as soon as he had reached the house, and hadn't even checked whether Meenakshi had returned from her office. 

After the deal, Raghav had taken him to some pub and he had watched the other man sell his weight in cocaine, molly and something that was being called angel dust on the streets. Notable amongst his customers had been people associated with two bollywood a-listers, a very prominent sportstar and the usual clientele of a drug lord. 

By the time he had entered the front porch of his house, the layers had started peeling alarmingly fast and he could feel the bile that he had suppressed since the beginning of the day, start to flood his mouth. 

He had barely managed to reach the sink in time. 

He didn’t know what had prompted the nausea to break open— the dream, the stupid blood alcohol level he was carrying at the moment, the way Tony Braganza had roved his beady little beetle eyes over him like he was a piece of meat waiting to be exploited, or the way he had unwillingly touched the server girl. 

Whether it was breathing in the stale smoke of hookah and cubans and the nascent toxicity of lines of coke in front or the overdressed hookers splaying their sharp nails all over his chest. 

After the porcelain god had had mercy on him, Shauryaman had ripped open his clothes, turned the shower to the hottest setting possible and jumped under the spray. The heat seared his skin and he started rubbing soap over it almost savagely. 

It was like the sheep skin had melded into his own skin and try as he might, he couldn’t separate the two. 

The taste of alcohol and lipstick and the metallic tang of blood was painfully sickening inside his mouth. The force with which he used the tongue scraper almost made him bleed. 

The entire washroom had fogged up because of the heat and anyone would have jumped out of the water by now but he couldn’t even move a single muscle. 

His mind had always been a torture trap of its own. 

Vitriolic. Unforgiving. Punishing. 

Was it worth it?

All this theatre—

This tiring dangerous game of smoke and mirrors?

Hadn’t his arrogance resulted in one catastrophe already, the biggest mistake of his life, that he was readily committing a thousand more? 

Will any of this even be fruitful?

He couldn’t get the powdery fragrance he had conjured up for his so-called daughter out of his mind. It blanketed everything else in a powerful wave. The haunting echo of his mother’s sitar only added to the building anxiety inside his chest. 

Suddenly there were hands over him. 

He could feel the echoes of the vicious blows that had cracked his bones, the blind desperation to survive, the taste of his own blood flowing inside his mouth, the boot stamped over his throat— someone had a fist full of his hair and was dragging his body against the road even as he struggled to escape. 

His breathing had exponentially shot up till he could practically hear himself trying to heave. 

Oh god, he can’t be having a stupid episode right now—

Not again. 

But the signs were clear. 

The breath falling short, his ribs tightening hard enough that it felt like his lungs would pop out, his entire torso was on fire. He saw dark spots dance in front of his eyes and scrabbled helplessly on the wet wall, trying to keep his wobbling legs in place. 

It wouldn’t do to crack his skull open on the bathroom tiles. 

“Shaurya!”

A sudden clear voice cut through the hammering of his heart inside his ears and his vision cleared slowly. 

Meenakshi. 

Her voice rang with that same mixture of irritation and annoyance that she always used while speaking to him. She was knocking impatiently on the door. 

“If your fourteen-step everything-shower is over, can you come out? I need to go to a client meeting around nine and I need the bathroom!”

Shauryaman cleared his throat once and then twice and when he was fairly confident his voice wouldn’t wobble too much, he shouted back. 

“There are thirty washrooms in this mansion!”

“All my products are inside this one! Come out fast, mister mermaid.”

An involuntary chuckle broke out of him at her exasperated tone and the ridiculous claim of him being a water nymph. He imagined her standing outside, stomping her foot, angry like a cute red button, those beautiful hazel irises burning fire. 

It was strange how his wife’s anger at having been kept waiting for the shower had seemingly broken through his anxiety. 

“Give me five”, he called back and quickly turned off the shower and patted himself dry. 

When he finally opened the door, Meenakshi had indeed been standing there, tapping her foot impatiently on the wooden paneling of the floor of their bedroom. She took one look at him and her anger vanished into bafflement.

“Wow..you look like a lobster having been left for too long inside a sauna—”

Shauryaman rolled his eyes and sidestepped her, clutching the knot of the towel he had hastily tied around his waist. 

“Who keeps client meetings at nine o’clock at night?”, he grumbled. 

“Businessmen and every consultancy firm ever—”, she had come to stand beside him near the wardrobe and he almost jumped at the sudden unprecedented proximity, “but…are you okay? You look…strangely jumpy”, she sounded concerned. 

Shauryaman suddenly missed the time when they had been avoiding each other because of ‘The Fight’.

No— he countered himself immediately the moment the thought had come. 

He didn’t miss that time. 

Never. 

He had been miserable. 

Well, more miserable than usual. 

Shauryaman could have never guessed that he would actually miss fighting with his wife. The silence of those days were only slightly less heavy than the guilt that had smothered him from the very second he had uttered those godforsaken words. 

Now, Shauryaman knew he was capable of a depraved level of cruelty when it suited him but the moment he had seen his wife’s angry face turn ashen, it had hit him like a freight train to the gut. 

He had said those terrible words to hurt her. 

Because she had hurt him. 

He had never been so affected by the words and doings of anyone before. 

Maybe Avantika could make him react just as badly, but Meenakshi seemed to have done a masters on the subject. She could raise an eyebrow and he would feel his temper flare, she would give him a condescending smirk and he would want to immediately snarl back, she would spit words coated in poison— words that many people have quoted to him in worse ways and yet it would twist inside his chest like acid coated arrows and draw blood. 

When she had brought Avantika in the argument, she had torn open an already tender wound. She had reached into his chest, snapped all his ribs in two and ripped his beating heart out of his body with bloodied nails and shredded it in front of him. 

It shouldn’t have hurt so much. 

Many people have said over the years that he was essentially incapable of love. 

Hell, Avantika herself had screamed it to his face the last time they had talked. 

And still, it had felt like this time it had hurt worse. 

Shauryaman was weak like that. He couldn’t swallow agony with grace. He had to turn around and spit it back. So he had lashed out the best way he could. Pulled out the only weakness he had found out in Meenakshi Bannerjee, sharpened that knife and plunged it inside her chest. 

The way he had found her later, statuesque and frozen under the icy spray of water— drenched and shivering, eyes blown wide and completely unresponsive, it had broken his heart. 

The way she had laid limp in his arms when he had carried her out. 

The guilt had hit so hard then that he could barely look at her trembling figure. He had barked some instructions at Vimmi tai and bolted from there. He had wished the earth would break open and swallow him whole. 

It was not like it had even been her fault. 

Anyone would have lost their temper at the way he had behaved. She didn’t know what that man was capable of. 

She didn’t know that Shauryaman felt like throwing up, curling into a ball and crying whenever he would catch the mere sight of Prakhar Sahani. 

She didn’t know the sheer magnitude of restraint he had to employ to stop from scratching that man’s eyes out, the way his supposedly soothing baritone felt like nails against a chalkboard to him. 

And he couldn’t even do her the courtesy of telling her the truth. 

The ugly bitter horrific truth of the man his wife had trusted like everyone else. 

The words would come at the base of his throat and coagulate like solid sludge. The terror would grip his lungs and squeeze demonically till he couldn’t breathe. The panic attack snapping its bloodied jaws at his heels the moment he would try to utter the words. 

‘She won’t believe you’, his demons sounded suspiciously like Prakhar. 

‘No one would believe you. Your own father didn’t care. Who would believe a womanizer sex addict like you—’, they would laugh. 

And he would swallow it all down. 

Even if he wanted to rip the fucker’s arm off anytime he would see him throw it on his father’s shoulders, as if in innocent camaraderie, or pat Meenakshi on the back, or graze close to them. 

Shauryaman was so weak he couldn’t even warn them, too repressed, too wrapped up in his own fear and the threat Prakhar had so benignly given him all those years ago. 

He couldn’t let Harshvardhan know the truth. 

Not that. 

It will break his father’s heart. 

It will kill him. 

So he stayed mum. 

Shame had always been a close friend and wrapped its terribly heavy arms around him like an obsessive lover, more often than not. 

But this kind of remorse had teeth. 

Claws that could rip through anything. 

Shauryaman remembered spending those two months of silence, sequestered inside his mother’s room, trying to pour every functioning brain cell into the board in front, steeped in his own agendas. But to no avail. 

