In the Name of Love – Chapter 30

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A man with a wounded arm was lying in an empty room. He opened his eyes with a lot of difficulty and felt immense pain in his arm. He let out a soft groan.

Just then, the door was thrown open, and in entered Pathak, having a grim expression plastered across his face.

“How are you feeling now, Sunny?”

“Much better,” mumbled the injured man.

Pathak said, “You have done a great favour by taking the bullet that was actually meant for me.” He grasped Sunny’s hands in his. “I lost my assistant in the gunshot, I could also lose my life in it as well. But you saved me. I’ll never forget this.”

“I just did my duty, Boss,” said Sunny slowly.

“I’ve always underestimated your loyalty towards me. But not anymore. Once you get well soon, I’ll assign a very important place to you in my gang,” said Pathak. “Take care until then.”

After he left, Sunny smirked thinking of how everything was going as per Vansh’s plan.

Vansh’s personal sniper had shot two bullets. One was meant for Pathak’s assistant, aimed straight at his chest, thus killing him instantly. The other bullet was aimed at Sunny’s arm, so that he’d get only minorly injured.

But to the onlookers, it seemed like that the second bullet was meant for Pathak, and that Sunny saved him by coming in the front and taking it onto himself instead.

Now, Pathak had no option other than to start trusting Sunny completely, and hopefully, he’d give him the position of his new assistant.
That way, Sunny would be able to get closer to Pathak, and then, he’d soon find out about the person who was passing on all the confidential information about Vansh’s business to Pathak.

A perfect, perfect plan indeed!
______________________________________

Riddhima was nervously pacing around in her room. Apparently, her best friend, Ashima’s maid had mistakenly thrown her important notes away. With the exams starting from the day after tomorrow, Ashima decided to get xerox copies of Riddhima’s notes. And for that, she was planning to come to VR Mansion in about an hour.

But there was a problem. Riddhima had not yet revealed to her or anyone else from the college about her engagement. And she had no plans of doing something like that too.

Riddhima thought, “If someone from the house blurts out to Ashima about me being already engaged, then Ashima being her regular self, would spread the news like fire to the entire college.

“And after that, my reputation of being a topper and an ambitious student would get tarnished. I mean why wouldn’t they make fun of that one girl who said some really big words at the time of orientation about fulfilling her dreams, and instead got engaged to get married in her first year of college itself?
What would all my teachers say, especially when they had already warned all the girl students before itself to not think of marriage until their studies get completed?

“No..no…no! I’ll do anything, but won’t let Ashima learn the truth. But for that, I’d have to keep her away from the rest of the family as much as possible.”

Just then, she heard Ashima’s voice coming from downstairs.

“Oh no! She’s already here!” She picked up the required notes and ran down to meet her.

“Riddhima!” Ashima squealed on meeting her friend after a whole twelve days.

Riddhima hugged her back. It felt nice to be meeting her after such a long time.

“Whoa, you lucky girl! You get to stay at such a magnificent place,” said Ashima looking all around her in awe.

“Let’s go to my room and chat there, okay?” said Riddhima. All she wanted was for them to reach her room quickly without anyone else catching them before that.

But unluckily for her, Gayatri arrived at the scene just then.
“Riddhima, won’t you introduce your friend to me?”

Riddhima bit her lip. This was what she had been dreading since the past one hour or so.

After all introduction was done, Riddhima tried to take her friend to her room, but Gayatri instead convinced them to sit in the living room itself.

“Even I want to talk to your friend,” said Gayatri gesturing the girls to sit on the sofa.
They started discussing about random stuff.

Riddhima was hoping that the topic of her engagement wouldn’t be broached upon, when Vansh entered out of nowhere.

“Vansh, you arrived at absolutely correct time. Look, who’s here to visit us. It’s our Riddhima’s best friend,” said Gayatri.

“Hi,” he greeted.

Ashima kept staring at Vansh, completely wonder-struck by his exceptionally good looks and overall persona.
“Haaye!” she said dreamily.

“Excuse me?”

Riddhima nudged her and she came back to reality.

“Uh oh. I meant hi!” said Ashima, still admiring him.

Riddhima who noticed all this felt quite envious.

