by MV Kasi
Her captor barely flinched, even though she was sure his wound must feel like it was on fire. He reached for something on the nightstand.
It was a whiskey bottle. Twisting the bottle cap using one hand, he picked it up and sipped straight from it. He took three or four sips before he placed it back on the nightstand.
Meantime, Nina was trying to put the thread into the needle. Her shaking hands made it even more difficult. Several tries later, she still was unable to put the thread across.
“Give that here,” he said. His tone held impatience.
With shaking hands, Nina handed it to him.
Her eyes fell on his hands as he held the needle and thread. His hands looked large against the tiny needle, and his fingers were much longer and thicker than hers to be able to handle the fine thread. But at the first try, he pulled the thread across the needle in a smooth move and handed it back to her.
She was surprised and wondered where he acquired the skill.
“Get going, Mrs. Bhupati. I don’t want to bleed all over my bed.”
His voice snapped her out of her thoughts. She took a step closer to him and bent towards his arm. Her hands shook as she slowly poked the needle into the red, swollen flesh. Her stomach threatened to empty its contents.
“Here,” his deep voice rumbled.
As soon as she heard his voice, she gratefully tore her eyes away from her task. He was handing her the whiskey bottle.
“Drink. It’ll calm your nerves,” he said.
“I don’t drink,” she replied.
“It wasn’t an offer, Mrs. Bhupati. I’m ordering you to drink.”
She couldn’t read anything from his eyes or face, but not wanting to risk his anger, she took the bottle from his hands and took a tiny sip. The fiery liquid almost choked her. She coughed out loudly. Her throat stung, and tears filled her eyes. Even her stomach felt as though it was set on fire.
“Another sip,” she heard him order. She wanted to refuse, but as soon as she met his eyes, she picked up the bottle again to take another sip.
This one burned similarly, but she was much more prepared. She waited for him to order her to take a few more sips. But he didn’t.
As she waited, the fire inside her belly, turned into warmth, and she felt her body beginning to relax.
“You better start stitching before you get too drowsy.”
Taking a deep breath, she picked up the needle once again. This time her hands shook a little less, and she was able to stitch through the wound on his arm. When she reached the end, she made a knot. She looked around the table for something to cut the ends.
A small pair of scissors lay within the bandages placed on a tray. She picked it up and then froze.
Her mind was fuzzy but still functioning. Her eyes flew towards her captor. His eyes were closed, and his dark lashes were still against his cheekbones. His chest rose and fell evenly. He must have fallen asleep because of the drink.
This time she stared at his chest properly. Within the toned muscled abs were two obvious deep wounds that had recently healed. They appeared to be bullet wounds.
She wondered how he got them. Did he kidnap people for ransom on a regular basis? He seemed fit and able. Why couldn’t he make money honestly? He owned a modest house in the forest, too. So it wasn’t like he was cornered and desperate to resort to such methods.
Why the hell do you care? And stop wasting time. Use this opportunity to hurt him and escape right now!
On instinct, her fingers tightened around the handle of the scissors.
“You might want to rethink your next course of action, Mrs. Bhupati.” Nina jumped when she heard him speak.
His eyes were still closed, and his chest rose and fell rhythmically.
“I-I was just trying to find something to cut the end off,” she said and used the raised scissors to quickly cut the thread.
His eyes opened and she was met with an intense stare. “I’m not your doting husband,” he said in a cold voice. “You have hurt and bloodied me twice. If you hurt me again, I’ll return that pain several times over. Remember that for the next time.”
Instead of getting frightened by his threat, she was angry. No, not just angry. Furious.
“You may be able to hurt me,” she said in a scathing tone. “But you should know that men who deliberately hurt women or cause them pain are simply pathetic. Hurting women or innocents is not being powerful, it’s just showing weakness!” She had shouted the last part and was breathing fast due to anger and adrenaline.
The captor’s nostrils flared, and he seemingly grew larger. Slowly, he stepped down from the bed.
Until that moment, he had either looked at her coldly or with no expression on his face. But now, he had a furious look.
Nina didn’t step back. Her legs shook, but she somehow held her ground.
She flinched when his hand grabbed the collar of the shirt she wore and jerked her even closer. He wasn’t hurting her, but she was terrified with the look on his face.
His dark, intense eyes burned with a rage. “Pathetic?” he asked in an awfully quiet tone. The contrast of the rage on his face and the controlled cold tone made her body tremble. “Then tell me, Mrs. Bhupati,” he continued in the same quiet tone that would have sounded casual to an outsider. “Tell me how every night you willingly slept next to a pathetic bastard?” He jerked her even closer and bent his head down until there were only a few inches left between their faces. “Tell me how did you let the pathetic bastard touch you with hands covered in an innocent’s pain and blood?”
His words cut through her fear and ricocheted in her mind. She stared at him in shock.
CHAPTER 13
Gaurav watched the shock on his captive’s face.
Disgusted, he let go of her and held her arm to drag her back into her room. She didn’t protest and followed behind him. He dropped her off next to her bed and turned to go back to his room.
