Step One: The Challenge
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Omkara rapped on the door to Shivaay's bathroom. "Shivaay," he called loudly enough that he heard the shower turn off, "are you singing?"
A moment's pause. "Do you and Rudra really have nothing better to do than hang around outside my bathroom?"
"It's a matter of health and sanity. If you insist on making this a regular thing, we're going to need to get you some singing lessons."
The shower swiftly started up once more, as did Shivaay's tuneless singing.
"Bhaiya really loves Anika didi, doesn't he?" Rudra smiled, leaning against the door.
Omkara smiled too, delighted for the unfettered cloud of joy his usually stoic older brother had been in for the past month. "Yes, he does."
"Lady Baba's wedding invitations arrived yesterday, I think Pinky Aunty's been in a kind of waking-coma ever since."
"She loves Shivaay and she loves how happy Anika makes Shivaay. She'll soon transfer that to just plain loving Anika." He patted his brother's shoulder and then was distracted by the buzzing of a new message on his phone. He pulled it out, his heart skipping a beat as he realised who it was from, what it was about.
He opened it and read the few lines of text.
"I have to go."
"Bhai, are you okay? You look ill." Rudra tried to grab his phone, see what had drained all the colour from his brother's face, but Omkara's arm snapped away from him, holding the phone out of his reach and then slipping it quickly back into his pocket.
"I'm fine. I have to go."
He ran out of the room then, leaving Rudra staring after him.
Ishana was excited. Omkara had called her, asked her to meet him in an hour by the steps where they'd had their first and only real conversation. The one that still made her heart ache to remember. The conversation where she had come dangerously close to telling him the truth, some part of her wanting to trust that she- the real Ishana- would be enough.
Fortunately a lifetime of experience had won out and she had managed to keep the truth firmly locked down. The real Ishana had been honed by fire and everything she was had been built on the foundations of the unrelenting will it took not to crumble under the bitterness of the world she lived in. It wasn't anything like the soft, sweet-natured Bela who had carved a niche for herself in the heart of Omkara Singh Oberoi.
Ishana knew she was the villain of Omkara's story, and that she couldn't even pretend to care made her the villain of her own.
She shimmied out of her jeans and halter neck camisole and into one of Bela's dresses. The white one. Ishana pulled her hair out of the topknot she had twisted it into and brushed it out into Bela's preferred loose waves. Grabbing her makeup wipes, she took off the smokey eye makeup and applied the natural 'barely-there' mask of makeup Bela wore.
Ishana closed her eyes, took a deep breath and opened them again, practicing her Bela smile in the mirror. "It's so good to see you again, why did you call me? Is something wrong?"
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
"I know." He said. Two words were all that was needed for Ishana's heart to almost leap out of her chest. She looked into his eyes, saw a quiet, fiery rage burning in them.
"Wh-what?"
"Don't play dumb with me, Ishana." His voice was barely louder than a whisper, but it cut straight through her.
It was over.
She was glad they were at these steps. At least this way, both conversations had here would be the truth.
"How did you find out?"
"You think an Oberoi has any difficulty getting their hands on information?"
"So you invaded my privacy?"
"Are you saying I was wrong?"
"Not at all, I'm just surprised. Everything I know about you would suggest that would be something that goes against a fundamental part of your nature."
"You don't know a thing about me."
Ishana smiled sadly out across the steps and shook her head, "Come now, Omkara. There's no need for petulance. I may have been lying to you, but you don't need to pretend that you were also lying to me. You're a good person, it's kind of what made this so easy. Or at least," she frowned, "it would have been if you weren't so bloody loyal. Are you still with Riddhima?"
"Don't you dare say her name."
"She's selfish, you know."
"Are you really calling someone else selfish?" Omkara almost spluttered at her insolence.
Ishana met his gaze, fearless. "Of course I am, it's only because we're both selfish and our wants directly clash that I notice. Selfless people rarely know when people like me are taking advantage of them."
"Why did you do this?"
"Money. I wanted to seduce you and marry you and use your money to pay off all the loan sharks hounding my family for money." She heaved a huge sigh. "I could have conned you into just paying them off, but my father is an addict and he'll no doubt build up another gambling debt as soon as I pay off the last one. It had to be a permanent arrangement."
They both stared at the road for a few long, silent minutes.
"Why did you ask to meet here?"
"Is that what you have to say to me?"
"Would you like me to apologise? Will the words help you even if I don't mean them?"
Omkara stared at Ishana and she wondered what it was he saw. Did he see through the bravado and the defiance? Did he want to?
"This place feels real."
Whatever Ishana had been expecting him to say, that had not been it. "What?"
"I used to be an addict too, I don't know if your research turned that up."
Of course it had.
"Not gambling. Drugs. Most things in my life don't feel real. More often than not I feel as though I'm controlling a marionette puppet of myself, pulling the strings to make it dance the way I know it's supposed to. But it doesn't feel real. Nothing feels real."
Ishana's heart was racing. Why was he telling her this? Why was he giving her such a precious piece of his soul?
"The only thing that made everything stop feeling like a set, stopped making me feel like an actor in a theatre, was the drugs. They made everything come into focus, everything had meaning. My artwork? Most of the pieces that made me my millions came out of that time."
"How did you give that up?"
"I hate not having control." He said it in a way which made it clear to Ishana that she would be getting no more from him today. Her gut twisted as she realised... perhaps she never would again.
"People look at the Oberoi brothers: Shivaay, me and Rudra. And they think Shivaay is the dangerous one. Shivaay is the ruthless one with an ice-cold heart who would destroy anyone who tried to harm him or his family." A pause as he stood up, offered a hand to Ishana and pulled her up too. He looked at her, the cold fire back in his eyes.
"Those people are greatly mistaken. Shivaay would die for his family. I would kill for them. I am the danger. I brought you here, Ishana, to a place that feels real to me so that you would understand just how real I am being when I say to you: if you and your lies ever come near me or my family again, I will burn your world to the ground."
Ishana shuddered as without laying a hand on her, Omkara's threat scorched her very skin.
As he turned and started descending the steps, walking away from her, a cold desperation clutched at Ishana's throat. She felt like she was trying desperately to cling to something but was watching it slip like water through her fingers.
"Omkara."
He stopped. Turned. Looked at her.
"Challenge accepted."
Step Two- The Prisoner
Edited by fallingpieces - 9 years ago
Real Estate