Ashima whispered into Riddhima’s ears, “Oh God! I had no idea that you were living with such a hot man. Why are you so lucky?”

“Shut up! You don’t have to act crazy every freaking time you encounter a good looking man,” Riddhima murmured.

Ashima grasped Riddhima’s hands suddenly. “Please set me up with him. I’d do anything you say in return.”

“What? No!” Riddhima blurted out which was loud enough to be heard by Gayatri and Vansh. She returned their questioning stares with a reassuring smile.

“He is NOT single,” mumbled Riddhima.

“Why do all the handsome guys in the world have to be married?”

“He has a fiancee,” said Riddhima trying hard to suppress the attitude in her tone. “And soon will get married to her.”

Ashima’s face fell. All the guys she had taken interest in were either booked before hands, or otherwise showed interest in her bestfriend instead. Why was life so unfair?

“Fine. But if he ever breaks up with that witch, then you’d have to only tell me once, and I’ll come running behind to mend his broken heart.”

Riddhima pinched her hard and Ashima let out a scream.

Vansh and Gayatri were taken aback.
“What happened?” they asked.

Ashima saw Riddhima glaring at her and said meekly, “Nothing. I think some insect must have bitten me.”

Gayatri cleared her throat. “Ashima, you know about Vansh and…..?”

Riddhima interrupted, “Yes, yes! She knows that. I told her everything.”

Ashima thought that they were talking about Vansh not being single for now.
“Oh yes, she told me all about it. Every girl isn’t lucky enough to have a good fortune,” she said making a sad face.

Vansh thought to himself, “What are these girls even talking about? I should have known that a crazy girl like Riddhima would have only crazy friends around her.”

He said out aloud, “How long have you known Riddhima?”

“Since high school. And thank goodness we got admission into the same medical college, or else it’d have been difficult for me to survive without her,” said Ashima.
“Do you have any idea how she saved me from ragging on our first day of college?”

Vansh raised his eyebrows at her. “Ragging?”

Ashima continued, “Yes! One of the senior guys asked me to dance to an item song in front of everyone. When Riddhima came to my help, he ordered her to polish his shoes.
But our Riddhima, she stuck glue on his shoes instead, causing him to fall flat on his face and thus made him the laughing stock in front of the entire college!”

Vansh started getting angry. How dare someone misbehave with his Riddhima like that?

“What’s that senior’s name?” he asked sternly.

Riddhima observed the changing expressions across Vansh’s face, and understood that his possessiveness for her was getting to his head.

She cut Ashima midway. “What’s in a name? Besides, that incident took place quite a long time ago…”

“Our Riddhima is such a brave girl,” said Gayatri proudly.

Ashima excitedly said, “Spot on! Let me narrate you another incident where the owner of a local recharge booth used to send vulgar messages to Riddhima at night….”

Riddhima slammed her hand against her head.
“Why is this Ashima hell bound on relating my memoirs of bravery? God knows what this Vansh will end up doing now. What if he decides to teach them a lesson just like how he did with….Neil?” she thought in shudder.

“Just give me the name and address of that leech, I’ll handle him in my way,” Vansh gritted under his teeth.

“But Riddhima has already sorted that problem out,” said Ashima. “The police came and shut his booth down.”

Gayatri clicked her tongue. “What has the world come to? It’s becoming so difficult for young girls to even venture out for the purpose of mere education even.”

Ashima started her rant again. “Exactly, Nani. And the worst part being, even educated and married men behave like this. There is a professor in our college who leers at the girls….”

Riddhima looked towards Vansh. His face had turned red with temper, and his eyes were blazing.

“WHO is that professor?” he asked in a dangerous tone.

Riddhima tried to stop her friend, but it was too late.

“He hasn’t taken any of our classes yet. He’ll be teaching us in second year apparently. But God knows how will we face him during Viva,” said Ashima.

“Enough of all this, Ashima. I think you should take my notes and get them xeroxed ASAP. We have only one day in between for the exam, and I need my notes back real quick too,” said Riddhima sternly.

Vansh angrily marched from there.

“He will definitely try to do something now,” thought Riddhima.
______________________________________

Vansh was in his bedroom, trying to dial up the Principal.

