Vodka on the rocks

Realisations [Ft. Vijay Deshmukh]

Vijay Deshmukh looked around himself with unfocused eyes. The courtyard of his house looked akin to the scattered remains of a battlefield after a terrifying bloodbath. He saw the people, of some who where his family and some he had adamantly refused to call his own, at various states of unrest and distress. They were sitting on the steps, like numb players of an unwilling theatre, leaning against pillars, as if unable to hold their own weight and propped against the walls unresponsive in the massive blow they had received unannounced.

He had barely registered when the police had come and had taken away the dead body of his son. Was he even his son? Was that man Mandaar? The innocent little boy who hated loud sounds and couldn't harm even a fly..? Was he this.. this monster? A man who had no qualms about pushing his own mother off the roof? Who remained unfazed even as he pressed the blade against the throat of the woman who he supposedly loved? He felt his head spin and he caught his temples grinding it and tried to shake the images of that.. that imposter's bloody face off his brain.

It was a grisly sight to be fair. The face had got majorly disfigured due to the closeness of the shot and the place where he had been shot. The bullet had lodged below the nose and above the lips cutting off the sensory ganglion synapses of his hands immediately so that he couldn't even move his hand for a second more.

Raghav Rao was a man not to be taken lightly.

After all the man had a reputation of being an experienced and ruthless fighter. There was no martial art technique he didn't know, no weapon he couldn't wield, no target he couldn't hit. Yet what most people (other than a few unfortunate sods who had the misfortune of standing up against him) and Mandaar didn't know that firearms where his speciality. The man was universally acknowledged as a notorious dead shot in the murky circles of dirty corporate politics. Raghav could hit a perfect round in the exact centre of a forehead from fifteen metres at best even when the wind flows opposite. Hitting the exact spot where he knew would render his rival's sensations inert so that he couldn't harm his hostage from a meagre distance of five feet was hilariously easy.

Of course the point being that the hostage held at knifepoint by the psycho was his wife, the woman he couldn't see wincing from a hurt toe without getting frantic let alone a knife, sure played majorly with his otherwise level headed nerves. He had to pretend that he would acquiesce to Mandaar's orders and shoot himself to distract the said man enough to be able to aim his gun mentally at the exact place he wanted to hit before he could physically do it and shoot. It was a hugely risky decision knowing that Pallavi could have gotten seriously injured had he not aimed perfectly but there was no other option.

Vijay had seen the minute expressions of terror and subsequent agony flash on Pallavi's ashen face before blood sprouted out in a torrential flow drenching her frame preceded by a deafening gun shot which made a few of the spectators scream in fright.

Mandaar staggered back and dropped like a dead weight on the floor making Vijay's knees topple without permission as well. The people around them were too shocked to even notice him dropping on the cot beside which his paralysed wife was propped on the wheelchair. He couldn't move his eyes from the sight in front, try as he might. He saw Raghav still clutching at the smoking firearm for dear life looking at his so... Mandaar. He saw Pallavi standing still like a marble statue, face half covered in his so... in Mandaar's blood, most probably shocked into inaction.

They weren't even given a chance to recover before Raghav's secretary whatsisname Farhad, dragged in the cops behind him. They took charge of the situation admirably and took away the body to the forensics.

Pallavi had by then walked towards the side and had seated herself on the steps of the courtyard looking seemingly unfazed. Vijay was worried. Yes, he was surprised himself that even after knowing about such a heart breaking secret, even after seeing his not-son Mandaar die.. get killed before his eyes.. he found himself worrying for that girl.