Married in Vengeance (Dynasty Rebels #4)

Chapter 43

Forty-Three

RAM

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I-“

“You gave me preliminary information and I ran with it. I made irrational, vengeful decisions off the back of it.” Ram pressed a thumb against his aching temple in a vain bid to alleviate the pain. “This isn’t on you, Virat. It’s all me. I should never have gone off halfcocked like that.”

Silence fell in the car for a while, broken only by the passing cars honking irately as road rage engulfed their drivers.

“Why did you?” Virat asked. “I never understood that. You’re the most rational human being I know. What the hell happened to you?”

Ram laughed mirthlessly. “Aadhya happened to me.” The car rolled to a halt at a traffic light. A beggar walked up and banged on Ram’s window. He rolled it down and handed him some money, his gaze following the man’s shuffling gait to the next car.

“I told myself she wasn’t my type but from the first moment I saw Aadhya, no type existed for me. It was, always, only her. I fell so hard, so fast…I kept telling myself it was only physical. Just a fling.” He shook his head. “But I was so fucked. It hadn’t been a fling from the first moment I touched her.”

Virat overtook a bus, his gaze on the road ahead, his entire demeanor calm and detached. He offered no judgements and served no platitudes.

“I was going to ask her out. I wanted us to stop meeting in the shadows and to step out into the sun. And then you brought that email to me.”

Virat brought the car to a slow halt in front of the main gates of Gadde Mansion. The gates opened and they drove through. Virat parked in the driveway and they sat in silence.

“It broke something inside me. I couldn’t lose her. And if I confronted her with it, I would have.”

“And so you tied her to you permanently,” Virat mused. “Dude that’s-“

“Fucked up. I know.”

“I was going to say some twisted love shit but yeah that too.”

Ram snorted. With a heavy sigh, he opened the car door in preparation of getting out. “And I lost her anyway.”

“You can still get her back.”

“No.” Ram shook his head. He closed the door and leaned down to look in through the window. “There is no coming back from this.”

“Never say never,” Virat said, a small smile tugging at his lips. “We can come back from the end of the world itself. We just need to want it badly enough.”

“I signed the divorce papers,” Ram told him and Virat’s smile vanished.

“What the fuck did you do that for?” Virat groaned. “Dude, you need to find your legendary self-control? Stop shooting off at a tangent like a hamster on steroids.”

“She asked for a divorce, Virat,” Ram told his friend.

“And you’re just going to give it to her.”

“I’ve come to realise that I will give Aadhya anything she asks for.”

“No questions asked? No wars waged?” Virat demanded.

“None.” Ram knocked on the top of the car in farewell. “I have no fight left in me. I’m done, Virat.”

“A divorce is going to harm your chances at a Supreme Court judgeship,” Virat warned.

“My judgeship went up in smoke the day I got married,” Ram laughed, a bark of sound that had the guard at the gate startling. “I always knew that video was out there. And with that Damocles sword hanging over my head, a seat on the bench was a dream I had to let go off.”

“Giving up on that was easy. Giving up on Aadhya? The hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life. But if it makes her happy, I’d do it in a heartbeat. Every single time.”