“Good evening Dr. Awasthi! This is Vansh Raisinghania. Actually, there’s something really important that I wanted to discuss with you. Supposedly, there’s a professor who teaches Forensic Medicine to the students and his behaviour with the girls is…..”

But before he could complete his sentence, Riddhima snatched the phone from his hands and disconnected the call.

“What the hell!” he shouted.

Riddhima looked at him pointedly. “Vansh, you are so damn predictable. I knew that you’d try to do something of this sort. Why don’t you stop interfering in my affairs for once at least?”

“I am your fiance, and your safety is my responsibility,” remarked Vansh. “And I can never let you face such a disgusting man! I’ll make sure that the professor gets suspended and also his medical license gets cancelled. And whoever that senior was who tried to bully you, I won’t leave him too. As for that bastard who tried to send you lewd messages, I’d personally take care of him.”

“Just stop this madness, Vansh. I am not some damsel in distress who constantly needs her knight in shining armour to protect her. I can deal with my problems by myself, in fact, I’ve taught all my trouble-makers a very good lesson in my very own way.
As far as that professor is concerned, he can stare at me how much ever he wants, but he won’t ever be able to cross his boundaries with me, and you know that. There are so many men who ogle at me on my way to college, we can’t possibly punish and beat all of them up. And not only me, but every other girl goes through the same problems everyday….”

Vansh cupped her face and brought it closer to his, so much so that she could feel his breath. “I don’t care what happens to other girls, but I just cannot let anything like this to happen with YOU, Riddhima.”

Riddhima stared back into Vansh’s eyes motionless. Don’t know why, but she always felt paralysed and helpless under his intense gaze.

Just then, Gayatri barged inside the bedroom and saw the couple completely lost in one another. She coughed to bring their attention towards herself.

Vansh and Riddhima appeared clearly flushed, and they hurriedly moved away from each other.

“I am so sorry, I’d have knocked and come had I known Riddhima was here, too,” laughed Gayatri.

“I was just trying to explain something to her,” said Vansh looking away and avoiding meeting his granny’s teasing eye.

“I see, my Vansh is really good at ‘explaining’ things. I’m sure at this rate, you’ll soon be able to understand everything easily, Riddhima,” said Gayatri. “Carry on with your ‘explaining’, I won’t disturb you both anymore.”
She winked at them and shut the door tight from outside.

“Dadi I tell you!” Vansh muttered under his breath.

“Let her be. We’ve other things to talk about,” said Riddhima folding her arms.
Her expressions softened. “Vansh, I know what you feel about me. But your possessiveness, I just can’t take it anymore. It makes me feel suffocated.”

“If getting concerned for you and ensuring you are safe and sound suffocates you, so be it,” said Vansh.

“And what if I do something similar with you, too? There might be quite a few women at your workplace too, who wouldn’t miss the opportunity of staring and crushing on you. So do you want me to come along and sack them off in an instant?” Riddhima tried to reason out.

“Since you’re my fiancee, I’d willingly let you do that,” said Vansh softly. “But, you should understand that a woman’s stare is relatively harmless when compared to a man’s.
We might go around shouting slogans about gender equality, and I’m totally for it, but the hard truth being that there will always be this uncrossable barrier between the two s*xes.”

Riddhima sighed. It was impossible to ever win an argument with Vansh. He knew how to steer any conversation in a specific direction that’d unfavourably guarantee him the last word.

Just then, they heard a knock. It was one of the manservants.

“Madam, your friend asked me to return these notes to you.”

“Thank you.” Facing Vansh, she said, “We’ll have a detailed talk on gender equality later. But for now, I am busy.”

“Of course, there are many things pending,” Vansh brought his lips close to her ears. “Like our dinner date for example.”

Riddhima flashed him a smile and left from there.
Once in her bedroom, she took out her notes and started reading from them, when suddenly, a loose paper fell down from them.

It read :

Vansh is not as trustworthy as he seems. There are many more dark secrets that he’s hiding from you. Love is often touted to be blind, but hopefully you’d be able to keep your eyes wide open.

–ACP Lakshya

Riddhima could not understand how did this letter even come in her notes. Who had placed it there? She remembered how Ashima took her notes to a xerox shop, so did one of the ACP’s informants secretly hid this letter among her notes at that time?

