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Rakesh slammed the cottage door closed and hurled Sheetal across the carpet.
She tripped over her sari pleats and hit the sofa’s edge. Sharp pain seared up the left side of her nape and ear.
Rakesh raised a hand. She threw up an arm and turned away.
His ring hand came down.
Sheetal numbed. She gasped for air and cowered, but breath didn’t come. Instead, something warm, wet, and sticky oozed down her cheek. Her eyes stung. She blinked and then squeezed them shut so she wouldn’t cry. Rakesh hated tears.
“Fucking bitch!” Spittle sprayed with his words.
She opened her eyes. His bloodshot eyes loomed like two bloody, out of focus moons. He struggled to balance and the hip flask swayed with his tilt. “It wasn’t about Yash, was it? But you. Am I not man enough...?”
Sheetal took small, shallow breaths as he paced the room. Soon, he would kill and drink or drink and kill. Either way, she was going to die. She had to keep him drinking and talking.
He pulled out the flask, unscrewed the cap, raised it to his lips, and gulped the liquid. Then he brushed the sleeve of the blazer across his face, staggered to the dining table, and thumped the bottle on the surface. “What is it you like-eh? That dark skin? That beard? Is that it?”
She turned away, keeping watch from the corner of her eye.
“What?” he screamed.
Ripples shuddered through her body. She had to answer. Say something quick. And keep her eyes down. “Nothing,” she whispered.
He torpedoed across the room, grabbed her shoulders, and forced her onto the double-seater. He pinned her to the backrest and mashed his lips down on hers. He sucked hard, drawing the breath from her lungs.
She fought the urge to vomit. She couldn’t breathe. She pressed hard against the cushion and turned away.
“Something wrong?” He inched his fingers past the neck of her blouse and down her cleavage, his sharp nails scraping. “Don’t want me anymore, do you, bitch? You want that son of a bitch!” His breath burned. “Yash likes him, you like him. Try him out, did you? What was he like, Sheetal? Was he all you wanted in a man?”
The nightmare was happening all over again. Her bladder was going to lose control and spill any second.
“What the fuck do you see in him? Nothing. Hear me? He has nothing. Not even a fraction of what I own. Shares a cottage with fucking students. Doesn’t own a house, and you were ready to leave me for him and take my son with you? How dare you? Yash is mine. He belongs to me. He’s my blood.” He touched her right cheek. “Now, how did that happen?” He licked his finger. “Sweet.” He pressed his lips against the wound and sucked hard.
Pain sizzled and she gasped for air.
Calm. Keep calm. Let him have his way.
He withdrew. Smears of blood marred his chin. “I gave you everything. A studio for those damned paintings. A career. A business. But nothing I ever do is good enough. Why?” He made his way to the kitchenette and grabbed one of the bottles he had stashed that afternoon. He unscrewed the top, raised the bottle to his lips, drank, and lowered it. “We’ll see how successful you are when I smash your studio this time. No more Naina. That tea will take care of Naina for good.”
Fear paralyzed her. The ayurvedic tea from Bharat Chaiwallah.
“This time, I’m going to burn those paintings, put an end to all your nonsense, and you’re going to watch your fucking career go up in flames.” The bottle swung in his hand, and scotch spilled on the carpet. “Tell me, Sheetal.” He dropped into the recliner and thumped his feet onto the coffee table. “What do you like about him?”
Twice. He had asked her the same question twice. “Nothing.”
“You were going to run away with him, right, and take Yash?” He raised the bottle and drank. “You....”
She might be able to make it to the front door and escape. But where would she go in the dark, in the middle of nowhere? Reception was at least a kilometer away. Even in his half-delirious state, Rakesh would get her. She needed her drawstring bag. She had to keep him talking and drinking until he passed out.
He swung the bottle in an arc to his mouth, sipped, and lowered it. “Running away from me, right?”
“I...I didn’t know what to do.” She inched to the sofa’s edge and slid onto the floor. Power. He craved dominance, control, and power. “I didn’t think you loved me anymore.”
“Fuckin’ bitch!” his speech slurred. “Liar.”
“You love someone else, Rakesh. I heard you and him on the tape.” Pretend. Pretend to be helpless. Weak. Lost. “You were making love to him on the tape, and—”
“Why, that son of a bitch! Double-crossing—” He thumped the bottle on the table and scotch erupted, spraying the wooden surface and carpet.
“I...I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to ask, but I was scared. What if you said you didn’t love me and loved him more? Then where do I go? How do I live without you?”
The creases around his eyes melted. “You...you...withdrew all the money and closed your account.”
“I had to, Rakesh. They were...lying.” He hated dishonesty.
“Gupta Sahib said you closed the account for personal reasons.”
“They were giving me a lower interest rate. Did Gupta Sahib tell you I was planning to open a new account? A joint account in both our names? They can’t mislead me again.”