Meenakshi had somehow carved a space inside him and now occupied it like a queen on her throne, unconquered and infallible. 

Then that fateful night, he had fallen asleep on the table like an idiot and his wife had almost found out everything. Thanks to that irritating demonic bug that had distracted everyone enough for him to remove the evidence. He shouldn’t have been studying in the open. 

But then, if he hadn’t— maybe he would have never reconciled with his wife— or whatever truce they had managed to come up with wouldn’t have occurred. 

Meenakshi was still staring at him, concern clear in her big eyes, now. 

Her hair had curled a little from the humidity outside from its natural beachy waves and he resisted the urge to run his fingers through the silken strands. It was a chore staying away from her most days— a task to walk around her, feel her warmth beside him on the bed, see her cut down men thrice her size in the boardroom with the easy demeanor of a warrior general and not being permitted to touch. 

Just to see if she was even real or a figment of his deluded mind. 

The first time Harshvardhan had proposed the alliance, Shauryaman had thrown a mother of all fits. Not only was he not interested in having any long standing relationship after Avantika, but also— he hadn’t wanted to bring another innocent person into the equation. 

But his father had been adamant and had taken out the last weapon in his arsenal. 

“Either you marry, Ms. Bannerjee, or you can get out of all my properties and I will freeze all your accounts—”

At literally any other time, he would have turned around and left but he had already been too deep in his plan. He had spent so many days and burned so many bridges and worked so fucking hard to reach where he is and he couldn’t throw it away.

So he had acquiesced and hoped the girl would turn out to be a dumb bimbo and would stay out of his way. She had obviously been far from it. 

Meenakshi Bannerjee had come like a storm in his life— uprooting every single thing he had thought about her, tearing through all his defences with the unbothered efficiency of a military general. 

She was a chaotic wildfire that followed no rules, was bound by no one and could care less for his idiosyncrasies.  

Shauryaman was terrified of his wife. 

And he was terrified for her. 

Meenakshi was like a lotus, blooming in the muck of his life and completely unaware about the snakes he had attracted intentionally, that swam underwater, orbiting their world in venomous subterfuge. 

He couldn’t suck her into the nightmare his life had become. So he had let her believe whatever the tabloids said, let her form her conclusions based on the flawed data he fed her religiously and let her detest him. 

But surprisingly enough, Meenakshi, unlike literally everyone else in his life, seemed determined to crack open all his shells and find out the truth. She wouldn’t be taken in by the falsities so easily and maybe he was tired of playacting all the time as well. 

Shauryaman didn’t remember the last time he had actually felt like himself. 

Then he saw her watching a baking show sitting on the couch, the silk of her blue nightsuit falling in effortlessly elegant lines over her amber cream body, the polished clean nails that she kept surprisingly short and efficient, the pleasantly relaxed posture that had seemingly poked and prodded at him. 

He had been so bone tired from all the partying and the sex and Raghav fucking Chotan dragging him all over town and pouring over every detail on a decade old case— he had just let go. 

He would never forget the look of pleased delight on her face when biting into the muffins the next morning. 

He had taken her out to lunch, shown her the place only he and his mother had ever visited. Let his wife of seven months inside one of the deepest, darkest cobwebbed corners of his heart that he hadn’t even been able to open for Avantika. 

The woman he had supposedly loved. 

The kiss was another thing he resolutely refused to even think about. 

The way she had moaned into his mouth, dragging him in like she wanted to devour him, the fragrance of her spicy, addictive perfume, the taste of her lipstick and the way her tongue had battled in drunken ecstasy alongside his own. 

Shauryaman deserved an award for the restraint he had shown that night. 

The way his wife’s smaller body had felt against his own, curled into him, rubbing languorously against his cock— suffice it to say he had had to take many cold showers in the days following. Desire had never felt so burning, so painful against his skin. 

Meenakshi Bannerjee Gaur was a beautiful woman, no doubt.

Objectively he might have seen more conventionally good looking women but her— mere words felt insufficient to describe her brand of striking attractiveness. 

There was something almost divine, wrathful and savage inside of her. She had kept it under control but it snarled at him from its enclosure often, baring its gleaming fangs having gotten the scent of another predator nearby. 

Shauryaman remembered watching her work the Laconte board once, when he had been called on time by his father in law for a majority shareholder’s meeting, almost two months prior. 

She was a master manipulator. 

A charm to see at work. 

Wrapped in a beige dress that accentuated her waist and the curve of her hips just the right amount and yet maintained that border of powerful professionalism, she had gone for a very light makeup, no bold colors, no visible lines. As if she was showing transparency overtly, putting everyone at ease. 

But Shauryaman knew better. 

Having played the game of shadows and covers— deception and manipulation came as easy to him as breathing. 

When you want to hide something, do not keep it locked up, show it in plain sight but surround it with enough glitter and glamor that every eye will be baffled in disoriented unfocus. 

She had been a marvel. 

Wielding words like precision tools and smiles like forbidden fruits hanging low enough to grab but would feel like benediction once directed at you, at the same time. 

The board had voted in her favor alright. 

Shauryaman had given her a smirk when he had met her eyes finally and she had just cocked a sharp eyebrow at him, unresponsive to his blatant provocation and marched off, clearly not concerned about keeping up appearances. 

He hadn’t voted in favor of her suggestion if only to rile her up. He had already counted the votes on the faces of the other board members the moment she had finished. It had been hilariously unsubtle. 

He had known his stance wouldn’t matter. 

So it had been pure ragebaiting. 

And maybe a little bit of curiosity. 

His wife hadn’t risen to the bait, but. 

It thrilled him— the constant game of push and pull that they seem to be playing. It felt like something real, something only they owned in a life that was ruled distressingly by a severe lack of privacy. 

Something that called to his own wilderness like a siren song. 

And the more he refused to answer it, the more he felt like he was being sucked into her terrifying gravitational pull. 

It was petrifying— this much loss of control when he had bound himself to a staggering constraint for nearly a decade. 

“I am fine..just took a hot shower”, he muttered pulling on his sweats. 

“More like a scorching shower—”, his wife commented but didn’t pry anymore, moving away towards the bathroom. 

She knew he wouldn’t say anything. 

They talked a lot. 

But not about anything important. 

That was the unspoken rule, wasn’t it? 

Shauryaman remembered her shaking in his arms, face buried inside his chest, trying to seek his warmth, his protection while thunder had lashed against the windows, outside. He had felt an uncharacteristic near violent surge of protectiveness that night. 

He hadn’t even noticed how her body felt against his own. Only the feeling that he had to shield her had compelled him to almost bury her under his weight, physically putting his larger body as a barrier for anything to come. 

It had worked miraculously and she had fallen asleep. 

Waking up to the feeling of his wife curled into your chest had been a novel experience. He had stroked a fluttering hair off her sleeping face and had marvelled at the way his heart had almost shrunken in an effort to reach out to her. 

My wife.. 

He had thought for the first time. 

Someone who could belong to him. Someone he could belong to in return. No matter how strong one’s will was, at the end human beings had not been designed anthropologically to exist in isolation. 

My wife.

Yet instead of pride, only a damning heartbreak had remained. 

She would never know. 

She can never know. 

He would not do that to her. The safest option was to let her believe the worst of him. To let her distance herself and live in her own world, removed from his, safer than his, much brighter than his. 

Shauryaman had put her gently on his side of the bed, pulled the covers on her and kissed her temple so softly his lips had barely touched her. Then he had dragged his screaming, protesting body out of the bed like a coward and hidden under the guise of nonchalance yet again. 

Meenakshi had still squeezed his hand, still shown her unrequired gratitude, if only nonverbal but it had hit him like an arrow to the chest. 

She was a much braver person than he. 

As an answer to his question in the shower, the dream-woman’s body flashed in his mind. A graphically clear image. So real that he could still smell the rigor mortis again. 

Shauryaman closed his eyes and swallowed a painful lump. 

Yes it was worth it. 

All the pain and the heartbreak and the sheer mental torture was worth it if he could pull the damned monster from his throne, bring his empire down around his ears and crush everything he has ever loved to fucking dust. 

It was worth everything.

Even if he ended up losing everything.  

Including a life with an incredible woman that he had begun to dream about, a life that probably would have been kinder to him than anyone and anything ever has. 

But he didn’t have time for self pity. 

He needed the call records of the phone he had slipped from the club. And he needed to get those permit plans for the gangster king of Mumbai. 