“What do you want from Suraj?” he heard her ask softly as he neared the door.
He almost ignored her, but her next words made him stop.
“I know it’s not money. It’s quite obvious that you have something personal against him. What do you think he did wrong?”
He whipped around. “I don’t merely think he did something wrong, I know it for a fact.”
“What did he do?” she asked again.
He was angry at her probing. He didn’t owe her any explanation.
“You obviously think I’m somehow involved. But what if I’m innocent in this?” she pressed. “Would you still think I don’t deserve to know why I’m being kept here?”
“Doesn’t matter if you are innocent,” he said, even though he knew it would. “Your husband didn’t hesitate to strike at an innocent for his selfish reasons.”
“Who? Who was that innocent?”
His jaw clenched as he realized he had spoken too much. He was drunk enough for some of his defenses to be lowered. Maybe she knew that, because she kept pushing even more. “If you plan on torturing me and raping me to send those videos to Suraj, don’t I at least deserve to know the reason why?”
He watched her face while she looked back at him fearlessly, waiting for him to answer.
One of the reasons Gaurav didn’t want to tell her the truth was that there was a small amount of possibility of her being rescued. If that happened before he could gather evidence and destroy his enemy, then not only his entire mission would end as a failure, but he would be putting Khan and Vikram in danger as well.
“Whatever wrong you think Suraj did to you, I’m pretty sure having a discussion with him would—”
“Shut up.”
She fell quiet at his order.
If he had doubts about keeping her in the dark, those doubts disappeared completely, when she took her husband’s side without even knowing anything. “I already told you, I don’t think it. I know it. Your husband took the life of an innocent person. In fact, two innocent people.”
&
nbsp; His anger didn’t seem to faze her. She continued watching him, trying to read his face. “Innocent people who were also your loved ones,” she stated softly.
He didn’t say anything.
“I know how it is to lose a loved one. I’ve lost my two sisters. They were the only family I had.” Her voice was calm and deeply sympathetic.
Gaurav froze when she said the word sister. A part of his brain said she didn’t know anything about him. But the other part urged him to fly into a rage and kill her right then, because she might have known everything about him, even before he had kidnapped her.
Shruti’s so-called suicide wasn’t covered in any of the newspapers, but that didn’t mean Nina Bhupati wasn’t aware of every evil order her husband had passed. Maybe she was the one who gave her husband the idea, just so her luxurious life style wouldn’t be threatened.
He slowly walked towards her and stopped right in front of her. He bent forward and held her neck, pulling her closer, until their faces were only inches apart. Right under his thumb, he felt the pulse under her soft skin of her throat beating rapidly.
Gaurav knew it was his grief that made him want to lash out at the nearest target. He tried to control the urge to snuff out the life of the woman his enemy loved.
“Please,” he heard her say, her warm breath falling on his skin. “I know grief and pain. I can see it in your eyes. I still mourn my sisters every day. Let me help you find the truth.”
Gaurav took several deep breaths as his hand on her throat trembled slightly.
End her! A voice inside him commanded. But slowly, and with great difficulty, he let his rational mind take over. He loosened the grip on her neck.
“Let me help you find out the truth and bring justice,” she said. “I know it won’t help you with the pain, but it will at least give you some closure.”
He didn’t remove the fingers he wrapped around her throat.
“Please. We’ve been through the same thing. Our loved ones were snatched away from us. Let me help you,” she repeated in a whisper.
He knew she was trying to establish a connection between them to invoke empathy towards her. She wanted him to think of her as an individual person with her own past and life, rather than a tool to be used.
It didn’t work. It just made him angry. “You can play your mind games all you want,” he snarled into her face. “But the only way this will end, and I’ll let you go free is, after your husband’s death.”
With that he let go of her neck and strode out of the room, locking it once again.
He headed up the stairs. “I’m going for a walk,” he told Khan who was waiting upstairs.
Khan looked at him and nodded grimly.
GAURAV WALKED THROUGH the familiar dark forest. Even though he had come to escape thoughts of what happened in the cabin a while ago, his mind still ran towards his captive.
“Why her?” Vikram asked, watching the couple on the TV screen.
Suraj Bhupati and his wife were in a government school. Nina Bhupati was distributing food packets and gifts to the children.
“Look properly,” said Gaurav.
Vikram frowned at the couple. “Yeah. Yeah. She’s Mother Teresa and Miss World wrapped into one. Bhupati is very lucky to find that bimbo. But what’s your point?”
“See how he looks at her,” Gaurav said.
Gaurav didn’t care about what Nina Bhupati was or how she looked. All he cared was how his enemy was looking at her. Suraj Bhupati was watching his wife with a tender look as she told the reporter about the importance of continuing the food program during the school breaks.
Vikram was silent as he took in that information.
“Neither of them are low-profile people,” Vikram warned. “If we get her, Suraj Bhupati is going to use his network and influences to get his wife back. We have to be prepared for a massive manhunt.”
“Of course. I expect the bastard to do nothing less.”
