There wasa new family group that had appeared on his messaging app. Kabir stared at the title. The Shit Stirrers. He didn’t even need to ask anyone to know that Rehan had created it. His finger hovered over the ‘Exit Group’ icon. His gaze scrolled a few inches above to the list of contacts on the group. And there she was…Tani Bug.
Before he could tap and exit the group, someone cleared their voice behind him. Kabir glanced over his shoulder to see his manager, Varsha, standing there.
“Is it done?”
“Not really.” Varsha looked uncomfortable, which was saying something. Varsha, on her worst day, was the shark the other sharks feared. Nothing made her uncomfortable but mostly because she didn’t believe anything comfortable was worth having.
“What does that mean?” he asked, dropping his phone on the table and facing her, his heart starting a dull throb in his chest, anxiety flaring in a burst of heat.
“She wants to meet you.”
His heart stuttered. “That’s not going to happen.” He turned away from her and walked towards the window of his hotel suite.
Plush, luxurious, opulent…empty, soulless, cold. How had everything he’d ever wanted become the cage he couldn’t escape.
“Kabir.” Varsha sounded disquieted as she came up behind him. “I think you need to meet her.”
“No.” He kept his gaze on the ocean in the distance, the only saving grace of this hotel room.
“She’s dying, Kabir.”
He watched a ship on the distant horizon, lights winking in the approaching dusk.
“Is she?” he asked, his voice cold and cruel.
“Is that all you’re going to say?”
“You’re right,” he said brightly, turning to smile at his confused manager. “I should say more. How about good riddance to bad rubbish?”
He walked past her to the stocked bar and pulled out a bottle of scotch. “This calls for a celebration.” He cracked the bottle open and held it over a glass. “Two fingers?” he asked, a cocky grin gracing his lips.
Varsha just watched him, clearly unimpressed by his little performance. “She’s your aunt, Kabir,” she said finally. “Your father’s sister. Surely you feel something for her?”
“She tried to kill me,” he told her, holding her gaze as he poured himself a lot more than two fingers of scotch. “On my fifteenth birthday. I won’t bore you with the details but I will say, you’re right. I do feel something for her.”
He bared his teeth, a savage grin that had her taking a step back. “I loathe her. If she really is dying, then I hope it’s the most vile, painful death any human could suffer from, and I do mean suffer. I want her to die screaming in agony and then, when she reaches hell to take her place there, I hope she relives that death for eternity.”
A brief, shocked silence fell before Varsha recovered from it. “And yet, you’ve been paying her off for years, buying her silence.”
He drained his glass and placed it down on the table, the gentle clink resounding in the quiet of the room.
“Her silence was worth it,” he said quietly.
“If her silence was worth the crores you’ve shelled out, then maybe what she has to say has value too.”
The words landed with weight that felt like it would drag him under. His world closing in around him, suffocating and terrifying.
“Maybe,” Varsha said now, hesitantly, “it’s time to bring in your family.”
“No.” The refusal was immediate. “My family must never know.” Panic clawed at his throat.
“Kabir,” Varsha sighed. “They can help.”
“They’ve done enough.” The words snapped out of him like a whip cracking. They had done more, much more than enough. They had done everything to shield him from his past. Now, it was his turn, to shield, to protect.
His phone pinged. The new group was active.
Reh: The old people are saying we need to get wedding ready soon.
