Dare to Hope | Heir & Heiress #2 | ✓

2.48 His Shield

Posted on: December 09th, 2019

Randeep

"What are you doing here?"

I push off the wall adjacent to the room where Narayan Raichand had been kept. I perk a brow at my cousin, "You think you're the only one with access to security monitors?"

Aarush catches on that I watched his conversation with Jhanvi - and no, I have no qualms about listening in and neither will I apologize for it. In the past couple of days, he's given me plenty reasons to be concerned about him and I'd be damned if I let him go about this himself. Even if the security monitors did not register audio, it didn't mean that I couldn't read lips off a clip.

When it looks like he'll argue about this arrangement, I interrupt his thought process, "Save it, bhai sa. It might have worked on Jhanvi, but not on me. No way in hell am I letting you do this by yourself. So, let's just go in and get it over with."

He debates internally for a moment before sighing and nodding at the guards standing in front of the door to leave before taking the only key that opens the door and putting it in the keyhole. Narayan Raichand looks up from a magazine he is reading, entertaining himself, while seated on a plush, comfortable sofa. He should be rotting in a jail cell - not looking like he is having the time of his life with all the luxuries the world has to offer... even if the door was locked. I get the feeling that he would have stayed in the room even if the door hadn't been locked in the name of self-preservation. The man knew - he was safe within the walls here. If he had escaped, the people he had been running from his whole life would find him. It would have only been a matter of time.

Narayan's eyes land on Aarush. Then, he puts the magazine away. "I'm sure this isn't a social call. So..." He stands up. "Where does it start? Threats? Torture?"

Aarush steps up, letting the door click shut behind me, while crossing his arms over his chest. "Sit." Without so much as a grumble in protest, the man twice our age listens and sits back down. "You are going to tell us everything you know. From the starting."

"There isn't much." He fesses up easily. It sounds as if he has rehearsed this in his head. He's certainly had plenty of time to figure out exactly what to say - knowing that we'd get to him eventually. "As I've told you, I don't know any names. I've never met anyone. I started getting threat messages a few years after we shifted to Mumbai. Always a different number. And if it was sent through a parcel, then stamps would be from all over the place. The death threats..."

Hmm... stamps. There were few on that envelope that I had gotten from Aarush. They were from that guy... what was his name? Jhanvi's ex-fiancé. It could be another start. Possibly a way to get some fingerprints of whoever put the stamps on those mails.

"....started soon after and I knew it was time to disappear. Kaveri and Dinesh... well, that was just perfect timing. She would have never agreed to leave, so I made a plan to disappear with Jhanvi. But then that insolent Raizada child interfered and ruined everything."

That is news. No, not Aarav's involvement, but the earlier part. "You planned on taking Jhanvi with you."

He lets out a scoff, "Don't go on to believing I care for her. She was a means to an end I would have used at the right time. Once Kaveri and Dinesh had paid for their betrayal and I would have been pardoned for marrying out of royalty, I would have been the beneficiary to the Raichand estate."

What a bastard. I watch Aarush clench his jaw to not march up and give him a beating for his sick and devoid personality, Thankfully, he keeps his reaction to a minimal as if understanding the need to shift focus away from Jhanvi and towards the people he claims to be scared of.