Married in Vengeance (Dynasty Rebels #4)

Chapter 9

Nine

RAM

I married you to ruin you.

The words spun in an endless cycle in his brain as he walked into his office the next morning. A young boy sat in the reception area, his knee jittering like a jackhammer as his parents tried to calm him down.

“Is that kid one of your clients?” he asked the man sitting in the conference room.

Karthik Thotta, his classmate from law school and partner in the law firm, looked up and sighed. He shut his laptop and put his hands on the back of his head, stretching as he did so.

“Before we get to that, do you want to tell me what you’re doing here the day after your wedding?”

“Working,” Ram said curtly, turning his head slowly to the side in a bid to get the kinks out of his neck. Sleeping on the recliner in the home theatre room was not as comfortable as you’d expect.

“Dude, I haven’t yet gotten over the hangover from your wedding reception. How are you all jazzed up and ready to go?”

“Left early.” Ram glanced up as their office boy came in and put a mug of steaming black coffee in front of him. “Thank you, Vijay,” he told him. “Now.” He looked back at Karthik. “New client?”

“Yep.” Karthik tapped a pen on the table. “Seventeen-year-old boy. His classmate accused him of raping her.”

“Did he rape her?” Ram didn’t glance up from where he was scrolling his emails on his phone.

“He says he didn’t.”

“But did he?” Ram looked up, his glance skewering his partner.

Karthik didn’t bother with a direct answer. “The evidence is circumstantial. Her word against his. I’ll get him off.”

Ram stared at him.

“That’s what matters right?” Karthik smiled, getting to his feet. “The job. The fee. The money to keep the lights on.”

Ram watched him leave, feeling the stain on his soul spread. Was that all that mattered? Fresh out of law school, he’d been all fired up on ethics and the greater good, the need to be better than his father’s shaky morality, his family legacy. He’d been born into a world of grey and he’d struggled in adulthood to live a life that was sparkling white. He’d wanted to work as a public prosecutor but his father had fought him long and hard on that.

His only son who resisted taking over the family’s media conglomerate and then wanted to go work in the public prosecutor’s office was not an option. At least, a defense attorney made more money. And in Chaitanya Gadde’s world, the least you could be was rich.

Choices. So many choices. And he’d made all the wrong ones.

“Ram Anna?” Vijay was back, an empty tray in his hands.

“Hmm?” Ram tapped out an answer to one of the emails clogging up his inbox.

“Akka is here.”

“Who?” Distracted, Ram looked up. “Veda or Raashi.”

“Me.” Aadhya appeared in the doorway behind Vijay, smiling at the blushing younger man as he moved past her mumbling about bringing her coffee.

The world stilled as he watched her enter his workspace, the first time she’d been there. She wore a simple white chikankari salwar kameez, her face scrubbed clean of all makeup and her glorious curls tumbling in wild abandon down her back. Her cool, reserved gaze took in the sterile, white environment, the cubicles outside the conference room that hummed with activity. He watched her clock the seventeen-year-old crying in Karthik’s cabin, sympathy darkening her eyes.

She turned slowly to look at him. The sympathy died from her face leaving a blank canvas.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” he asked abruptly.

“No.” She walked around the large conference table and took a seat directly across from him. “I’m a normal person which means I take a few days off after my wedding. Unlike others I know.”

“Doesn’t explain why you’re here.” His heart picked up its pace as she stared at him, her eyes boring into him.

“Your new bride would like to see your office. Is that a crime?”

“I don’t have time to play games with you, Aadhya.” He got to his feet, gathering his phone and files. “I have work to do.”

“We have unfinished business, Gadde. I’m not leaving here until we put a pin in it.”

He froze on his way to the door. “You have some gall,” he said, anger leaking through his rigid control.

“Do I? I would think the man who got married to someone to ruin them would be the one with gall.”

So, they were doing this then. Ram turned the lock on his conference room door and then moved to face her. Aadhya rose to her feet in a languid motion, her grace as always looking like liquid silk in motion.

She came to a halt in front of him, their chests brushing against each others, every rushed breath bringing them in closer contact.

“You bastard,” she whispered. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Ram arched one eyebrow. “Your husband, for starters. Or have you forgotten the interminable rituals we sat through yesterday?”

“Interminable?” Her eyes swam with a toxic cocktail of emotions, anger, hurt, betrayal.

“Yeah.” Ram drawled, shoving the knife in further. “I thought I was going to pass out from boredom.”

She smiled, a small, bitter twist of her lips. “Yeah. Boredom was top of my mind.”

Ram made a point of staring down at his phone and pretending to scroll through something, though he saw nothing on the screen.

“Are we done yet with this morning’s theatrics?”

“What did I do to deserve this? You told me our fling was just physical, nothing else. I accepted that. I respected the map of our equation that you specified. I stayed within the boundaries you drew. Then you redrew those boundaries by sending a fucking marriage proposal home. And now, you’re changing the lines on me again. This isn’t a map I even understand. This is a whole different planet.”

Ram stared at her, his emotions boiling beneath the cold facade he’d perfected over the years.

“You better get used to this planet, sweetheart. It’s the only one you’ll be living on in this lifetime.”

She stared at him, fury flashing over her face. “I want an annulment.”

“No.”

“We have not consummated this marriage,” she hissed. “I want the fucking annulment.”

“You want this consummated?” Ram took a step forward forcing her back a small step. “We can consummate it right now.”

“Fuck you, Ram.” She shoved him back.

“I believe that’s what I just said too.”

Aadhya made a strangled, shrieking sound, like a pressure cooker letting off steam.

“If you won’t agree to an annulment,” she ground out. “Then I’ll file for divorce.”

“You can try.” He smiled. “It will be a pleasure to meet you in court. I can drag this out for years, Aadhya. You can spend those years in Gadde Mansion or you can spend them in the filthy, crowded corridors of a courthouse. You take your pick!”

She stared at him, wild-eyed, breath heaving, temper churning.

“Why?” she whispered finally. “Why are you doing this?”

“You know why,” he told her, dropping his shields and letting her see the loathing that churned within him. “You know why!”

Shaken, she stumbled back a step, her hands going to push her hair out of her eyes. “You’re a complete bastard.”

“Noted.” He nodded. “Go home,” Ram told her, stepping away from the door and leaving the path open for her to leave. “You can think through your choices, past and present. And then, let me know which poisoned choice you want to make now.”

“Rot in hell, Gadde,” she muttered, stepping around him.

“I’m already there, Reddy,” he murmured, watching her angrily swipe her tears away as she left.