It was a well-known fact that Suraj Bhupati madly loved his wife, which was why Gaurav targeted her.
Nina Bhupati was close to her husband in all aspects of his life. Her husband had openly announced several times to everyone that his wife was his equal partner or was at least aware of every major decision he took.
Nina Bhupati may or may not have been directly involved in Shruti’s murder, but the fact that there was some chance of her involvement, automatically made Gaurav hate her.
He wanted to take from Suraj Bhupati what was snatched from him. He didn’t want Suraj Bhupati dead in a quick, merciful way. He wanted the bastard to slowly lose his mind. He wanted the bastard to lose all hope.
Just like he had.
CHAPTER 14
Six months ago…
The cool breeze from the river blew on the fire while chants filled the air.
Gaurav watched as the fire continued to burn brightly, fueled by the offerings made during the ceremony. He felt numb as he blindly followed the instructions of the priest.
They said it would make the souls of the departed rest in peace. They said the souls would leave the earth to make their journey towards heaven. If that were true, then he wanted to stop the ceremony and beg their souls not to leave him. He wanted to beg them to forgive him. Tell them it was his fault. All because of him.
I’m sorry.
He stared at the pictures of the two women, the only family who mattered to him or even cared for him.
It was said that one was supposed to recall all the happy memories of their departed loved ones. But each time he saw his mother’s picture, he didn’t remember her gentle smile or the way she held him in her lap while she stroked his hair and listened to his worries. Instead, he remembered her shocked face and her screams when she saw her daughter’s dead body hanging from the ceiling.
Those screams would forever be lodged inside his head.
It pained him even more that he recalled the same sight when he thought of his sister. Instead of her mischievous smile and their silly sibling arguments, all he recalled was her pale face as she lay in the coffin.
“Sir, the ceremony has concluded. Please take a dip in the river,” the priest instructed.
Gaurav got up and moved like an automaton. The water felt cold over his freshly shaven head, bringing him slightly out from the numbness. It made his grief even worse.
But along with his grief was anger—intense anger and hatred towards one man who was responsible for the grief.
The urge to destroy and kill grew in intensity.
All it would take is a gun with a bullet. He wouldn’t need more because he wouldn’t miss. If he were to kill the bastard, it would be at a point-blank range while Suraj Bhupati looked at his killer’s face in horror and begged for mercy.
Rising from the water, Gaurav took in a deep breath of air while he blinked away the excess moisture.
Standing at a distance was a large group of people attending the funeral. His mother and sister knew a lot of people because of their friendly and helpful nature. Gaurav also had a big network of friends and colleagues who came to pay their respects.
Among the crowd who had come to attend the funeral, there was one attendee Gaurav did not want to talk to or associate himself with. But the older man stubbornly insisted he be heard.
“Give up your quest at least now, Gaurav,” a well-dressed man with salt and pepper hair pleaded. “You have proved enough. Come back home.”
“Yes, Gaurav. Suraj is dangerous. He’s already attempted an attack on you,” another man who was a few years older than Gaurav warned.
The throbbing from the knife wounds from an attack that had happened a day ago increased in intensity at the reminder.
Gaurav didn’t reply to any of their concerns. At that point, he didn’t care for his life. Neither did he care for the older man’s concerns. In fact, Gaurav felt every bit of humanity, morals, and all other softer emotions slowly disappearing from him.
All that consumed his mind was one thought—he would m
ake Suraj Bhupati and everyone involved in his sister’s and mother’s deaths pay.
CHAPTER 15
“Mr. Bhupati, we have notified everyone in the department that finding your wife and her kidnapper is our top most priority.”
“Then why the hell hasn’t your team found my wife yet!” Suraj more or less shouted at the IG of Police on the phone.
Almost ten days had passed since Nina went missing. When Suraj got back to their room in the morning, Nina had already left their home for donating the leftover food to the homeless.
Two hours later, a panicked car driver who had taken Nina there called Suraj to say Nina hadn’t yet returned to the car, and neither was she found anywhere around.
Suraj rushed to the place where she had gone missing. He and his men grilled every homeless person present there about whether or not they had seen anyone speaking with Nina.
None of them gave good responses. Most of them said they were asleep.
Soon, Radha had called the police on Suraj’s order, and the police took over the investigation.
“We are trying out best, Mr. Bhupati. Our best technical team along with the field team are working round the clock, sir.”
“Did you at least find the vehicle the kidnappers used to take her?”
There was a pause on the line. “The CCTV captured all the vehicles that drove on the street during that day, but none of the people who were driving the vehicles that day seem to be involved in Mrs. Bhupti’s kidnapping.”
“How can you bloody say that? My wife didn’t just disappear by herself!”
“We have been following each of those vehicles for the past two weeks and none of them appeared suspicious.”
“And what about the soiled dress you found of hers last week?”
Before the IG could answer, “Suraj…” a hesitant voice called from the door of the office.
“What?” Suraj snapped.
It was Radha. “We received a package just now. And it has…”
