Page 75 of Born in Ruin

“The last thing I remember is wandering the office lobby trying to find signal on my phone that night. They took me, didn’t they?” she asked, her eyes on the uninteresting white wall in front of her.

His fingers tightened painfully around her own. He nodded, still not looking at her, his gaze like hers on the stupid wall.

“Did they rape me?”

He sucked in a harsh breath, gripping her hand like it was his only hold on sanity. He shook his head, a hard negative.

“I asked Amay but I still needed to hear it from you.” She wiped the back of her hand against her mouth. “I’m sorry but I needed to hear it from you. If there is one thing I know about you, Adajania, it’s that you won’t sugarcoat the truth for me. I always know exactly where I stand with you.”

His eyes closed, anguish tightening the lines of his face as he thumped his head against the wall.

“I want them to burn in hell for this,” she whispered, rage igniting inside her.

Ishaan turned to look at her, for the first time that evening, his eyes a blazing inferno of fury and vengeance. “Consider it done. I swear to you, Yukhi, I will make sure this happens even if it’s the last thing I do before I die.”

She nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Okay. But don’t die alright? There’s no need for extra drama.”

He buried his face in her neck, a desperate, wet, sobbing laugh escaping him. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Why?” she asked, tunnelling her fingers through his hair and gripping his head, holding him close to her. “Did you kidnap me?”

He didn’t respond so she did for him. “No? Then stop being fucking sorry. You carry enough weight on your shoulders, Adajania. Don’t add their shit to it.”

“I’m going to bury them in their shit, so deep that they’ll never see daylight again.”

“Now, that’s a plan I can get behind.” She smiled, a shaky but savage smile. “I’ll bring the shovel.”

FORTY-ONE

Ishaan

“They were gone by the time we got back,” Virat said, leaning against the wall of the hotel room. “And the single staff member we found on the premises insisted that the family hadn’t come to Alibaug in over a month.”

“The property Mayukhi was held at?” Dhrithi asked, leaning forward on the attender’s stool she was sitting on.

“Belongs to an elderly couple who live in Mumbai. They’ve put it up for sale. That property has no link to any of the Dusty Dickheads.”

Amay smiled grimly, from his corner behind Dhrithi. “I like that name.”

“We have the video of Ishaan arriving at the Alibaug house. The only person on it is Parash who came to the door. The light was behind him though, and all we saw was a backlit silhouette. He could easily be passed off as the staff member we spoke to.”

“And all the audio content we collected?”

Virat sighed. “Could be placed anywhere, could have happened any day, any time. We need more to nail their asses to the wall.”

“Prints on the mask? On the ropes and the blindfold?”

“We’re testing for it.”

Ishaan sat on the bed beside Mayukhi, his body impossibly still. Helpless anger churned inside him but he kept it ruthlessly contained. “So, again, we have nothing.”

“We have more than we had before.” Virat pushed off from the wall. “Yukhi, you’ll work with my sketch artist to get us an image of the man in the stairwell and the security guard?”

She nodded, fatigue dragging at her. She’d already been exhausted when her parents had stormed in and now, she was seriously flagging. It had taken some convincing for her parents to leave for the night but Mayukhi had been insistent that she didn’t want them staying with her.

“She needs to rest,” Ishaan said abruptly. “Everyone get out.”

“I do believe that’s my line,” Amay said, amusement lightening his eyes. He was about to say something more when there was a knock on the room door. Virat moved silently into position behind the door before Amay walked over to open it. A delivery boy stood there with a massive, assorted bouquet of flowers.

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