And was it true whatever he was saying? Was Vansh really hiding something more from her other than the fact that he belongs to the Mafia?

She recalled Vansh’s words where he had asked her to have faith on him no matter what.

She berated herself. “No! Riddhima, stop doubting him, for heaven’s sake. Vansh has promised me that he’d tell me everything on our dinner date. So I should wait and continue to trust Vansh until then.”
______________________________________

When Riddhima reached her college for the exam, she could see a lot of hustle-bustle in the corridors. Some of the students were busy discussing the last minute important points, while some of them were making plans on how to cheat during the exam.

As soon as her batchmates spotted her, they started giving her weird stares and ushering amongst themselves.

Few of the girls gave her nasty looks while others ignored her completely. The rest of the students started making way for her to walk through the crowd.

“What is even happening? Why is everyone behaving so strangely?” Riddhima wondered.

Just then, the class representative (CR) of her batch, Rahul approached her.
“Hi Riddhima. Did you prepare well?”

“Yeah, kind of.”

Rahul grew serious. “Listen, remember the argument we had last month? I hope you’ve forgiven me for that.”

Riddhima was surprised. “Come on, we just had some difference of opinions about the assignment, no big deal in that. In fact, I don’t even remember that.”

He heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank God. Anyways, best of luck for the exam.”

Riddhima did not know what to make of all this. On top of that, the security guards and peons saluting her now and then and the lecturers trying to smile and get way too generous towards her, did not help much.

In fact, things went so overboard that when she sat down to write the exam, one of the professors even came and offered to help her answer some of the difficult questions! Of course, Riddhima believing in being honest, politely declined her offer, but she didn’t know the reason behind this bizarre change in everybody’s behaviour.

After the exam got over, she ran up to meet Ashima, but she tried to ignore her instead.

“What’s your problem? Why are you behaving like this?” Riddhima asked sadly.

Ashima snapped at her. “So do I’ve any other option? Should I give you a medal instead for hiding about your engagement from your best friend?”

“What? Who told you that?” she asked completely shocked.

“Not only me, but the whole college knows all about it. We all know that you are engaged to Vansh Raisinghania.
Why did you hide such a big piece of news from me? I thought I was your bestie,” Ashima sounded very hurt.

Riddhima tried to explain her point of view, when she heard a group of girls walk towards them.

“Congratulations Riddhima. We heard you got engaged to the renowned business tycoon, Vansh Raisinghania.”

“She’s so lucky! Now her life is totally set. She wouldn’t have to slog like us to build a career. Her rich fiance would make sure she gets into the best PG college, and would even gift her, her own hospital.”

Not able to control her emotions, Riddhima burst out.
“Lucky, and me? Within a short span of 2-3 months, my mother passed away and my dad went missing and still cannot be found, and you call me lucky? I wouldn’t even want my worst enemy to go through the same ordeals that I had to face.
I just wanted to have a normal life like any other normal girl out there. If this what lucky feels like, I didn’t want to be lucky ever….”

Ashima consoled her. “Relax, Riddhima. Just ignore those jealous witches. You don’t need to take their words to your heart.”

As Riddhima wiped off her tears, she realized who it could be who had informed about her engagement to the college.
“Vansh!” she shouted in anger.
______________________________________

“You shouldn’t have spoken to him like that,” said Gayatri. “He is very hurt by your bitter words.”

Riddhima sat up straight. “And what he did was right? Meddling in my college life and showing his dominance there? Nani, why don’t you ever notice his mistakes?”

Gayatri sighed. Just when she was beginning to think that things were becoming alright between the two of them, this had to happen. Why did they have to quarrel so much every now and then?

“Vansh tell me the same thing. He feels that I always tend to support and defend you,” said Gayatri. “To be honest, I’m totally fed up of being sandwiched in your fights.”

“If I did the same thing to him? If I interfered in his business, how’d he feel?” she asked.

Gayatri explained, “I know he is wrong. But you’ve to understand that it is difficult for a person to change completely overnight. He has already shown quite a few changes since you entered his life. The rest of the changes will take some time to occur.

