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“I heard you the first time, Viper,” Harsh said tonelessly.
“You can’t go after him. Not without me.”
Harsh’s gaze shot to hers.
“I know him. Every strength, every flaw, every weakness. I know it all. If we’re taking Anant Madhavan down, you can’t do it without me.”
A slow grin tugged at his lips as he watched her, a warrior princess reborn.
“I’ll tell you everything,” she swore. “I’ll tell all of you. And then we’ll shut him down once and for all.”
“Alright,” Harsh said, sitting up in bed, the sheet falling to his waist.
“Alright?” she asked, caution still shadowing her words, almost as if she expected to be rejected.
“It will be an absolute fucking privilege to go to war with you by my side, Raashi Kodela,” he told her, tucking a particularly frizzy lock of her hair behind her ear. “Let’s bury the fucking worm.”
“Raashi Gadde,” she replied loftily. “I never said I was taking your name.”
He laughed, delight saturating him. “I’ll take yours if that makes you happy. Harsh Gadde has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”
“Your family will have a collective heart attack,” she said, smiling a little. “Let’s try not to kill them.”
“You have a deal,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her softly on her lips. “Battle ready darling?”
Raashi grinned. “I was born ready, sweetcheeks.”
Forty-Four
RAASHI
She’d insisted she go back to Agastya’s study with Harsh. She wanted Harsh to know the truth. But if there was one person who deserved to hear it first, it was her brother. Ram had fought endlessly for her without asking a single question. He deserved to hear the answers before anyone else.
And so, now it was time for her reckoning. Would Harsh still want to touch her after he heard her truth? Or would he find it hard to even look at her? She was about to find out.
“He was my father’s business partner,” Raashi said, her gaze on her ragged manicure. Her wedding nails had barely lasted a day. She doubted her marriage would last the night.
“Chinna, you don’t need to do this,” Ram said grimly.
“I want to, Anna.” She held his gaze. “It’s time.”
She looked away from him and to Agastya who was looking at her, worry and concern warring for supremacy in his caramel-coloured eyes. She didn’t dare look at Harsh. Not now.
“He was more than a decade younger than Nanna, but my father trusted him implicitly. Till today, Nanna credits a lot of City News’s success to Anant’s brilliant mind.”
Ram grunted, a constipated snort of a sound which told her exactly what he thought of that.
“Initially, he was just an older person who came home to meet Nanna, sometimes stayed for dinner if there were late night meetings. He was funny and wise and…” She sighed. “I was a socially awkward, gangly, nerdy teenager and he…he was kind to me. I never knew when that kindness became something more but as time went by, I started turning to him for everything. Advice, friendship, companionship. It started with small things. Counsel on what subjects I should choose once I cleared my tenth board exams and slowly moved to bigger things. He told me what to wear, how to behave, what to say, when to say it. He decided who I was going to be. Soon, very soon, he was my everything.”
Silence descended on the study. She could see Ram’s fists clenched tight at his side. She didn’t dare turn around to look at Harsh.
“I loved him,” she said simply. She heard Harsh’s sharp inhale behind her but didn’t have the courage to face him. “Actually,” she corrected herself. “I thought I loved him.”
“Thought?” Aarush’s gentle voice was thoughtful. She’d almost forgotten he was in the room too.
She glanced at him and saw no judgement in his face. It gave her the courage to continue.
“Anant taught me many things, the most important of which was to worship him. It wasn’t love. It was never love. It was control. He showered affection, praise and attention on me. All things I was starved for.” Ram made a pained noise in the back of his throat. “But only as long as I was a good girl.”
