Page 17 of Born in Ruin

She didn’t respond, the frown intensifying and tipping into wrinkle territory. For a brief moment, she opened her mouth to say something but then seemed to rethink it and shut it again.

Good girl.

“I’ll pick you up at eight,” he said, opening the car door and getting in. He slammed it shut behind him and left, not bothering to look at where she was still standing, the now ferocious frown making her like a pruney grape.

What’s wrong with you?

He tried to shake off the unease that her perceptiveness caused, his mind going to the night ahead. He was going to take her home to meet his friends. And Dhrithi.

It was time. It was time to bring his Mayukhi card into play because they, his friends and he were running out of time.

Two months ago, Varun Gokhale, Dhrithi’s then husband, had rammed his car into hers, critically injuring her and landing her in Amay’s hospital. The one good thing that had come from that had been the fact that the abusive piece of shit had died in the same accident. Great news really. Except his death had brought more questions than closure.

Varun’s unexpected death had opened up a can of worms with the police using the accident and the opening it gave them to launch a long pending investigation into Varun’s legal and somewhat legal business activities. Raids across their many properties had ensued with the Gokhales swearing vengeance and calling on the Gods to give their poor, departed son’s soul some peace.

And then the worms had come crawling out of the woodwork. Varun Gokhale had been a founding member of the Dusty Devils and whatever he’d been involved in, Ishaan knew the DD’s had been neck deep in it with him. Because Ishaan and his friends had gone to the same school as the erstwhile DD’s. They’d played tormented to the DD’s tormentors. But it hadn’t been until the night of graduation that they’d seen the true evil that lurked beneath the rich, elitist bastard’s masks. And that was why Ishaan and his friends knew that there was something deeply wrong in the scenario. And if the police weren’t going to be able to find it, they definitely would.

But what was it? The police had found nothing, and neither had their fixer extraordinaire friend, Virat. They hadn’t even had anything to go on until Dhrithi had found a photograph on the floor of her cupboard. Masked naked men surrounding a naked woman who’d been accessorised with enough sex toys to start a shop of her own. On the face of it, it looked like an orgy. Wildyes, a little deviant maybe, but illegal no? Not as long as it was consensual. But was it?

They’d turned the house inside out searching for another clue but had found nothing. Ishaan himself had spent hours surfing through Varun the pervert’s porn collection and still found nothing. Virat’s team had torn through Varun’s life online and offline, and still they’d found nothing beyond vague murmurs of another life, a secret one.

Varun Gokhale wasn’t smart enough to erase all traces of this secret life. He was an abusive cokehead who thought he owned the world because he’d been born with a silver spoon shoved up his arse.

Which meant there was someone else. Someone with the brains, the know-how, the money and the connections to keep whatever this orgy business was, secret. And Ishaan and his friends were done with twiddling their thumbs and chasing their own tails. It was time for them to make the next move on the chessboard. And Ishaan was going to play his Queen.

He pulled up to his apartment building, parking the car and getting out, his mind still going round in circles as he worried at the puzzle from every possible angle. He made it to his penthouse before his phone started to ring. He’d set it to Do Not Disturb so the only people who could be getting through to him were on his favourites list.

He pulled the phone out and glanced at the screen. The toxic cocktail of negative emotions inside him swirled a bit more at the sight of his mother’s number on the display. Ishaan flopped down on his recliner as he answered the call.

“Mom?”

“No need to sound so put upon,” his mother, Tanaz Adajania snapped.

Ishaan sighed. This conversation was off to a great start, as always.

“Hi Mom,” he said now. “What’s up?”

“What’s up? What’s up?? I’ll tell you what’s up,” his mother’s ranting voice climbed an octave. “My son doesn’t bother to come and visit his family. That’s what’s up.”

Ishaan rubbed his forehead with the heel of his palm. He bet he had a frown line to rival Mayukhi’s.

“I deposited money in your account yesterday,” he replied, not attempting to correct her assertion. She wasn’t wrong after all, so there was nothing to correct. “Did you receive it?”

There was a short pause on the other end of the line. “Ishu, you know that money is not the only thing we want.”

Did he? Ishaan glanced over his shoulder to the large French doors that framed his balcony. From this height, he could see the ocean on the distant horizon.

“But did you receive it?” he asked again.

“Yes,” his mother answered, sounding defeated. “We received it. Thank you.”

“I don’t need your thanks Mom.” He was still staring at that hint of blue in the distance. It had been a while since he’d gone swimming in the ocean. Maybe once all this blows over, he would fly out to Thailand or Bali, maybe even Australia, for a short break.

“But you have it,” she said firmly. “Come for dinner one day, dikra. We miss you.”

Ishaan’s throat worked, unvoiced emotion clogging it. He missed his family too but going home meant dealing with the messy emotions that came with it and Ishaan didn’t do mess. He’d cleaned up his life and he wanted to keep it that way. Neat, superficial, very non messy.

“It’s a busy time at work,” he murmured, evading the implied question. He could almost hear his mother’s sadness on the phone.

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