He opened the door of his mother’s room with the spare key and slipped inside and then shut the padlocks. There was no other way of entering this room, except from the balcony but that was two stories up and oversaw the security cameras that he had installed inside. 

The board pinned up on the wall in front was already covered in pictures and newspaper cuttings and stacks of sticky notes, a convoluted spider web of red thread seemed to join the entire display like a crocheted mesh. 

Shauryaman replaced the sim inside his phone and dialed a number from the contact list. 

The other person picked up on the second ring. 

“Akshat, I need you to crack open a cell phone for me. I will get it to you tonight. Same place, same time. Order a bourbon."

“Just one?”, came from the other side, almost cheeky. 

Shauryaman rolled his eyes, even if he knew the other man couldn’t see him and cut the call. 

He leaned back on his chair and stared at the board. It had taken him nearly a decade to build all the connections, to find all the clues and gather the testimonies. And yet, it had fallen short. He had struck off the three thousand and forty seventh option a week back and no new solution was in sight. 

But he was so close to his target. 

He could finally see the end of the tunnel but the light glimmering from the other side could either be freedom or a nuclear explosion waiting to swallow him whole. 

He had to meet with Justice Chaudhary. 

There was a party being hosted in the CJI’s home next week and all the high court judges would be in attendance. Shauryaman had to secure an invitation somehow. It wasn’t a celebration where industrialists or their rotten heirs would be called to— especially not disbarred rotten heirs. 

The only way in, would be as a plus one. 

Richa Khosla was enamoured of him enough, all he had to do was rub in the slight he had thrown at her father a month ago, and she would be game. And if that wouldn’t suffice, he knew how to show a woman a good time— 

Richa wouldn’t even care that he was married now. She would only get a thrill out of it. 

Pulling men like bees hovering over nectar. 

Arrogance will be her downfall one of these days. 

Just like it had, for him. 

Just like it would be for the fisherman. 

Shauryaman took a dart and threw it with perfect aim to hit dead center on the face of the man whose photograph was pinned in the middle of the spider’s web. 

I will have you, you fucking bastard. 

“I will have you if it is the last fucking thing I ever do”, Shauryaman Gaur growled to the silence choking the otherwise empty room. 

The sitar had stopped playing, finally. 

__________________________

“Kia, you have to listen to the strings before tugging at them—”, Shauryaman instructed the twelve year old, who was listening to him with rapt attention, her small fingers pulling at the strings of the old sitar. 

“See, one, two, three…one, two, three….maintain the chord as well as the rhythm”, he continued gently and demonstrated it on his own instrument. 

Well, technically it was his mother’s instrument but she had left it to him. 

His tiny student followed through with military focus and the eager determination of a pupil wanting to impress their teacher somehow. It tugged at his rotten heart somewhere. The girl was so desperate for approval that it reminded him of another twelve year old boy. 

“Good”, he offered her awkwardly. 

Praise came stilted and unused to his lips. It was like pulling teeth. Not because he couldn’t feel it but because the expression took more emotional labour than he could extend on most days. 

It was tough to squeeze blood out of a heart having been beaten into stone years ago. 

But Kia smiled so brightly that her dark skin started glowing like gold, being hit from the humid sunshine filtering inside the room where the ceiling fans were working overtime to counter the oppressive heat. 

The cotton kurta he was wearing had stuck to his back with sweat quite uncomfortably. 

The place was so atypical of his usual setting that he stuck out like a sore thumb despite his effort to acclimatize to it. He had foregone his usual expensive western clothes with a simple modest kurta over washed up jeans and black rimmed spectacles. 

Not that anyone here would recognize the infamous playboy billionaire in this part of the town but he didn’t want to take any chances. He had read somewhere that wearing spectacles made it difficult for people to focus on identifiable features of a face without it. 

He was sitting on the floor of the living room of the one-bhk flat. The sounds of children playing gully cricket on the narrow strip of road outside came in periodically. Someone was watching a Marathi soap opera on their tv down the corridor. 

It was the usual atmosphere one would expect from a lower middle class housing complex in Parel. 

Kia had already gone to the next string of notes and Shauryaman could see that she had practiced. 

The girl had an uncanny ear for catching a tune. 

Just like her mother. 

“You know, you don’t have to do this, right? It's not like we are paying you to tutor her. We can barely afford three square meals most days—”

Shauryaman sighed and turned to the old woman who was leaning against the doorway, wiping her sweat streaked face on the pallu of her saree. 

“That is because you adamantly refuse to accept the money I keep sending—”, he countered exasperatedly. 

“Hey now..as far as I remember, you are the one paying for Kritika’s schooling and books and—”

“But it is not enough. I told you to get an AC and I sent the electrician that you sent away—”

“Beta, what do you think I should tell the landlord and the neighbours, how did I suddenly get money to buy an AC? They are getting suspicious anyway and you know we can’t—”

She stopped suddenly and wiped the corners of her eyes. He looked down and plucked at the string of his sitar, giving her time to compose herself. 

“Your pride will be the end of you, aaji”, he muttered quietly. 

“Pride is all I have left, beta. And Kritika. I can’t lose her too”, the old woman’s voice broke. 

“You will not lose her”, Shauryaman snapped and then regretted his tone immediately.

“Kia, keep practising”, he instructed the twelve year old who nodded vigorously and 

He got up fluidly, eager to move the ensuing conversation away from his young student’s ears. The sitar was a chore to pack and carry with him but he powered through, zipping it up and lifting it like a sling bag on one shoulder. 

Then he stepped out of the room with the old lady. 

 “I have almost reached my goal”, he told her. 

“What—”

“It is just a matter of months and I shall have him. I will have that brute grinding his nose on the fu— uhh ground.”

Akshat had come through with the call records. 

“I hope you know what you are doing, Shaurya. This man will not be easy to catch. Not even for you”, his friend had said in between the sips of his bourbon. 

“I don’t want to just catch him. If that were the case, I’de have done it years ago. No— I want to destroy him”, he had replied, sliding the digital copy of the call records that the former copied into a pendrive for him, inside his pocket. 

Now he had a direct link connecting Tony Braganza and his target. He had given the permit plans to the old mobster turned businessman for building his clubs, just a week ago. 

Now he was waiting on the summons. 

“Boy, you stay away from that monster”, Kritika’s great grandmother said, clutching his arm desperately. There was fear naked in her cataract laden gaze. 

The kind of animal fear that only the hunted had. 

It felt like the hands that had had Shauryaman in a chokehold for years. 

He removed her grasp gently and patted her shoulder awkwardly— still unused to the concern extended so undeservedly on him. 

“Don’t worry for me. I have made enough noise all these years that try as he might, he couldn’t make me disappear. I have a shield that you all never did— I have money”, he tried consoling her. 

“That will only go so far..he offered us the money but—”

A sudden sheepish voice from the corridor outside stopped both of them mid conversation. 

“Arre, Bhosle aaji, I saw your young man from outside. If he is done teaching Kia, can he come and look at these papers for me, for a bit?”

“Arre Rajesh, how many times do I have to tell you that he is not your free legal counsel. And how many land disputes are you even embroiled in? What is that good for nothing lawyer of yours doing?”

Mrs. Bhosle snapped, irritated, making the middle aged man quiver in fear. 

Bhosle aaji was the undisputed ruler of the community and even at the ripe age of seventy six, feared by everyone. 

Shauryaman stifled his smile and slinked out, using the opportunity to escape the older woman’s well meaning, if only, unnecessary concern. 

“Rajesh dada, come with me. I might not be able to fight your case but I think I can give your useless lawyer some wisdom. Come, come—”, he ushered the grateful man outside, clutching his papers.

After he had educated the idiot of an advocate fighting the neighbour’s case and refused the man’s repeated entreaties to pay him in lunch, Shauryaman found himself walking a good two miles on foot till he had left the locality behind and hailed an auto. 

He had to reach the flat that he had bought here a few years ago, change into better clothes and take his car back to his house. 

The Sunday heat was killing him. 

Then his phone rang. 

Richa. 

He picked it up on the seventh ring. Not too fast and not too late. Just at the edge of lazy disregard and suppressed enthusiasm. 

“Hey.. I was just thinking about you—”, he drawled seductively. 

“Liar”, she giggled and then, “what is that godawful noise? Are you inside a generator?”

