However, his conscience wouldn't allow the poor girl to suffer for no fault of hers. And so he would quietly carry to her a glass of water, apiece of bread, some biscuits, a fruit whatever he could manage to get hold of and she gratefully accepted it.
For 48 hours she was alone in a room with just one window, sunlight filtering in at dawn and the reflection of the moon on the windowpanes at dusk. The room had a small bench attached to a desk that Khushi used to sit in whenever she got tired of pacing the floor. She had questions and she demanded answers.
She was also worried. Worried that her parents might be looking for her and they wouldn't know where to start. Worried that her sister might be crying her eyes out thinking something unholy had happened to her. Well, something had definitely gone wrong. And for reasons she couldn't imagine she was being held captive in a small dark room of the Sheesh Mahal.
Khushi was scared of enclosed spaces. And she was scared of the dark. She had lost her parents to a car accident at the dead of the night. Ever since the night Khushi was extremely claustrophobic. She would gasp for breath in a perfectly ventilated small room and would often have dizzy spells and faint in dark spaces. Khushi was scared. She didn't know how to deal with it. It petrified her. She held her stomach and wept. She wanted to stop the rising fear in the pit of her stomach. She needed a source of light from somewhere.
*****
Arnav Singh Raizada was watching Khushi's reactions through the camera that was installed in the room. It was meant for Arnav to know how his competitors behaved in his absence. And he used this as a tactic to break his competitors down. Whatever Arnav had been prepared to see, it had not been a girl clutching her stomach weeping profusely. For a moment, Arnav thought all this was wrong. This girl was innocent. Then the images of the fashion show flashed in front of his eyes. How she was the only one wearing a green dress in a fashion show with a theme of red. How she slipped instead of completing her walk on the ramp and how she landed straight into his arms. And Arnav flinched.
She was no nave 24-year-old girl. She was probably paid by the competition to ruin his fashion show. AR had a reputation in the market and the amount of damage control he would have to do to keep this news away from the media was bad enough. He could not allow himself to be emotionally swayed at this juncture. Clearly, whoever this girl was, she was a very good actress. She didn't deserve any sympathy. Surely, whatever was there to know he would know in the next six hours. She would tell him, he thought while he stomped away from the monitor room.
There was another person standing behind him who was observing the entire scene silently. He chose to disagree with the conclusion drawn by Arnav Singh Raizada and therefore, against his better judgment he asked security to switch on the lights in that room.
The lights came on and the weeping on the monitor reduced to spasms finally stopping within a few minutes. The other person smiled to himself. Although he might have angered Arnav, he felt good. Something told him this girl was innocent. And although he might not be able to do anything right now, he was sure going to make these 48 hours for her as bearable as possible.
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