Married in Vengeance (Dynasty Rebels #4)

Chapter 25

Twenty-Five

RAM

Aadhya had curled up in a fetal position again, her back to him and shut her eyes. At some point in her self-imposed exile, she’d fallen asleep. He touched her forehead again relieved to find it was cool. She seemed to be resting more peacefully.

His brow furrowed as he watched her. Clearly, things weren’t going well at work for Aadhya. He was surprised to overhear that conversation. Aadhya had always come across as confident and extremely sure of her place in life. He’d always assumed that that surety of self had come from her professional space. God knew, her family was almost as dysfunctional as his.

But then again, this was the same woman who was blackmailing him to unknown ends. Was it even blackmail if your blackmailer didn’t make any specific demands? Did weird, vaguely threatening mails qualify as blackmail?

A film of sweat sheened Ram’s forehead as he watched Aadhya sleep. What was her endgame? It was a question that kept him up most nights. And he was no closer to the answer.

His phone vibrated in his pocket disturbing his already disturbed train of thought. Karthik. He stepped out of the room and into the corridor so he didn’t disturb Aadhya’s sleep.

“Dude, you’re not in court?” Karthik shouted, clearly pitching his voice over the cacophony around him.

“I didn’t have any cases coming up today.” Ram shifted to lean against the wall. “And Aadhya’s sick. So, I stayed home.”

“Anant’s appeal got kicked out of court.” The words were a little garbled and drowned out by background noise, but the meaning came through clearly.

A fierce exultation flooded through him. “Excellent!” Now, they had that rat bastard!

“Thought you’d want to know. I heard through the grapevine.”

All the lawyers in their close circle knew why Ram was so invested in this case and kept an eye out for any way in which they could help out, a fact that Ram was deeply appreciative of.

“Thanks man.” He disconnected the call and took a deep breath, relief sweeping through him.

Ram had spent his entire life rigidly in the white. The black had never been a temptation and the grey had been his father’s domain. Even when he’d found out what Anant Madhavan had been doing to his sister, his path to vengeance and justice had been a straight arrow through the white.

And then Aadhya had happened. He’d known that a fling with her would never be just a fling and yet, he’d fallen into bed with her without a second thought. He’d known she wasn’t the right woman for him. She was too impulsive, too volatile, too brash and yet, she was the only woman he wanted. And for the first time, in forever, he’d dared to dream, to hope, to dip a toe into the world on the other side of the line.

And then the first email had arrived and his illusions had splintered along with his sanity. He’d never quite regained his semblance of common sense after that. Every decision he’d taken, every move he’d made on this chess board of life, and every word he’d spoken had been tainted by his bitter fury seasoned with unreasonable hurt.

She’d broken his heart. Ram hadn’t even known he’d had a heart to break. His father’s endless machinations for power, his mother’s increasing disconnect from a life that didn’t make space for her and his need to be father, mother and older brother to his two sisters had taken up every second of his waking life. He’d struggled to find structure, stability and a moral compass in a world that seem to hinge on everything ephemeral. He'd struggled to give his sisters the same, fighting to shield them from the realities of their world.

And he’d failed. On every level. Veda had grown up constantly trying to make herself smaller to please people around her and Raashi…his prodigy of a baby sister had found herself at the mercy of a sexual predator like Anant.

His world of white had turned blood red in the moment he’d found out. A moment that had been immediately followed by Aadhya’s betrayal.

What did she want? He hadn’t waited to find out. He’d been done playing by the rules at that point. He’d wanted vengeance and he’d wanted to watch her pay for her sins. And here they were. Here they fucking were.

His gaze strayed to the shut bedroom door. His phone vibrated in his pocket again and Ram pulled it out. Virat’s name flashed on his screen. Fuck his life. Now what?

“Hello.”

“Fancy a drink tonight?” Virat sounded like he was standing in the middle of traffic. An earsplitting ambulance siren in the background had Ram wincing.

Ram stared at the shut bedroom door as he contemplated his answer. “I can’t. Not tonight.”

“Hmm.” Virat moved somewhere relatively quieter and his voice came through more strongly. “We need to talk.”

The hair on Ram’s nape prickled, an ominous forewarning of trouble to come. “About?” he asked, his voice going low and quiet like it always did when he was going into battle.

“We got another email.”

Ram’s gaze stayed on the shut bedroom door. “Right now?”

“Fifteen minutes ago. I tracked it back to the decoded sender.”

“It’s the same? It’s her?”

“That’s what it looks like,” Virat confirmed.

“Was it a scheduled email? Can you tell?” Ram ran a hand through his hair, adrenalin surging through his veins. He started to pace the corridor, unable to stand still.

“Not at the moment.” Virat’s voice sharpened. “Why? What does that mean to you?”

Ram came to a dead halt in the middle of the corridor. “Because if it wasn’t scheduled, then the sender wasn’t Aadhya.”

A beat of silence and Virat snapped, “Explain.”

“Aadhya’s sick. And for the last four hours or so, she’s been tucked into bed, mostly sleeping.”

“And you know this how?”

“Because I’ve been right there with her. If she’d typed out and sent an email, I would know. It’s not her.”

“Mails can be scheduled like you pointed out.”

Ram started to pace again. “We need to dig deeper. We need to find out exactly what’s going on.”

“I’m already on it.” Virat sounded irritated but more at himself and his failure to know more.

“What do you know so far?”

“When I know something, you’ll know,” Virat returned coolly. “As of now, all we know with surety are that the emails can be traced back to Aadhya’s office email account.”

“Well, that’s stupid,” Ram said. “If she was going to blackmail me, why would she do it from her work account?”

“For it to be blackmail, she needed to have asked for something. And it’s not directly from her work account. It’s routed through another anonymous address. And yes, it’s still stupid because it’s not a complicated cover. But the real question as always is, if it is her, what’s her endgame?”

“She’s been having some issues at work too.” It felt disloyal to relay that to Virat, but Ram knew for his friend to be effective, he needed all the facts.

“She is?” Virat’s voice sharpened. “What kind of issues?”

Ram told him what he’d overheard when Aadhya had been on the phone with Aarush.

“I’ll look into it,” Virat promised.

“It’s not her,” Ram said again, a weird, rootless conviction sprouting in his heart. “It can’t be.”

Virat sighed. “My gut agrees with you. But we need proof.”

“Why does your gut agree with me?” Ram stopped in front of the bedroom door, one hand reaching out to touch the oakwood panels, his fingers splaying out and his palm pressing down. A vain bid to reach for the woman sleeping behind it.

“I like Aadhya. I find it hard to believe she’d pull this shit.” Virat’s voice vibrated with frustration. “And yet, everything I pull up points to her.”

Ram shut his eyes, his hand pressing harder against the door. “What did this latest email say?”

Virat’s voice when it came through the line was hard and cold. “It said, ‘It’s time.’”