“Hmph,” he grunted.
“Oh.” She eased her tone to make light of the matter as pain burned across her face. “He must have forgotten.”
He reached for the bottle and drank. “You were on the phone with him. Why?”
“Who?”
“You know fucking who. Arvind. Megha told me of your plans to run away.”
How did Megha know anything when she didn’t even live with them?
“You talked with him three times.” He rose, turned around, then paced the room, struggling to stay upright.
The static on the phone hadn’t just been Naina. Megha spied for Rakesh. That explained her frequent visits, timed to Rakesh’s absences. The brother-sister partnership wasn’t a heightened security measure, it was a team. They were the real Dhanrajs. The turf had always been theirs to rule, control, and protect. For so long, she had believed she was the outsider, but Mummyji and Naina were the true exiles struggling to hold ground. With Naina gone, Rakesh would continue to play Mummyji against her so they could never unite.
“Why the calls, Sheetal?”
“He wouldn’t stop calling. He wanted me to run away with him—still thinks I love him and that he has a right over me.” She lowered her tone, “I-I didn’t want to trouble you with such trivial things. It’s you I love, not him. And you’ve got so many worries...pressures of the business and the debt. So, I played along. I let him believe what he wanted, thinking he’d eventually go away. I came for Yash, just like you. I think Arvind’s hurting our son and doing things to him. Things you said happen to boys in a dormitory.”
He sat in the recliner again.
“I love you.” She dabbed her wounded cheek with the pallu and cringed as sharp zari embroidery pricked the raw skin. She inched toward his feet, maneuvering to keep the recliner’s right armrest between herself and a blow should Rakesh strike. “I...I love you.” She glanced up at a digital clock near the gas stove. Nine-thirty. Ninety more minutes.
He grabbed her hair.
Skin ripped from her scalp. She tried to pry his fingers off but he looped her hair and tugged hard. She screamed, but he tightened his hold and she numbed.
“Fucking bitch, liar! It’s him. It’s always been Arvind.”
“No.” Tears streamed down her face. “You. It’s only been you.”
He twisted harder.
“I’ll prove it.”
He let go.
She forced herself onto her knees, shuffled forward, wedged herself between his thighs, then leaned toward his face, took a shallow breath, and closed her eyes. She gulped against the bile that raced up her throat, pressed her lips to his, and exhaled through her nose. She was going to be sick.
He pulled away. “Games, eh, to play with me? I bet you did much more for Arvind. I’m done with you. Fuck off!”
She staggered to her feet and stumbled to the corridor. Her attention fell on the kitchen counter, toaster, sink, and the wooden block of three knives. She paused. Four. There had been four. She made it to her room and closed the door, leaving a crack open. Then she peeled off the sari, slipped on a salwar suit, donned a thick nightgown, and turned off the light.
Glass clinked on wood. Feet shuffled on carpet. Silence. A beam of moonlight streamed through her window. She dabbed her cheek with the petticoat she’d removed. The fabric grew moist and dampened her fingers. She could just make out the silhouette of trees outside and her suitcase lying open near the foot of the bed.
She slipped between the sheets, pulled the covers up to her chin, then leaned over the edge of the bed to peer through the door gap. No sign of Rakesh. She didn’t want to risk being seen. She eased her head back onto the pillow, waited what she hoped was fifteen minutes, then checked her wristwatch. Ten-thirteen. Forty-five minutes to go. She prayed the car would be waiting outside.
She threw the covers aside, swung her feet to the floor, padded across the carpet, halted at the door, and listened. Nothing. She carefully opened the door and tiptoed to the end of the corridor. Moonlight allowed her to make out the coffee table’s outline and a half-empty bottle of liquor. Four objects lay on the floor. Sheetal inched closer. Rakesh’s shoes and socks. A dark form draped the recliner’s back. Had Rakesh collapsed? Sheetal slid one foot ahead of the other. “Rakesh?” she whispered.
Silence.
“Rakesh?” She reached for the object. Her fingers sank into fabric. His blazer.
She blinked and scanned the living room, then tiptoed back up the corridor past the bathroom on the left, her room on the right, and hesitated before the two-inch gap in the door of the bedroom on the left. She pushed the door open an inch more and saw Rakesh’s form, fully dressed, face down on the bed.
She looked at her watch. Thirty-five minutes left.
She crept back to her room, peeled off the nightgown, rolled it into a ball, and arranged the gown, several saris, salwars, and pillows lengthwise on the bed where she had just lain, then rolled the covers back and patted a sleeping figure into shape. She went to the cupboard, wrapped her outfit’s matching dopatta around her neck, and slipped on her Nike shoes. Then she tiptoed to the kitchen, removed the drawstring bag from its hiding place, tucked it under her left arm, and hurried to the front door.
