Chapter Forty Eight
The VVIP lounge air was a heavy, swirling fog of tobacco and the cloying scent of perfume.
In the dim, red-hued light, the elite of the underworld indulged in their darkest vices.
Men sat with stacks of cash on low tables while girls draped themselves over their shoulders, in the shadowed corners, the sounds of moans and hushed, breathless encounters blurred into the heavy thumping of the bass.
In the center of this chaos sat Samar. He was relaxed in a high-backed leather chair, a cigarette dangling from his lips.
A girl was kneeling beside him, her hands wandering over his tattooed chest in a desperate attempt to get his attention, but he didn't even blink.
His clouded eye was fixed on the entrance, his mind churning with the memory of Devraj’s insult.
The steel doors swung open, and Deepak stumbled in.
He looked like a man who had been dragged through the gutters...eyes bloodshot, clothes disheveled, and his spirit visibly broken.
Samar’s gaze sharpened. Usually, he’d have a low-level junkie like Deepak tossed out, but something about the boy’s raw, vibrating anger caught his interest.
Two girls approached Deepak, looking to soothe his nerves, but he leveled a glare at them so filled with venom that they hurried away.
Samar’s eyes narrowed. He crushed his cigarette into the crystal ashtray and stood up.
The girl at his feet let out a soft whine of protest, but he ignored her completely. He sauntered over to the bar where Deepak had slumped onto a stool and sat down beside him.
"A troubled mind is a heavy burden, isn't it?" Samar started..
Deepak snapped his head up. When he realized he was staring into the scarred face of Samar, he let out an audible gulp and instinctively pulled away a bit..
Everyone in the city knew Samar wasn't just a man, he was a death sentence.
"Ah, don't worry.." Samar said, a sick smirk stretching across his face. He leaned in, the red light catching the scar over his eye.
"I don't bite... well, unless you’re a threat to me or my territory. And you? You just look like a man who wants to burn something down."
Deepak let out a shaky sigh, his fear momentarily eclipsed by the crushing weight of his own humiliation.
"You look like you need to relax.." Samar said, "Are the girls not your type tonight?"
Deepak glanced back at the two women he had chased away.
He scanned their features, their smiles and beauty, and shook his head.
"Red hair... green eyes.." he mumbled, the words sounding like a prayer.
Samar’s brow furrowed slightly, his interest piqued.
"What?"
"I... I want a lady with red hair and green eyes.." Deepak repeated.
"That's a rare combination in these parts.." Samar remarked, leaning back and studying the younger man.
"We don't have anyone like that on the floor tonight, but any of the girls here can put on a show that will make you forget–"
"She is the only one I need! The only one I want!" Deepak interrupted, his voice rising to a fever pitch.
He reached up, clenching his own hair and tugging hard, his pupils dilated from the cocktail of drugs and hard substances burning through his veins.
He was spiraling, the highness turning his obsession into a waking nightmare.
"I... Ira.." he gasped out.
Samar went perfectly still. He leaned in, his one good eye narrowing as he dissected Deepak’s expression.
"Ira? She’s the one with the red hair and the green eyes? The one you’re losing your mind over?"
Deepak looked up, his gaze desperate and bloodshot, and nodded frantically. He looked like a man standing on the edge of a cliff, ready to jump if it meant landing at her feet.
Ira.
Samar turned the name over in his mind. It was rare, unfamiliar.
He knew every face in this sprawling, hedonistic labyrinth. He knew every worker, every dancer, and every girl on the payroll, no matter how large the building was.
He prided himself on knowing exactly what..and who..was in his territory.
But a girl with natural red hair and piercing green eyes? That was a ghost.
He had seen plenty of cheap wigs and colored contacts in the dim light of the club, but nothing that sounded like the image Deepak was describing.
Samar’s expression darkened as he fell into a deep silence.
If this girl wasn't one of his... then where did she come from?
"But... but he claimed her already.." Deepak choked out, his voice cracking under the weight of his despair.
"He had to take the one thing... the one thing I wanted more than life.
.." He broke down completely, his fingers digging into his scalp as his head hit the back of the leather couch, staring at the ceiling with hollow, drug-clouded eyes.
"Well, if you want something, it doesn't matter who claims it. You just have to take it. Use every ounce of power you have, boy. Sometimes, greed is the only thing that gets the job done."
"I... I can't fight him..." Deepak whispered, a shudder racking his frame. "Rathore... he’s too strong. He’s a god in this city."
The mention of the name made Samar’s face harden instantly, his scarred features twisting..
"What did you say?"
"Devraj Singh Rathore.." Deepak stammered, oblivious to the storm he was brewing. "He has her. Ira... she’s his woman. He came here to my face... and told me she belongs to him."
Samar’s jaw tightened.
"Devraj has a woman?" he mumbled to himself.
The only woman he knew was Alia, but she doesn't have Green eyes or Red hair...
His mind raced back to the hallway..to Devraj’s condescension and the way he’d said he had already taken care of the business he was here for.
"She’s a vixen! A nymph!" Deepak’s voice grew hoarse, "I got obsessed the second I saw her! I’m sure that’s how she does it...she traps men. Makes them go crazy until they’d die just for a taste. I want her so bad... I’d give anything. I’d sell my soul to have her."
For a long moment, silence hung between them, broken only by the muffled bass of the club.
Then, Samar started to laugh.
It wasn't a sound of joy; it was a dark, melodic rumble that echoed with years of hatred.
His grey eye flashed with a terrifying light as he looked down at the pathetic, worn-out heap of a man beside him.
