“Where are you taking Amaal at 12 in the night?” He took a seat on the dining table chair because he was still not strong enough to hold himself up in half-sleep.
“Secretariat.”
“Why?”
“Ok, you two can talk like I do not exist. I’m going to sleep. Feel free to leave when your party for two is over. Goodnight.” She reached for her pillow and shawl when Samar got to his feet — “Sit, Amaal.”
“You sit,” she snarled.
“Sit,” Atharva ordered, silencing them. “Both of you.”
They turned to him, and he glared. “Now.”
Samar trudged back to his chair and sat down, and Amaal moved her bedding aside to sit on the sofa, as far away from Samar as possible.
“Decide how you will do this,” Atharva ordered her. “But I want Saba first thing tomorrow morning. And when I’m done with her, she is out.”
Amaal sighed. Another human resource nightmare. But first she needed to know what had happened. If it was as Atharva said, then it was also a security nightmare. Saba knew too much about their party, their leaders, and some about Iram, too, to be dropped off like that.
“It’s not that easy.”
“The alternative is to keep her in my office, my secretariat, around my family knowing that she let Iram leave and never uttered a word? What were her intentions?”
“Not good, that I guarantee,” Amaal sliced him a look.
“What do you mean?”
“You know very well what I mean.”
Saba was their PR Associate, and had taken up a lot of the Press Secretary duties while Amaal had been busy with Samar. But it was an open secret that she was found more often around Atharva than she was supposed to be. It was clear as day to most people who worked with her. How had Atharva been so clueless?
“You can’t mean that!”
“It’s a possibility.”
Atharva scoffed and turned towards Samar, as if he would have a different opinion. Amaal doubted it. Samar was as low on EQ as men could get. Sometimes even lower.
“Iram told you this?” Samar asked.
“If you evenimplythat she is lying…”
“No, I didn’t mean that. I was just asking.”
Amaal let out a quiet sigh. Crisis averted.
“What reason do you think she had, Amaal?” Samar eyed her.
“It’s a bullshit reason.” Atharva intervened. “Maybe she is working for Sayyid Butt… How did I not think about this earlier?”
“She is not.” Amaal asserted.
“And how are you so sure?”
“We run regular background checks plus deep dives on each of our staff members. You know it. You get the reports. After Iram, audits were run on each. It came clean.”
“So you say she did this out of some misplaced heartbreak?”
“Heartbreak?” Samar piped in. “At your hands?”