Shauryaman resisted the urge to pinch his nose. 

“Im on a yacht, baby. You tell me, to what do I owe the pleasure”, he made sure to emphasize on the last word. It incited the correct reaction and the woman giggled sensually, clearly remembering the night they had spent a few days ago. 

He still hadn’t managed to get her floral perfume off his skin, despite rubbing himself with the strongest smelling soap he had, for hours, till he had pruned and turned raw and red. 

“I have the invitation for you…papa is friends with a defense attorney so— wanna come along?”, she asked.

Gotcha. 

“Why not? I’ll pick you up at eight. Wear that red dress”, he added lecherously and cut the call before she could reply. 

And if later in the evening, when he had entered the gates of the CJI’s house, had immediately ditched his date to go get himself acquainted with the high court judge, Justice PV Chaudhary’s decade younger wife, no one had thought much of it. 

Typical of the Gaur heir to whore himself out. 

His poor wife. 

No one had even spared a second glance when Justice Chaudhary and Shauryaman Gaur had stood at the corner of the lawn, heads almost bowing together in deep conversation for the rest of the party. 

_____________________________

It had been a few days after the party at the CJI’s house when Shauryaman found himself returning home at a more respectable time. 

He had just entered the hall when Vimmi tai came scurrying towards him, hands twisting inside the pallu of the saree she wore as a uniform. 

“Sir, I uhh— madam..”

“What happened?”, he asked, observing that she had been speaking at a tone much lower than normal, looking here and there as if an invisible tiger was waiting to jump on her at a moment’s notice. 

“Madam has been in the gym since the afternoon. Rajan said he heard something breaking inside but we have been too afraid to enter and—”

Shauryaman dismissed her and started towards their built in gym. 

Whatever he thought was happening, it surely hadn’t been this— the sight that he happened upon could belong in any biopic movie of an underdog kickboxer. 

Meenakshi was slamming into a punching bag continuously, her form perfect and the force with which every individual hit rocked the hapless sand filled leather, the invisible shockwaves created in the air around could practically be seen. 

She was wearing a bright orange sports bra and gym shorts that would have looked ridiculous on anyone but somehow managed to give the appearance of a model on a runway sticking to her ludicrously built body. 

She was sweating and had he not seen the aftermath of a punching bag lying, sadly torn at the seams, at the other end of the gym, he wouldn’t have known where the noise Rajan had heard had come from. 

Meenakshi was so engrossed in her boxing or rather destroying the punching bag that she hadn’t even noticed Shauryaman who had opened his shoes and left his jacket at the door and worn the extra pair of gloves himself. 

Her hair was braided so tight it must have hurt, slapping continuously against her back and the air like a cobra with every violent movement. 

It was like watching a warrior prepping for some end of the world battle. 

“Want to hit a real person instead of that poor abused leather?”

His words almost made the latter swing around and she would have knocked the living daylights out of him, had he not managed to block the punch on time. 

“Shaurya! Not now, please”, she snarled, gasping for breath and moving away. 

He just quirked an eyebrow and gestured with his gloved hands. 

“You afraid of fighting someone who can fight back?”, he challenged and felt his wife’s simmering temper boil over immediately. 

He knew how to spot danger and right now, pissed as she was for some reason, Meenakshi Gaur could happily trample over a herd of elephants, let alone just one man. But he was also a reckless idiot with suicidal tendencies so he swung at her lightly. 

‘Baiting an enraged tigress— good move, Shaurya!’, the last remaining cell of self preservation howled at him furiously. 

“You wanted it—”, was all she hissed before swinging at him. 

Shauryaman gasped and blocked the hit but could barely make his own as she just kept on coming at him relentlessly. They were dancing around in the entire gym now, him trying to not get his skull caved inside and her doing the best impression of Muhammad Ali on steroids. 

At one time, she had hit one of his blocks with her leg so powerfully, he had stumbled back, getting the breath knocked out of his stomach and barely managed to not fall on his ass. 

Meenakshi’s eyes were blazing, the sweat pooling around her glowing face, made the small flyaways and baby hair stick to her defined cheeks. 

Shauryaman would never know how fury could look so besotting on anyone. 

Anger had always looked ugly to him. 

His father’s shouts, the screaming in the pubs and nightclubs, the vicious kicking and punching endured at the expense of information and appearances— but her. She was like a warrior goddess. 

After all, what could one expect from the daughter of the Bengal Tiger himself. 

The Major had taught his daughter well. 

“Fuck!”, he cursed almost taking a knuckle sandwich to his cheek and blocked her next hit and completely missed her knee coming up in a graceful arc and slamming headfirst into his unprotected stomach. 

Shauryaman dropped like a sack of potatoes and tried to breathe through the fire coursing through his lungs, flat on his back. 

“Shit!”

Meenakshi kneeled beside him immediately and started prodding on his stomach as if checking for internal injuries.

“I told you! Why can’t you tone the godforsaken baiting down for one fucking second—”, she spat but panic had bled into her tone. She was trying to tug his top over the impacted area to inspect more, hands shaking slightly at the sheer adrenaline drop, he figured. 

“Hey now— at least buy me dinner first”, he joked in between hissed breaths as her fingers poked the tight hot skin. 

“Shut up!”

Meenakshi ordered him to breathe deeply and then did some odd sort of stretch and pull with his legs and upper torso and then wrapped an arm around his waist and pulled him up with alarming ease. 

“That would bruise brilliantly”, Shaurya said, looking over the impressive red and blue clotting over his skin, on the floor to ceiling length mirrors. 

“How would I know you couldn’t take a tap”, his wife grumbled from underneath his shoulder, but that fury had tempered down. 

“That was not a tap. That was a death blow—”

“Stop whining—”

“I am not whining. You should join MMA as a side hustle. Does this come under domestic violence? I should make a case if only for later when your lawyers cry alimony—”

“First of all, you are a pea-princess who bruises like a peach and you baited me so now don’t cry about it. Secondly, I will never want alimony, I’m richer than you—”

Shauryaman guffawed and looked down at her. 

“You are not richer than me. I am twice your net worth—”, she poked him at his bruise like a she-demon and he gasped and tried moving away as they climbed the staircase to their bedroom. 

“Your company is twice my net worth. The company you are leaching off like there is no tomorrow. You will be on the streets, by the time you gain control. That is if the board ever lets you—”, she said and dropped his weight on the bed. 

He leaned back on the pillows and pouted at her in an incorrigibly immature way.

“You didn’t deny the domestic abuse allegations”, he sing-songed. 

“You didn’t deny the pea-princess allegations”, she smirked at his rolling eyes and brought out the first-aid box. 

He hissed slightly when she applied a very cold cream over the bruise but it mercifully numbed the area almost instantly. She said he was being a big baby and sank into the chair beside, unbothered about the sweat now sticking to its expensive upholstery. 

“Why were you taking your anger out on the poor punching bags, anyway?”, he asked almost hesitantly. 

She sighed and looked up at the ceiling. There was a strange emptiness in her eyes that felt painfully familiar. 

“Have you ever loved someone and hated them at the same time with such a fervour that it makes you sick?”, she whispered. 

Shauryaman raised an eyebrow but somehow immediately knew who she was talking about. He didn’t speak. He thought it was obvious. Meenakshi didn’t ask again because he knew she knew as well. She had bent down, hands over her knees, trying and failing to look unbothered. 

“Mama…she has done everything for me, she built me into this person I am today. She is the strongest woman I know but..somehow while trying to make me strong, she had turned me to stone as well— just like her. I hate it.”

The tears springing to her eyes were unexpected and so sudden, it took him aback. 

He looked away, suddenly awkward. But kept his fingers towards her hand that was clenching the bedspread, if only to gesture any sort of comfort. 

It took her a long minute to compose herself. 

He had taken that time to settle the words inside his mind. These were such important things, they couldn't be spat without thinking like he usually did with most of his thoughts. 

“You are not stone, Meenakshi. You cannot be. This rage you feel, it is just the emotions you cannot express. As for your mother, I don’t know her well enough to form an opinion, but I know you— and a woman who can shape you, cannot be stone either. Maybe she has been left out in the cold for too long.”

Meenakshi was quiet for so long after he had spoken that he was afraid she had taken offence. Just as he was about to say something stupid if only to distract her, she spoke again.

“That was surprisingly wise. You sure, I didn’t hit you too hard, triggered a cognitive recalibration?”, her words were humorous but her cadence was warm. 