She eased the lock from its grip, turned the doorknob, and pulled. The door didn’t move. Her attention flew to the joint between door and wall, to another lock, higher up. She slid down a metal lever on the higher lock and then turned the knob again. The door still didn’t budge. In desperation, she gripped the knob in both hands and yanked back and forth but stopped. The noise is bound to wake him. She groped across the dining table for the keys. Gone.
She hurried to the patio door, pressed the sheet of glass, and shoved right but the door didn’t move.
She groped for the lock. There’d been a key in the lock yesterday afternoon.
The metallic knob held no key.
It must have fallen.
She groped across the floor, frantically widening her search. Nothing.
The moon spilled white light across the wooden deck and the grass beyond. There were two ways in and out of the villa and Rakesh had the keys to both.
The isolation. The layout. The timing. He had planned all of this. The perfect trap to hold her hostage.
She crept down the corridor, pressed her back against the wall, and peeped round the edge of Rakesh’s door. Still asleep.
She entered the bathroom and sat on the bathtub’s edge. Both doors locked. Every window, a sheet of glass protected by metal bars on the outside.
“Let’s say I know what’s going to happen,” Rakesh’s words swirled in her mind. “Do I do something about it, or just let it happen?”
She glanced at her watch. Twenty minutes.
She was not going to die.
Sheetal looked at the ceiling and her attention shot to a two-by-two feet square, ten feet off the floor, covered with a lattice mesh. The mesh appeared to be a temporary covering for a window that needed repair. Four screws, one in each corner, held the wire mesh in place. Her heartbeat quickened.
Carrying the drawstring bag, she turned off the light, eased open the bathroom door, tiptoed to the kitchenette, and removed a knife from the woodblock. She hid the knife in her bag and didn’t breathe again until she closed the bathroom door and punched the lock.
***
Rakesh stirred. A noise came from somewhere. White noise. He tried to open his eyes but his head pounded. Cold. He was so cold.
***
Sheetal lowered the toilet lid, placed her bag on the edge of the bathtub, and climbed onto the commode. She felt along the window’s vinyl frame, searching for nails and extra screws. Nothing. She stepped down, yanked the knife from her bag, and the torch rolled out. The clank against the porcelain caused her to freeze. She listened for sounds in the hall—sounds from Rakesh’s room. Did he hear?
Sheetal stuffed the torch into her bag, climbed onto the commode, pressed the knife tip into a screw head and tried to rotate the knife counterclockwise. The knife tip slipped off the screw. She replaced the tip, gripped the handle with both hands, and applied pressure as she rotated the knife. The screw turned, but bangles tinkled along her wrists.
Too much noise.
She removed the bangles, heaped them on the commode’s water tank, then loosened and removed the second screw, the third, and the fourth, spinning each in the same direction. Each rotation brought her closer to freedom. Finally, she returned to work on the first screw, but before it came out, the vinyl frame slipped. She tried to catch the mesh but the frame struck the commode, clanged, twanged, and banged against the tank, then hit the bathtub amid a shower of bangles.
***
Rakesh rolled onto his side and opened his eyes. The wall blurred.
That noise. That damn noise. Where was it coming from? And why was he so hot?
***
Sheetal grabbed her bag, tightened the cords, slung the bag against her back, and thrust her arms into the hoops. Then she reached up, grabbed the window ledge, and looked down at her feet. She had to get herself up. She crouched without releasing the sill and then leapt, aiming her head and shoulders toward the window. She strained with the effort of getting herself up and through the opening, but finally her head and upper torso hung outside the window. She sucked in cold mountain air, then pedaled her toes against the bathroom’s tile wall and shoved with her hands against the siding. Her hips cleared the sill and she curled as she plummeted.
She hit the ground hard and lay in the damp grass a moment before rolling onto all fours. She clambered to her feet, steadied herself against the wall, and then shoved off and ran.
***
Rakesh marched into Sheetal’s room and pounced on her sleeping frame but his hands sank into cushions of fabric. He threw back the duvet and balls of clothing unraveled.
He straightened to his full height and roared.
***
A blood curdling scream tore through the night. A lion? A bear?
Sheetal’s lungs strained to keep pace with her feet, to supply her need. She stumbled over uneven terrain, searching for lights. The car. Where was the car?
She stopped on the crest of a slope to catch her breath and spotted the silver ribbon of road in moonlight. The outline of a silver bonnet broke the moonlit landscape. The car!
A figure near the car waved for her to hurry. Jatinder Singh!
Artificial light flooded the grass behind her and from the corner of her eye, saw the cottage bathed in yellow. She pounded one foot ahead of the other as wind rushed through her hair. She was getting closer. Closer. She skidded to an abrupt stop against the side of the vehicle.
“Hurry, Madame.” Jatinder opened the rear passenger door. “Getting late, we are. No time. Rushing must.”
Sheetal almost fell across the back seat.
Jatinder slammed the door, leapt into the driver’s seat, revved the engine, and sped into the night.