Terrorized By Love [ON HOLD]

Chapter 4: Curiosity Killed the Cat

Aditya Velhankar was his real name, while Dev Gupta was his alias. When he was taken away by the terrorists at his tender age, they raised him to be one of them.

He was filled with hate and vengeance against the people of the country. He was turned against the same mother who brought him up and raised him.

"Your mother killed your father. She's a whore, a prostitute. She slept around with men," Mahendra, the head of the terrorist organization told him. "Do you even know what she has done?"

He was young and naive, and although he cried and said he still wanted his mother, they managed to succeed in filling his ears with hate.

Over time, his emotions died, and he felt like he was lost. He was trained and taught to use a gun. He was assigned small tasks like starting commotions at local pubs, trying to spread the name of HRIM, the name of their organization. Nobody knew what it meant.

This was his first major task.

He was assigned to kidnap the President's daughter. On the back end, HRIM would attempt to contact the President and pass threats. If the President didn't obey their commands, then Aditya himself would need to kill Mahima.

He changed his name just for this mission, to take extra precaution. Dev Gupta was such a common name, that it wouldn't pose a problem. If the name of Aditya Velhankar got out, then it could threaten their mission.

Earlier, when Mahima said her name, Aditya paused for a moment, because of a distant memory from his childhood. A young girl who used to call him her Adi. He had almost forgotten his childhood memories, because the organization had turned him against everything about his past, but there was something so soothing about this girl, who he remembered was also named Mahima, that he couldn't ever forget her.

Her name was Mahima Godse though, and this girl in front of him was named Mahima Ashtikar.

He was trained very well, so the faint sound of her footsteps had woken him and he grabbed his gun before she could, and pointed it straight at her face, as a defense mechanism.

She looked frightened, and he lowered the gun.

"Don't come near this gun," he warned. "It's dangerous."

She nodded, looking shaken.

"I - I was curious," she mumbled.

"Curiosity killed the cat," he warned.

Mahima sat on the ground next to the bed, and watched as Aditya, who she knew as Dev, laid back down on the hard bed.

"Isn't that uncomfortable?" she asked him.

He turned to look at her.

"I'm used to it," he said gruffly, and looked back up at the ceiling before closing his eyes.

"Where do I sleep?" she then asked him.

"On the ground," he informed.

Mahima frowned.

"But surely the President wouldn't let you make me sleep on the floor!" Mahima argued.

Aditya sat up and glared at her darkly. She cowered under his dark gaze and gulped.

"Fine... I'll sleep on the ground," she murmured.

Aditya just ignored her and laid back down, before easily falling back asleep. Mahima on the other hand, tossed and turned on the ground, trying to get some sleep, but unable to. For the last 12 years of her life, she had only been sleeping on soft and comfortable beds.

It would take a while for her to get used to this again.

"Dev?" Mahima murmured in the middle of the night.

Aditya groaned and opened his eyes.

"What?" he asked her.

"What are we in danger from?" Mahima asked. "Is it terrorists?"

"Yes," Aditya replied. "Go to sleep."

Mahima closed her eyes and tried to sleep again, but once again she couldn't.

"Why do they do it? Create terror I mean?" Mahima asked, irritating Aditya some more. "It's such a wrong thing to do."

Aditya ignored her and tried to go to sleep.

"I hate terrorists," Mahima said.

She lost people who were close to her because of them. They killed her parents, and her Rani Aunty.

"Will you shut up or would you like me to make you?" he asked her darkly.

"How would you make me?" she asked him curiously.

He lifted his head from the bed and looked down at her, pointing his gun down at her lying figure.

"All I need to do is pull this trigger," he threatened.

"You wouldn't!" she gasped.

"Do you want to test me?" he asked her, raising his eyebrows and making her second guess herself.