Shauryaman grinned at her. 

“Please, you need to hit my head for that and both of us know, I am much too stubborn to get redeemed like that. It would ruin my aesthetic."

She laughed and the clouds brewing on her face had finally misted off. 

He didn’t know what came over him, but he cupped the side of her face. She stilled, topaz eyes going a little wide but she didn’t stiffen or move away immediately and he took it as permission enough. He rubbed his thumb gently over the miniscule scar practically invisible on the apple of her cheek. 

She was staring at him, slightly behooved. 

“Look at us…just a regular couple having daddy issues and mommy issues—”

Meenakshi smirked but still didn’t move away. 

“And anger issues and alcohol issues—”, she added mischievously and he sniggered, finally dropping his hand and immediately missing the softness of her skin pressing into his own calloused one.  

Yes, a right, regular couple they were, who solved their problems by punching each other. 

Later that night, when both of them were trying to sleep, Shauryaman had squirmed on the bed a little, the pain from the bruise would flare up if he moved his abdominal muscles even a little bit and he just couldn’t find the correct position to sleep. 

Meenakshi had suddenly rolled over and wrapped a leg over one of his and tucked her head under his chin, trapping him with her weight without touching the inflamed wound at all. 

Her fingers had caressed the bruise from over his t-shirt lightly. 

“I am sorry… I know you were just trying to distract me. I just—”, she whispered quietly in the dark and the sudden apology was more startling than the way she had moulded herself over him. 

“It's okay, angrybird. I’ll consider it payback for all the times I’ve been an ass to you”, he whispered back, stealthily trying to run his fingers through her hair. If she had felt it, she hadn’t stopped him. 

“If it was payback, I should have hit you harder”

“Hey!”

She giggled against his throat and he felt like his heart doing something incredibly goofy like a cartwheel inside his chest. 

They had fallen asleep like that and the next morning, he had stayed in bed till his wife had woken up and deigned to lift herself from over him, grumbling about coffee, some client meeting, her entire body aching and it somehow being his fault and he had just smiled up at the ceiling like an idiot. 

_____________________

One month. 

It took one month of working with Tony Braganza before the summons came. 

Shauryaman had been in some high end gentlemen’s club, watching the newly arrived Prince of Jaipur play polo with Ambani’s son in law. He was bored out of his mind and the only reason he was here was because someone had invited Harshvardhan and the latter had decided to drop it on him. 

“Try not to embarrass me any further”, his father had said and sent him on his merry way like he was still a toddler. 

“Mr. Gaur Jr. I believe”, the man had sidled up to him from somewhere and he pretended to startle. 

“Mr.... should I know your name?”, he smirked at the reedy looking man who smiled at him like he was a retard, from behind his owl rimmed glasses. 

Shauryaman knew him perfectly well. 

The PA of the man he had been trying to meet for the past decade. He was so close now that he could practically taste it. 

The sweet cold flavour of revenge. 

“I am no one of import but my boss definitely is. And he wants to meet you. Heard you helped solve a problem for us in the Andheri project?”

Shauryaman drank the rest of his cognac and grinned. 

“I may have pulled some strings.”

“He is very pleased. How does eight o’clock at the Taj sound?” , the nasally voice had started grating on his ears and he nodded vaguely. 

“I do love their toasties”, he answered, pretending to be busy in the game in front.

“Very good sir. We shall be seeing you”, the man left just as inconspicuously as he had entered.

Talk about feeling like the protagonist of a Bond film. 

‘Oh your employer shall be seeing me much more than he would have ever expected’

___________________

The meeting had gone on for three hours. 

Shauryaman had given the best performance of his life, if he so believed. 

The fisherman had looked convinced enough. 

Tony Braganza had been his usual brand of scarily contemplative and had only added to the conversation whenever absolutely necessary. 

He had recognized at least one supreme court judge, a very famous cardiac surgeon, three industrialists and two IAS officers in the round table. But his attention, like the rest, had solely been on the head of the table. 

He had pretended to be pleasantly tipsy by the end, joking with his neighbours and letting them have their fun at his expense. 

Later, back in his office, he called Akshat again. 

“Oh for god’s sake, now what?”, his friend sounded half dead, no wonder— it had been one in the night but he was topped with enough adrenaline and scotch to rouse the dead. 

“We have hit the jackpot, Chillar. Just came back from a meeting with our target”

“What!”, well now he sounded awake. 

“Yup. Finally. He looks remarkably unremarkable in person, honestly.”

“The most venomous spiders look the least harmful—”

“Don’t I know it…”, he said, almost humorous. 

“What are you planning to do now?”, Akshat Chillar asked, a little warily. 

Shauryaman picked up the second dart and hit it dead center on the photograph in the middle. He had lost count how many times he had perforated that face plastered on the glossy surface of the photo. 

“Now, we wait and I find a way to somehow get my ex’s deity-like husband to commit perjury in court without his knowledge.”

The sigh that came from the other side rang like the last breath of Promestheus after being sentenced to eternal agony by the Olympians. 

“Sometimes I wonder about your sanity, my friend—”

Shauryaman couldn’t stop the giggle from escaping him. Maybe he was really tipsy.

“Isn’t that the million dollar question—” 

___________________

The anniversary party was when it all came to head. 

At least some of it. 

Shauryaman, for the first time in his life, had actually wanted to attend the party. For some reason, people commenting on how handsome they looked together, how pretty his wife was, how lucky he was, was actually making him preen a little inside. 

‘Like, yes, look at her. Can you believe it?’

‘She is gorgeous. She is my wife.’ 

It had been absolutely ridiculous considering there was nothing remotely husband-wife like about their relationship. He had to continuously remind himself that it was a contract at the end and that he was essentially deceiving Meenakshi in a way. 

Even if he wanted to be with her, the foundation of their marriage couldn’t be based on a signed deal and a lie. 

But overtly, at least he could enjoy the charade. 

Meenakshi was looking mesmerizing in that forest green saree and for a second, Shauryaman had almost blurted out the truth. He had wanted to say, ‘you look beautiful’ but that would have been too intimate, too close to the truth, too near to his rotten heart— so he had turned it around slightly and said, ‘good. You look good.’

His wife had returned the compliment, in decent courtesy be it but it had still made his cheeks heat a little. 

And then she had worn the earrings he had given her. She didn’t need to but she did. And it had made something long dead flutter inside his stomach. 

Something he had ruthlessly crushed after Avantika had left his heart mangled and bleeding and splayed all over the floor for everyone to see. 

“Looking gorgeous madam”, he had told her mother instead and Lata Bannerjee had smirked at him reminiscent of her daughter and swatted him away. He had shaken hands with the major, barely managing to stifle his wince at the sheer strength of the man’s hold. 

No father would be too pleased with him anyway and he had slunk away to the bar, letting his wife handle the rest of the guests. 

He had barely taken a sip of the whiskey when his father had come up beside him. 

Harshvardhan Gaur had always had such an intimidating aura surrounding him, it was impossible to feel anything other than small in his presence. Or that could just be the twelve year old inside Shauryaman still waiting outside his father’s study door, hands trembling against the wood. 

They had not conversed much in a way after the Surat plant deal had been lost. 

“It is her night too”, his father said quietly from beside him, not looking at him but rather towards the guests chattering and drinking in front, “try not to ruin it.”

He smiled into the rim of the glass and swallowed the distraught ‘And me? What about me? Do you care about what it means to me?’ with the whiskey. 

“Heard you were seen with Khosla’s daughter in the CJI’s housewarming party. Do you have any shame at all?”, Harshvardhan hissed in between his own sips. 

“Would it matter to you if I answer that question or was it rhetorical?”, he said languidly. The single malt burned his throat. 

“Sometimes I think it was good that your mother died young. She would have been appalled at how you have turned out—”

‘Wow. Low blow, daddy’

Two could play this game. 

“Well the thing is, Mr. Harshvardhan Gaur, if you had prioritized my mother over your precious company for once in your goddamned life, maybe she would have been here to be appalled at my behavior.”

His father’s face twisted in clear hurt but Shauryaman was tired. He kept the glass down and walked towards the kitchen, eager to get out of the sights of their guests and more importantly, of Harshvardhan, before he said something he couldn’t take back again. 

He had not seen the man following him or he would not have chosen to sequester himself away from anyone’s sights. 

