Guilty Pleasures

53

"She came like his saving grace; and she left with his heart before he was even ready to say those very words."

Raghav Rao sat in the depths of his Den; the moons rays dipping in to highlight his chiselled jaw whilst also providing light for her mark that lay at the base of his neck to shine through the half opened robe he had hardly tied.

He leaned back with his fingers playing with the orange card that had been slipped between the works of the clock; poking out like a sore thumb yet it had been commissioned in such away that only he would catch. His eyes followed over the words; before moving to look towards his phone screen that had a similar threat threaded between the hollow words. He breathed an exasperated sigh; his mind working endlessly as he tried to decode the face behind the violence filled words that had been messily engraved into piece of card.

He knew he had many enemies; hell he could no longer count them on his fingers; but he knew not of the many wanting and waiting to extract their revenge because Raghav Rao had always played to win. Played to destroy to the point that rendered every opponent into nothing more than smithereens. He had a habit of being thorough: of destroying people to the point that they would never be able to look him back in the eye once more and so as he leaned back he rummaged through names but one refused to slip from his mind.

Sheru Pandit.

It was dumb; he knew. Lacked logic however the staging of events had him now doubting that perhaps the death he witnessed was nothing more but a set up. Nowadays it was too easy; to stop your pulse using drugs; to fake the reality of death by staging such.

He rubbed a hand over his face; his mind delving back into a past that he had long wanted to let rest; trying to search for a loophole; anything.

And as he turned to rest his head against the head rest; his eyes closing; he let himself be haunted by the gunshots once more; the sound of struggled words and breaths meetings his ears once more, which had resulted in the hairs standing on the end of his neck. He allowed himself to hear the cries of a family he had met a handful of times; the painful howls they omitted; and then Raghav Rao had shot forth.

Because a looming reality had begun to haunt him: he had never seen Sheru's body after it had been shifted to the morgue; and on the funeral day his family had insisted that he be wrapped in a white sheet that shouldn't be removed as they gave him Agni.

And now Raghav had found his loophole; yet his eyes had widened in nothing but disbelief because it had meant everything was a lie.

It had meant that Sheru: a man he had considered a brother above all had been betraying him from the very outset and now had arisen as nothing more than a ghost story to ensure that the past remained buried.

And looking at the name signed messily at the end of the card; he pieced together another memory he had long hoped he had buried alongside his comrades: for Lion had been a code name Raghav had given him for undercover operations a name that incorporated his real one: Sher.

He cursed loudly with his hands hitting the base of his desk loudly; and his uneasy mind has increased in tenfold; his eyes scurrying back and forth as the depths of his chest cavity heaved in laboured manner.

He forced himself out of the chair stumbling over his own feet whilst memorise of his past; of a time where he had bled yet somehow survived came to the forefront of his mind. He could still faintly feel the arm of Sheru that had been wrapped around his shoulders one night when they had drunk silly; howling in laughter; passing jokes and teasing each other like no other.

And Raghav then collapsed to the floor; with the weight of betrayal eating away at his already battered soul: Sheru was his closest confide; someone who had kept him afloat when his mother and sister had abandoned him; a hand that had never let him shed the shroud of his humanity stating that it was the biggest source of light within him; one that would shine through and remain victorious.