Chapter 44
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.”
“And what constituted you being a good girl?” Agastya asked, his voice deep with suppressed anger.
“I had to keep my hair long and always braided. I had to study hard, only science subjects were acceptable. My weight had to hover between fifty to fifty-two kgs. Nothing more or less than that was okay. I could not waste time with useless pursuits like friendships. Before I blinked, I had no friends. I was told my family didn’t understand me, they didn’t like me, they were disappointed in me. I was too ugly, too unaccomplished for them. The only person who understood me, who appreciated me, was him. Along with my friends, my family faded into the background too.”
She laughed, a sad, bitter sound.
“Anna and Akka tried, they really did but, at that point, no one could reach me.” She took a deep breath. “At that point, I would have done anything he asked.”
Unable to meet anyone’s eyes now, she glanced down at the fingers she was twisting together in her lap.
“And I did,” she said softly. “I did.”
“Raashi, no Chinna,” Ram breathed.
“I gave him the papers from Nanna’s desk,” she looked at Ram, knowing instinctively that he’d understand what papers she was talking about. “I’m the reason he walked away from the partnership with such a big chunk of the pie.”
“What papers?” Agastya asked sharply.
“Our father had struck a deal with someone in power to bury a story. It was meant to cement a friendship.”
“Our father.” It was the first time Harsh had spoken since they entered the room. “Gadde Garu had a deal with Nanna, didn’t he?”
Raashi nodded, her gaze fixed on her clenched hands. “Yes,” she whispered.
“The alleged rape case. The illicit affair between our uncle and the maid.” Agastya’s voice was level and cold, freezingly cold. “That was you?”
“That was Anant,” Harsh corrected him, his hand coming to close on Raashi’s shoulder, squeezing once. She flinched away from his touch. His fingers stiffened and withdrew.
“No.” Raashi couldn’t deny her share in this whole drama. “It was me too. Nanna had left the file in his study intending to shred it. He’d spoken with your father and he agreed that extended family’s debaucheries shouldn’t impact your father’s otherwise stellar career. I think it was an olive branch, a gesture made in the hopes of building an alliance, if not a friendship.”
“It wasn’t rape,” Harsh said quietly. “It was consensual sex but it was also, a complete abuse of his position of power. There’s no denying that.”
“That was the year Nanna lost his election. The only election he’s lost in his career.” Agastya’s voice was carefully calm. He took a deep breath, his hands going to the back of his neck to grip and press, to try and ease the stress building there.
“Because that was the year, Mama decided to think with his dick,” Harsh replied calmly. “If he’d kept his little soldier in, none of this would have happened. If we need someone to blame, it’s him.”
Raashi drew in a shuddering breath. “That was also the year I turned eighteen. Anant told me he loved me and wanted to spend the rest of his life with me. I was over the moon. It was like God had decided to answer my every prayer.”
She looked at Agastya, eyes brimming over with tears she refused to shed. She wouldn’t cry over that man, not for one second more. Anant Madhavan did not deserve one more tear of hers.
“He told me if I loved him too, truly loved him, then I’d show him that I loved him more than my family. He said he could only love someone who put him above everyone else, even her own father. I had to prove myself.”
She looked at Ram and one tear spilled over. So much for her supposed self control. “And I did. I took those papers and I handed them over to him. I gave him the means to break both families, in one fell swoop.”
“Why didn’t you come to me?” Ram’s face bore a look of devastation that tore at her heart.
“I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. I didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. I thought I was living through an epic love story.”
“He was more than ten years older than you. Fucking paedophile. Talk about abuse of power.” Aarush looked livid.
“Fourteen years older.” Raashi swiped at her tears, drying her cheeks. Not one more tear, she reminded herself. Not for that man.
“What happened then?” Agastya asked, his voice infinitely gentle now, his earlier shock fading.
“He used what I gave him as leverage to try and break my father. City News was the reason he even had a career, but he wasn’t above destroying it to get what he wanted.”
“And what did the asshole want?” Aarush asked.
“To be the sole owner of City News, forcing my father out of the partnership. When the story broke, your father assumed mine had reneged on their deal. Their friendship devolved into a rivalry that was a savage version of do or die. They both preferred the other drop dead. The least they would settle for was career suicide.”
Agastya barked a laugh at that very concise summary of their fathers’ complicated relationship.
“Anant assumed Nanna’s weakened position would have him retiring to lick his wounds.”
It was Ram’s turn to laugh. “Like Nanna is even capable of that. When he’s wounded, he lashes out harder and more viciously.”
“Yes.” Who knew that better than Raashi did? “Yes, he does. He’d been prepared for a day like that one. He opened up file after file laden with dirt on Anant and then he buried him in it.” A fierce glow of pride lit her up from within. In some ways, Raashi was more her father’s daughter than either of her siblings were.
“Anant doesn’t like to lose. When his victory disappeared, so did his love for me. He turned on me like a hyena on a rotting carcass.”
Exhaustion weighed her voice down. “I applied to every college I could find in America, the furthest from Hyderabad I could run. And I took the first admission letter I got and left. I swore I’d never come back.”
“Why did you?” Aarush asked, curiously.
“I was tired of running. I was tired of being alone.” She stared down at her hands, now lying lax in her lap. “I wanted to come home.”
“What happened with Anant and your father?”
“Given they both had something to lose, they agreed to split the company and go their separate ways, maintaining a mask of civility for the public.” Ram was the one to take that question, his voice a tightly reined in mask of fury and pain.
“And over the years, the mask turned into something more genuine. Nanna respects him.” Ram shoved his fingers through his hair, a look of utter disgust on his face.
“Of course he does. One shark always respects another.”
Raashi didn’t have a doubt her father had forgiven Anant years ago. Just as she knew with a soul deep certainty, that he would never forgive her for what she’d done. She’d lost her father the day she’d picked up that file from his desk.
And today, after her sordid confession, she was sure she’d lost her husband too.