The kitchen was mercifully empty— the staff busy catering to their guests' needs. 

Shauryaman braced his hands on the counter table and took deep breaths, trying to control his fury somewhat. The thought of his mother always hurt fiercely. He poured a glass of water and had just brought it to his lips when he felt the presence just behind him.

Years of paranoia and milling about in the seediest parts of town with a dangerous band of rogues would have alerted him of another presence immediately had the ever familiar cologne that always made him gag, hadn’t already.  

He turned around fast enough to give himself whiplash and staggered back till the counter was poking uncomfortably in his lower back. 

Prakhar Sahani was staring at him. 

Gone was the mild mannered pleasant look always plastered on his face and the jocular demeanor that made people want to get close to him. 

He had a macabre look of anger which somehow had turned his usually handsome features into a sore ugliness. 

“You—”, Shauryaman gasped and tried looking over his shoulders for any escape but there was no one. 

“You are testing my patience, kiddo. It is one thing not answering to me and ignoring me in the office, quite another to ignore my phone calls and insult me in front of both of our wives”, he snarled. 

“You stay away from my wife!”, the younger man spat, trying to suppress the hysteria rising inside through brutal force. 

“Hah, she is a pretty little thing but you know I am not interested in her—”, the man had his fingers trailing down Shauryaman’s face and the latter recoiled from the touch like being burned. 

His heart was inside his throat. 

Not here. 

Not inside his home. 

Meenakshi was here. 

Oh god, Meenakshi was just outside—

“I will kill you—”, Shauryaman whispered and scrabbled behind him for something, anything that would protect him from the monster in front and found a handle. 

“You..”, Prakhar laughed and grabbed his waist with a hand, tight enough to make the pain travel like pinpoints through his jacket and shirt, “you are just a silly boy who is still searching for daddy’s approval”

Shauryaman gripped the handle tightly, wincing at the pressure on his waist, stomach roiling in sheer unadulterated fear. 

“You cannot keep doing this for long. One day, I will expose you and that wouldn’t be pretty..”, he tried pushing at him but for all his workouts and training, his strength fell useless in front of trauma. 

He was twelve again. 

And he couldn’t escape the monster in his bed. 

Prakhar Sahani laughed slowly, almost pleased at his sniping. 

“Oh you have grown a few little teeth have you? Don’t worry, I will break them off. Did you forget what I can do to you and your poor dear father? Do you really want that to happen, baby boy?”

Ice smothered his nerves and it was pure desperation that had him slashing the swiss knife he had managed to clutch in the air. Prakhar sprang back with a yelp and a dinner plate that had been balanced precariously on the edge of the sink smashed into pieces on the floor. 

“You come near my family again and I will destroy you!”

Terror and terrible anger had mashed together in a ferocious magma-esque feeling burning him from inside out. He could barely breathe from it, the weapon gripped so hard in his hand he could feel the blade slice into his palm. 

What if he just killed the man, right now. It would be so easy, slash his throat out and watch him gurgle and choke on his own blood on the floor. Watch the light leave his eyes. 

There was a sick fascination in watching something die, wasn’t there?

“Shaurya!”

Meenakshi’s petrified voice was what brought him back to earth. 

Prakhar’s expression changed almost dramatically from that sinister darkness to helpless fear. Shauryaman could not see through the anxiety gripping his chest, his hands were shaking and she was saying something. 

She was right in front of him. 

“---op the knife, please..”

The knife?

Oh, he dropped the knife almost immediately and couldn’t even register the sting of it and the blood that was falling into little droplets on the floor. 

His wife had her back turned to him, talking to Prakhar and—

Oh god, she had seen him. 

She had seen them. 

In that position inside the kitchen, he was two seconds away from actually bringing the knife down on the monster’s face. He didn’t even know when his feet had started moving but before he knew it, he was gone from the kitchen and racing up the staircase. 

Oh god—

__________________________

Meenakshi entered the bedroom, trepidation building inside her chest with every step. 

She had never seen Shauryaman quite that unhinged before. And despite her assurances to Prakhar downstairs, she was wary about the state she would find the other man in.

But whatever she might have envisioned flew swiftly outside the window the moment she spotted him. 

There was a narrow space between the heavy teakwood dresser and the king sized bed inside their bedroom and her husband was tucked right there, on the floor, leaning against the wall, knees drawn close to his own chest. His obsidian eyes were frozen wide on a completely colorless face. 

It was like someone had ripped off an entire layer off him.

He looked painfully defenseless. 

It jolted Meenakshi of her own confusion almost violently. 

“Shaurya!”

He didn’t even react  and she hurried towards him and kneeled in front. He looked like was intentionally trying to make himself appear smaller. Curled into his own body, reducing the surface area for impact. The effect was sickening to look at. 

“Shaurya what..what happened? Are you okay?”, she whispered, her voice automatically lowering like she was trying to soothe a skittish horse. 

Where was the enraged man from the kitchen?

That homicidal rage on his face that transformed into a piercing naked look of absolute blankeness. It was a terrifying to look on someone who had only ever appeared to swing between utter nonchalance and an annoying amount of vanity. 

“Hey..hey..”, she was afraid to touch him so her hands hovered, a hair’s breadth away from his rigid body. 

Shaurya’s eyes seem to focus on her, the pupils still wide like he was high on mushrooms or something. He seemed to drop another six shades if that was even possible and appear starchy, similar to the hospital sheets they put over corpses. 

Meenakshi’s heart was hammering hard enough to probably be audible to all the guests downstairs. 

He opened his mouth, tried speaking but only a helpless sort of gurgling noise seemed to come out before she could see the sweat gathering at the corner of his temples. He was trying to speak but it felt like some invisible ancient force had its paw wrapped around his throat. 

“Shaurya..Shaurya..breathe, it's okay..can I please have your hand? You were bleeding—”, she hadn’t forgotten the unintentional wound he had given himself but his hands were clenched so tight over his own knees, it seemed like she would need a crowbar to pry his fingers off the material of his suit pants. 

She could see the blood seeping in the black fabric making it glisten in the amber lighting of the room. 

“I can’t…”, he managed to whisper, a dry rasp, unbecoming of the arrogant cadence that Shauryaman Gaur was infamously known to possess. 

“Can’t what?”, she asked softly, keeping her hand on his white knuckles grip softly so as to not spook him more. 

“Breathe..”, he wheezed suddenly and she could finally spot the bluish tinge to his veins, popping out in the back, “can’t breathe—”

Then she finally noticed that he was trembling. His entire body had locked up but he was vibrating like a tuning fork. And suddenly it was so very clear what was happening to him that Meenakshi wanted to hit herself for not realising it immediately. 

“You are having a panic attack, sweetheart”, she whispered and held his quaking fingers, trying to pry them off his knee. He was chattering now, nearly on the verge of hyperventilation and he would asphyxiate if he didn’t slow down right now. 

Frantic worry flew through her own veins but she couldn’t let it out. She had to calm him down somehow. 

“Hey..Shaurya, look at me, look at me please… see breathe with me, can you feel my heart?”, she had finally managed to unclasp his own hand and brought it to her chest. He had gripped the silk of her saree on her chest, but it didn’t matter to her, at the moment. 

As long as he could feel her heart beating rhythmically. 

“Try to follow it..mimic it.. there thats good..thats very good, honey..”, the sudden endearments she had never spoken felt as easy as air on her tongue and she patted his shaking hand and scuttled closer to him. 

His breaths were falling shorter but steadier with every second. 

The blood seemed to return to his ashen cheekbones a little. 

He was still too pale for her liking but it was progress. 

She had no idea how long they sat like that, breathing together but finally Shauryaman’s muscles uncoiled and he let a deep audible breath out and seemingly collapsed against the wall, leaving her saree immediately. 

“Can I touch you?”, she asked gently and he looked at her wearily, still unable to speak but nodded imperceptible anyway. 

“Thank you. Your hand please—”, she took his wounded hand. The cut wasn’t too deep but she had to put antiseptic anyway, lest it catches infection. She was about to stand up and move away to get the first aid box when he suddenly grabbed her hand, eyes blowing wide in terror. 

She sank down again and rubbed his hand. 

“I will be right back, sweetie. You are bleeding. Let me get the first aid box, okay..I will be just here..alright? Please?”