"Is that so?" Samar said, his laughter dying down into a chilling smirk. "You want her, and Devraj has her. It seems, Deepak... we finally have a common enemy. And I think I know exactly how to make both our dreams come true."
"Do you have a picture of her?" He asked.
Deepak nodded frantically. He fumbled with his phone, his hands shaking so much he nearly dropped it.
His lock screen lit up, revealing Ira’s face, but he quickly swiped past it to his gallery.
He tapped on a specific photo, one where Ira was caught mid-laugh, her green eyes bright and her red hair glowing like embers in the sun.
He held the screen out to Samar.
Samar froze. He had expected a pretty girl, maybe a model or a socialite, but the woman in the photo had a raw, natural magnetism that seemed to pull the air right out of the room.
He stared deep into her eyes, his own clouded eye tracing the curves of her face on the screen.
If this woman was enough to make the Lion of Rathore drive all the way to the slums just to bark a warning...
Samar abruptly jerked his gaze away, his heart thudding with a rhythm he hadn't felt in years.
I see why he’s obsessed.. he thought, a dark thrill running through him.
He looked back at Deepak, a smirk stretching across his scarred face.
"What if I help you get her? What do you say to that, boy?"
Deepak looked up, his eyes wide with a desperate, pathetic hope.
"Y... you will? You’d really help me take her back?"
Samar didn't bother to answer. He didn't need to explain that he wasn't doing this for Deepak’s benefit.
He simply stood up, the leather of his chair creaking, and patted Deepak’s shoulder with a mock-friendly heaviness.
"Drink as much as you want tonight.." Samar said, "You’re going to need the liquid courage for what’s coming."
Without another word, Samar walked away, his boots echoing against the floor as he exited the VVIP room and stepped into the dim, neon-lit hallway.
He leaned against the wall for a second..
"Ira..." he whispered into the shadows. A chilling smirk spread across his lips as he thought of Devraj’s proud, arrogant face.
"This should be fun. I’m going to bring you to your knees, Devraj. And I’m going to use your own heart to do it."
~??~?~??~
Kunal walked down the corridor, the weight of the day’s disasters making every step feel heavy.
His phone vibrated in his pocket...a soft beep that broke the oppressive silence of the house. He stopped, pulling it out to see a notification from Ira.
"I hope you are okay? If something is wrong, you can always talk to me... Love you. Goodnight."
A small smile finally broke through his mask of stress. She was his anchor, the only pure thing left in a day full of shadows.
But then, the memory of Devraj’s voice on Ira's phone...possessive, and mocking...flashed through his mind.
His eyes darkened, the warmth vanishing.
"I don't like him... not one bit.." he mumbled to himself, his jaw tightening as he pocketed his phone and continued toward his father’s study.
He pushed the door open to find his father hunched over his desk, flipping through a thick file under the harsh glow of a desk lamp.
His glasses were perched on the bridge of his nose, and he looked like he had aged five years in a single afternoon.
"Papa..." Kunal called out softly.
His father looked up, letting out a heavy sigh as he removed his glasses and tossed them onto the desk.
"Kunal? The deal... the one we spent months securing... it’s been frozen. Every asset, every ledger...locked."
Kunal sat down opposite him, leaning forward with desperate energy.
"I’m trying to sort the issue, Papa. I don’t know how they managed to freeze it so quickly. The investors... we can handle it if they walk, but that contract is the backbone of this entire quarter.."
His father leaned back, his face etched with a grim sort of resignation.
"I’ve already reached out. I sent an urgent inquiry to the entity that froze the assets. They just replied."
Kunal nodded quickly, his mind already racing. "Okay, Papa. I’ll handle the correspondence. I’ll see to–"
"Let me finish." his father interrupted, Kunal went still, sensing the shift in the air.
"The reply was very specific.." his father continued, his gaze pinning Kunal to the chair. "You won't be handling this from behind a desk. You will be going to the Rathore Empire tomorrow morning. Person to person."
Kunal’s stomach dropping into a cold pit.
"What? The Rathores? Why, Papa?" Kunal asked.
"Because Devraj Singh Rathore is the one who froze the contract.." his father said, the name sounding like a death knell in the quiet room.
Kunal surged to his feet, the chair scraping harshly against the floor.
"What? Why? How is that even possible? That contract wasn't anywhere near the Rathore portfolio. They have no jurisdiction over those assets!"
His father let out a long, weary sigh, the sound of a man who understood the brutal reality of the food chain they lived in.
"You, of all people, should know how deep the Rathore roots go, Kunal. Their branches are everywhere, invisible until they decide to strangle you." He stood up.
He walked around the desk, stopping in front of Kunal to place a heavy cautionary hand on his shoulder.
"I’ve already sent a reply to Devraj Singh Rathore himself.
He claims he wants to understand why this contract is so vital to our operations before he considers releasing the hold.
I told him you would be at his office tomorrow morning to explain it personally.
I suggest you get your head in the game, Kunal. Because..."
He looked deep into Kunal’s eyes, "We cannot lose this. If this contract stays frozen, this company doesn't just stumble..it drops into the bottomless pit. We will lose everything."
Without another word, his father walked out of the study, leaving Kunal standing in the suffocating silence.
Kunal’s fists clenched so hard his knuckles turned white, the nails biting into his palms.
"That devil..." he hissed through gritted teeth, his chest heaving with a mixture of terror and rage. "He’s doing this on purpose. He’s pulling the strings just to see me crawl."
He stared at the wall, his mind racing through the events of the day...the phone call, the date comment, the sudden freeze.
"What kind of obsessive, crazy man is he?"