“And I know that nothing hurts him more than your sharp words. Today also, you gave him the impression that you are embarrassed to call him as your fiance in front of the world.”

Riddhima said, “But that is not what I meant….”

Just then, they heard Vansh shouting at someone in his study.

“See? Whenever he has a fight with you, he takes out his anger on other people, especially Angre,” said Gayatri.

Riddhima looked at her resignedly. She realized that now she’d only have to do something to make Vansh’s mood alright.
______________________________________

Vansh was holding his head tightly between his hands to reduce the throbbing pain he felt, when he saw Riddhima enter his study.

He gave her a death stare. “Leave me alone! I’m already having a headache, and I don’t want to increase ot further by arguing with you.”

Riddhima became concerned. “Did you take any medicine?”

“Didn’t you hear what I asked you to do? Stop bugging me and get lost from my sight,” he growled. “You are the reason for this damn headache in the first place!”

Riddhima couldn’t understand this man at all. Sometimes, he’d act like the sweetest and the most romantic person ever, and at other times, he’d unreasonably start throwing a fit of temper.

She tried to maintain her calm as much as possible and said, “If I’m the reason for your headache, then I will be the one to heal it. Let me give you a massage.”

“What did you just say?” asked Vansh taken aback.

“Uhm, I meant a head massage,” replied Riddhima getting a little red-faced about how her words were being misinterpreted to give a very wrong meaning.

“I don’t need it,” retorted Vansh. “Just leave. Besides, why does it matter to you?”

“Of course, it does. I can’t see you in pain….” said Riddhima.

Vansh fell silent. Riddhima came towards the chair he was sitting in, and gently dug her fingers in his hair, and started making soft circles in and around his temples.

“Close your eyes, and think of those things that make you happy….” she said softly.

Vansh obeyed her. A thin smile started playing on his lips as he thought of that one thing that always made him happy – Riddhima herself.
He knew she was dangerous for him with the kind of drastic effect she was having on him and his mood, but he couldn’t help it.

As Riddhima continued the massage, she felt his tense skin gradually relax over the time.
“Did it help?”

“Hmmm.”

“Should I stop?”

“No.”

Vansh said after some time, “You have some kind of magic in your hands.
You’re a good dancer, a good masseuse, a good therapist….What more hidden talents do you have?”

Riddhima chuckled. “You’ll get to know about them as time goes.”

She tried to leave, but instead slipped and landed straight in Vansh’s lap.

He caressed her face and said, “I know that we have different thoughts and opinions on different matters, but we shouldn’t let that affect the dynamics of our relationship.”

“I agree,” said Riddhima coyly.

She tried to get up, but before that as luck would have it, Angre entered the study instead.

He stood there open-mouthed for a second before realizing that he’s supposed to look away.
“I’m sorry Boss. I had knocked the door but when no reply came, I thought of it as your permission…
I’ll leave right away, Boss.”

Saying this he left from there in a hurry.

Riddhima straightened her posture.
“Why is everyone barging in at such times only?”

Vansh said amusedly, “So are you telling me that you don’t want them to disturb us at such times?”

“That is not what I meant. Stop running your thoughts in the wrong direction,” said Riddhima trying to suppress her smile. “Besides, I have my Anatomy exam tomorrow. So I need to go and prepare for it nicely because that subject is quite tough.”

“Don’t you’ve any gap between two successive exams?”

“Nope.”

“That can be very stressful. Let me talk to your Principal regarding this….”

Riddhima narrowed her eyes at him. “Vansh, not again.”

He raised his hands in surrender.
“Fine, fine. I won’t do anything like that. Happy?”

Riddhima smiled and left for her room.

Precap:
Riddhima wears the sari for Vansh at the party. He gets mesmerised on seeing her. They spend some time together.

Riddhima overhears Vansh speaking to Angre about some secret. She breaks into his study to find out about it, but Vansh comes there instead.

Hello everyone! Really sorry for not replying to the comments, but I read all of them and really enjoyed doing so. Thank you for all the love. Also yes, I’m doing very well right now.

Also, many of you had requested me to show a glimpse of Riddhima’s college life. I managed to show only a very little part of it as of now, but if you all liked it, I can show some more incidents later on.

Do  comment below.

Peace out!

 

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