He uncurled his fingers but looked miserable and she hated herself a little for prying the rest of his grip away but she had to get him some first aid. She almost slipped on her own saree in her haste to get to the box and bring it back as fast as possible. 

Shauryaman was staring at the ceiling when she had come back and let her do her ministrations without any sound at all. Meenakshi never thought she would miss the whining but at the moment she would take anything as long as he spoke. She put the antiseptic and bandaged his hand tightly. 

“Want to get off the floor?”, she asked but he scuttled back and seemed to lock into himself again. 

“Okay okay..we can sit here too..”, she sat down more comfortably, cross legged and adjusted her pallu. 

“You want to tell me what happened in the kitchen?”

Shauryaman stared through her. It was unnerving. It wasn’t like he couldn’t meet her eyes, more like he didn’t know that he wasn’t. He curved a little over his knees again, looked at the ground and shivered once. 

She could wait. These things took patience. 

He didn’t make her wait too long though. 

“I..just…wanted him to…go away.”

The words were spoken haltingly, like it took extra effort to form the syllables and Meenakshi was intimately aware of trauma. She knew the bone deep exhaustion of coming out from an episode of this severity. 

She had just not expected it out of her husband. 

The words themselves registered only a second later. 

She frowned and tried picturing the scene again in her mind. Shaurya with the knife, Prakhar backing away. It didn’t—

Then it was like a truck hitting her. 

Like lightening striking her. 

Her head spun. 

She could barely breathe through the sudden jolt of horror that filled inside her synapses like crystallised ice. All the disjointed scenes between the wizened CEO of Gaur Constructions and its heir, the moments where he deliberately ignored him, walked right in the opposite direction on seeing him approach, the way he had screamed bloody murder that evening when she had called them—

The moment in the kitchen, blade drawn again— it was not the anger of a predator wanting to cut down a rival in his territory. It was the desperate fury of a prey having been cornered with no escape. 

Her husband wasn't angry at seeing Sahani. He was terrified. 

And suddenly like a blazing light being thrown in the darkened corner of a room, everything became so crystal clear that it hurt her eyes. 

The scenes were all coloured wrong in her mind. 

The wine bottle slamming down on the table, followed the tremor of his hand that she had noticed but forgotten in her own rage, the uncontrollable shaking in the kitchen hadn’t been maniacal murderous wrath but absolute unadulterated terror. 

Meenakshi knew this kind of fear. 

She was a woman after all. 

And unfortunately every woman genetically is born knowing this kind of terror. 

The realisation came with a sudden surge of acute nausea and she had to clasp her hand on her mouth trying to force the bile back inside. 

The times she had laughed with Prakhar Sahani, eaten food with the man, let her hug him—

She clutched her head and crushed her eyes closed and counted till ten. 

When she opened her eyes, Shauryaman was looking at her, this time the fear on his face was different. This one was borne out of something else. The primal feeling of shame that afflicted the mind like a jailor keeping him captive in a quagmire of guilt. 

“Did he hurt you?”, she asked, voice nearly gone at the force of her own guilt. 

His face lost whatever color it had gained again. He was holding her hand suddenly, a violent desperation in the sudden strength of his grip. 

“Please.. You can’t tell anyone.. You can’t. He will destroy the company. He will.. You can’t—”, his breaths were falling faster again and she could practically taste the anxiety blowing up again. 

She removed his grip with deadly force and wrapped her arms around his shaking body. She had pulled him down to fit the crook of her neck, his hands were spasming on her back and she swallowed the lump stuck in her throat painfully. 

“Did. He. Hurt. You?”, she gripped him tighter, trying to physically force his body to calm down through her own. 

He whimpered against her neck. A sound she wouldn’t have known, he could make. 

And that was answer enough. 

The nausea had brought with it a blinding rage. She could practically feel it beating inside her throat. She wanted to smash something, destroy the entire room. Go back to the gym and tear the punching bags open. 

“Sweetheart..listen to me. He won’t hurt you again, okay. He will never hurt you again. I will kill him. I will drag him out by his fucking throat and rip his fucking dick off—”

‘Breathe, breathe, you can’t lose control, not now, not here, not yet—’

“No!”, he cried out suddenly and pulled himself away. 

His eyes were wild under his disheveled hair. He looked painfully young. 

“What—”, she began but he held her hands desperately. 

“Promise me. You won’t go after him!”

“But—”

“Meenakshi, I am begging you. No! No please. I can’t take it if he— you won’t go after him. Just promise me. Now. Do it”

“Okay..okay, calm down please”, she rubbed his nape and he dropped his head into the crook of her neck, tired, suddenly falling weightless in her hold. 

Evidently the last bout of excitement had been enough on his nerves. 

“Lets get you to the bed, okay?”, she distangled herself from him and pulled him up by his waist. He was like a ragged limp doll, letting her maneuver him in whichever way he desired. 

She was feeling sick. 

She set him on the bed and pulled his jacket and his shoes off and then drew the covers over him. She would have helped him undress, get him into something more comfortable but he deserved whatever dignity was left. 

Shauryaman tugged at her hand weakly, looking up at her through half lidded eyes. He was clearly drowsy. His mind shutting down in self defence, letting his body rest forcefully if anything. It was common after a panic attack of such proportions. 

Meenakshi sat down on the edge of the bed, beside him and saw her husband curl around her body like he was unconsciously trying to seek her warmth. She felt her eyes burn and hesitantly placed a hand over his forehead. 

When he didn’t recoil, she let her fingers rake through his hair in a long forgotten rhythm she remembered her mother used to do when she would fall sick as a little girl. 

He had closed his eyes but kept holding onto her hand. 

“Why didn’t you just tell me? That evening when I called him…”, she whispered thickly, unable to let the consequences of her ignorance leave her mind, try as she might. 

For a moment she thought he had fallen asleep.

But then he answered. His voice was so low she had to bend down to hear the sleep softened words. 

“I didn’t think you would believe me..papa didn’t. Who would believe me..”

And then he opened his eyes slightly again, a small frown of consternation darkening his face and he tried squeezing her fingers with whatever strength was left in his body. 

“I am sorry. I ruined your evening—”

Meenakshi wanted to laugh. But it came out like a sob. And before she knew what she was doing, she bent down and pressed her lips on his temple. He fluttered his eyes shut again and she kissed his forehead and then the corner of his eye, blotting the tear he probably didn’t realise had escaped. 

It was like she had forgotten everything. The hate she had felt for the man, at the early days of her marriage, now curled around her like a caterpillar. The absolutely disgusting notions she had about him and more importantly, the detached nonchalance at his existence. 

At this moment she felt like someone had torn her heart out of her chest and stamped on it for good measure. 

Her own tears slid down her face into his temple as she pressed her forehead against the skin there and struggled to breathe through the guilt and the anger and the regret and the absolute soul shattering horror that was bubbling in her blood. 

Twelve. 

He had been twelve. 

The way Prakhar Sahani had looked at Pauravi Gaur’s picture that day in the lobby and the way he seemed to defend Shauryaman to everyone— it was all so twisted she wanted to vomit. 

She had promised her husband that she won’t go after him and she will honor that despite her better judgement and an intense desire to shoot the bastard in the face but he will not step inside their home again. 

Not as long as she was in this house. 

Never again. 

_______________________

Meenakshi stormed out of the room, after making sure Shauryaman was fast asleep. 

She could see their guests chattering happily from the balustrade above. She could see Prakhar Sahani laughing aloud near the bar, encircled by a group of admirers as usual, Harshvardhan leaning aside on the bartop, chuckling with his friend. 

It sent a pure white heated rage through her entire body. 

How dare he!

How fucking dare he stand in her home after what he had done to her husband!

How fucking—

Even before she was aware of what she was doing, she had plucked off a champagne flute from the tray kept on the server’s desk and smashed it on the ground, shocking everyone into complete silence. 

There was a foggy haze of crimson that had curtained her eyes. 

She could barely breathe with all the rage ballooning inside herself. She had no idea when she had already reached the bartop. She hadn’t noticed the way her parents were trying to catch her eye, she hadn’t noticed her father in law calling out to her, confused at the sudden diametric transformation in her countenance.

She was locked onto her target like a missile in the air. 

Meenakshi felt the awareness come back to her a little when she felt the sting of her skin splitting and the ensuing tingle of the impact rattling her entire right arm after she had already bashed her knuckles inside that monster’s face. 

The alarmed gasps of the guests and the horrified shriek of Leena Sahani barely fazed her. 

