Deviant (A Kabir/Pooja FF)

Chapter fourteen

Dhruv drove his bike slowly. 

He had lost sight of his quarry. 

Where did Pooja disappear? She was just ahead of him few moments ago. How can she just vanish off the curve?

Dhruv stopped his bike near a clump of trees, and killed the engine. Did Pooja take a detour somewhere? But it doesn't seem possible that she would find an alternate route, on this road. 

"That's not possible" whispered Dhruv to himself. 

"You are right, that's not possible" said a voice behind him.

Before Dhruv could turn, a rope looped around his neck, pulling him to the tree. Dhruv struggled with it, but he was taken unawares, clearly his captor had an advantage. He felt the rope loosening, but that was a trick. The rope slipped down his neck, over his arms, and was tightened somewhere around his waist. Before Dhruv could even realize what was happening, he looked down at himself, firmly tied to the tree. 

"And so we meet again. Finally. How are you my-not-so-real-ex-husband?" came Pooja's lofty voice, as she walked from behind to stand before his eyes. 

Wiping a drop of sweat above her brow, she said, "You know I expected that living like middle-class people for the past two months, you must have lost some weight, but that doesn't seem likely. It was quite a heavy task dragging you and tying you to this tree."

"Pooja!" Dhruv screamed in rage. He seemed too blinded by rage to form any coherent sentences.

"Softly, please! I am not deaf you know" mocked Pooja. "And neither am I blind or stupid. Tell me why were you following me today? In fact, start from the beginning, why did you hire those goons to attack me? What was the big idea?" 

Dhruv's shock at Pooja's words, clearly gave away the truth.

Pooja smirked. She had guessed as much. 

"Dear, dear, what did Dhruv babu think? That he will abduct Jahnvi, and punish her for making a fool out of him?" said Pooja in a sing-song voice.

Dhruv started struggling against his ropes. 

He didn't care about confessing to the crime, that moment had long gone by. All he cared about was erasing that mocking smirk from her face, making her yell in pain, feel the agony that he had been suffering for the last two months. 

"Calm down" said Pooja, authoritatively, all trace of laughter gone from her face. "Now listen to me very carefully, Dhruv. I know you very well. You will dream up some immature plan to get even with me, but if you remember your goons, you will see that I will escape unscathed, whereas you wouldn't be so lucky. This time the goons didn't know who hired them, smart of you to use an intermediary, frankly I wouldn't have expected you to be that intelligent. But if you continue doing such stupid things, spying on the office, stalking me, following my car, you are only going to land yourself in trouble. And your family has had it's share of trouble, hasn't it?"

"All thanks to you. Why do you care? You brought all that trouble upon us, you ruined our family" shouted Dhruv.

"It was a repayment. For killing my father, ruining my and Rani's childhood" said Pooja. 

"And what about me? What did I do to deserve this? My father killed your father, but what was my mistake in all this?" asked Dhruv, in an anguished voice.

"Your fault was that you are PK Mittal's son. I had to avenge my father's murder, and for that I had to do what I had to do. It's your bad luck that you happened to be my road to achieving my goal" said Pooja.