“Get the fuck out of my house!”

She had snarled viciously. 

“What the hell! Have you gone mad?”, someone, maybe Harshvardhan or her own father or maybe another of the older men in the company cried out horrified. 

She didn’t care. 

She wanted them out. All of them. The entire party of glittering clowns hiding their teeth behind their plastic smiles and false wishes. 

“Get out!”

She screamed again, sounding a little unhinged herself. 

“All of you! Out of my house!”, she snapped. 

Harshvardhan was trying to lift his barely conscious friend from the ground with the help of the latter’s wife, throwing horrified and enraged glances at her. From a third person’s perspective, she had indeed done something completely crazy. 

But she cared not, for anything at the moment. 

“Meena, what have you done? Why did you hit Mr. Sahani?”, her mother’s sharp hiss of disbelief got Meenakshi to observe how everyone else was mumbling amongst themselves, throwing her wide eyed glances. 

Why were they all here again?

She plucked off the whiskey decanter from the bartop and threw it with all her might on the opposite wall, narrowly missing the head of a poor bartender making everyone jump and finally cry out in restrained fear. 

“Didn’t you hear me? The party's over! Get moving. Chop chop!”, she showed them the way quite disrespectfully and completely uncharacteristic of her usual poise. 

“She has gone mad..”

“Is she drunk?”

“I think her husband has started to rub off on her—”

“This is what happens when you have too much money…”

The guests had reluctantly started filing out of the hall, clutching their pearls and their spouses hands. The servants that had been startled into inaction, started helping them out as if catching onto her unspoken command. 

This would definitely make headlines tomorrow in some tabloid gossip columns. 

Meenakshi Gaur, loses her mind, knuckle punches the CEO of Gaur Constructions and threatens her guests on the day of her first wedding anniversary. 

Fantastic. 

The stock prices of Laconte might take a drop. 

But Meenakshi didn’t care. 

She didn’t care about her parents still trying to prod her for what had happened or Prakhar Sahani giving her a nasty yet chillingly calm look or Harshvardhan half furic and half befuddled, trying to help the former with a handkerchief which was now drenched in blood. 

“I am so sorry, Prakhar, I don’t know why she did this.. I..”, Harshvardhan sounded genuinely distraught as his friend shook him off, muttering, “its okay”s under his breath. 

Meenakshi wanted to drop kick him. 

“I was only trying to help you and your husband, Meenakshi. You should have realised that instead of acting so irrationally”, Prakhar said, through a blotted muffled nose, having been seated on the chair, his wife and friend had helped him into. 

Oh this right fucking manipulative bastard. 

Her hands were itching for another punch but she restrained herself. 

“You, so much as breathe the same air as Shaurya again and I will kill you myself!”, she growled like a hunting lioness. 

“Meenakshi!”, Harshvardhan snapped angrily, “be in your limits. Has that boy filled his nonsense in your head too? What the hell are you—”

“The only reason he is still breathing is because of something your son refuses to tell me, and you”, she whirled around, that still scorching rage directed at her father in law, “you should be fucking ashamed of yourself!”

“Meenu—”, she ignored her father’s warning.  

“He was a child! He was just a boy and you should have protected him! You are his father! You should have—”, she shut up remembering the horror struck expression on Shauryaman’s face and his desperate plea for her to not pursue this. 

She gritted her teeth and swallowed the rest of the words in. 

“Protected him from what? What are you even saying—”, Harshvardhan shouted incredulously. 

“Why don’t you ask your dear friend!”, she snapped, “now get out of my house, all of you!”

Riddhiman seemed to have broken out of his baffled stupor and tugged at his wife’s arm and turned to Harshvardhan and Prakhar, the latter was staring at Meenakshi almost daringly, half his face hidden behind the sodden hanky. 

“Mr. Gaur, I think it's best we leave right now. Mr. Sahani needs medical attention. I will talk to my daughter later—”

Meenakshi bristled at that. It was like her father was saying he will school his errant child after the adults are gone. 

But at least she got to kick that monster out of her home, this way. 

Riddhiman and Harshvardhan supported Prakhar on his way out. And only then did Meenakshi realise that Mrs. Sahani was staring at her but instead of the humiliated anger and horror she was expecting, there was almost a knowing melancholy on her lean face. 

‘Oh so you knew too, didn’t you? Why didn’t you say something, you cowardly woman!’, she wanted to scream at her. 

But alas, Meenakshi knew all too well to spot the signs of abuse in someone. 

Years of psychological trauma left marks on a person’s face. 

Shauryaman had hidden them behind a livid arrogance and devil may care persona and Leena Sahani had hidden behind servile submission and isolation. 

Meenakshi just shook her head in defiance and turned away, letting the poor woman follow the others out. 

“I hope he is worth the mess you have just made”, her mother’s parting words reverberated in the empty hall which now bore witness to the aftermath of a simple anniversary party that ended up in blood spilled. 

Meenakshi huffed, stared at the broken glass, spilled whiskey and the blood staining the marble and walked up the staircase at a more sedate pace. 

The rage had left a suffocating grief behind and she didn’t know how to grapple with it. 

_________________________

Shauryaman woke up with a start. 

It had been a dreamless sleep. 

The heavy kind of slumber that left you feeling discombobulated even hours after waking up. The room was still dark and somehow he knew that it was still night outside. There was only the sound of the air conditioning and the soft rhythmic breaths of another person audible. 

He turned slightly and was rewarded with the sight of his wife, deep in sleep, her hair splayed on the white pillow covers almost like a halo. She was turned towards him, chest rising and falling softly under her cotton nightshirt. 

He realised that she had her fingers entangled with his on the covers in between. 

It made something ache sweetly inside his chest. 

She had believed him. 

He hadn’t even had to say much or justify himself. She had believed him. She had not turned him away, or looked at him with disgust or worse— pity. 

She had been angry, instead. 

On his behalf. 

He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had been angry on his behalf. Or hold him like that. Like she wanted to be the physical barrier protecting him from all the evils in the world. A human armour. 

He remembered the fragrance of her perfume, the hint of vanilla and neroli oranges in her skin where he had dug his nose, the touch of her fingers through his hair. If he imagined hard enough he could sense the slight affection. 

There was an odd pressure, like a feather on certain places on his face. 

He didn’t know from what but it was pleasing. 

Very pleasing. 

He wanted to turn around and fall back asleep, maybe brave the distance a little and snuggle against her side. She looked so inviting, her posture so much more open than usual. 

She would indulge him tonight, wouldn’t she? Just for tonight? He could resume the act tomorrow, right?

But something was niggling at the back of his mind. 

He certainly wasn’t a clairvoyant but it wouldn’t do to ignore such strong intuition for so long. So he turned to the other side, gently disentangling his fingers and picked out his mobile from the side table. 

It was vibrating.

The caller id was unknown. 

Shauryaman wanted to put it back down but that feeling of wrongness wouldn’t let him. He picked up the call instead and the other line crackled with a very familiar if, somewhat afraid, voice. 

“Hello? Mr. Gaur? I..you said to call if—”

“Soma?”

He sat up straight, adrenaline building up immediately, all thoughts of sleep and softness having flown from his mind. 

“Sir, he contacted me again last night. He was furious, demanding to know who I was talking to. I think he might know it's me—”

Shauryaman repressed the urge to laugh like a lunatic with much difficulty. 

Ten fucking years. 

I have you now, bastard!

“The Swandive. Meet me there”, he whispered hastily on the phone and slid out of the covers, almost tripping over his own feet in hurry. 

“Now?”, came the incredulous voice from the other side. 

“Right the fuck now, Mittal. And please don’t get killed on the way. His men might be on watch”, he hissed and cut the call. 

Suddenly Meenakshi turned in her sleep, sighing and Shauryaman froze. She was on her back now, still dead to the world. He hoped her dreams were sweeter than her reality was going to be in a few hours. 

A sudden pang of vicious regret went through his heart. 

He wished—

He wished for so many things. 

Shauryaman bent down as noiselessly as he could and gingerly pressed his lips on her forehead. She didn’t stir and he mentally apologized to her. 

Amongst all the actors and pawns in this game, she had always been the uncounted variable. 

He hadn’t expected her. 

But the game was already set. 

And now it was time to burn the entire fucking board down and all Shauryaman could do was pray that she would be the only one escaping unscathed.