#2 Addicted-virman-SS-COMPLETE - Page 49

7:05 PM, the same day, dining hall.

"Ria, put that down baby. GET OFF THE DINING TABLE! And Nikki, don't pout. and look at me like that. I am not going to change your punishment."

"I am making a song." Ria goes clinking the glasses and plates with a spoon, sitting on the dining table.

"Why are you so hyper? Wait a second, you were eating a cookie!!!!!!!!!! Weren't you?"

"Nouh!!" she suddenly stops her song and her eyes roll from far right to far left corners of her eye - her eyebrows arched up; and she is looking at me with a confused face.

I am glaring at Ria and the intercom in the kitchen rings. "Momma..phone!!!!!!" Ria shows me immediately.

"Liz, can you get that?"

"Liz is not here." Ria tells me. I turn around and back at Ria. "I am NOT done talking with you Ria Vadhera."

She rolls her eyes at me.

"Did you just roll your eyes at me Ria?"

"Phone Mamma!!" she reiterates.

I walk to the kitchen without taking my eyes off her and take the call. "Hello."

"Manvi, listen to me carefully. No questions. This is very important ' DO AS I SAY." His voice is panicky and very resolute at the same time. I look around in the living room. Wasn't he here a minute ago?

"Virat? Everything alright?"

"No, everything is not alright. Manvi, there are three shooters in the house and they have surrounded the living room and kitchen from three directions. They are snipers and they are just getting into position; they can shoot you from a distance. I want you to duck down behind the kitchen counter and shield yourself."

WHAT?!

"DO AS I SAY MANVI and don't hang up."

"Ok"

"Sir, Miss Swetha is in the kid's room." I hear someone else on the intercom.

"Call her and ask her to lock the room. But they won't go there. They want me and they want Manvi. Blanco, do you have a clear shot?" Virat asks.

What am I am on radio? I am hearing everyone's voices. I hear the security people talking among themselves, deciding their positions and Blanco and Virat were instructing them.

"Sir, our men have a clear shot of two people. We cannot locate the third person. They are wearing masks and it is dark." Blanco tells Virat.

I am tensed and nervous and I start grasping the gravity of the situation! What the hell is going on? My throat is parched and my kids are out there.

"Virat, where are you?" I ask nervously.

"I am right behind the wall of the living room, Manvi. Our Security is moving into position - surrounding the shooters."

"Virat, the kids are on the dining table."

"I know!! I am standing right behind them. As soon as they have a clear shot of the shooters, I will go grab them."

I look at my kids from the crevices of the cabinet. Ria is standing on the dining table and Nikki is petting spiderman. Oh my god!!!!!!!! I cannot sit like this. I cannot live if anything happens to them. I have to get them safe.

"But, what if they shoot first Virat. I will call Nikki and Ria, they will come to me."

"NO MANVI!!! DO AS I SAY. They cannot suspect anything. They must be waiting for you."

"Virat!!!!" I am looking at the kids and trying to grasp what Virat was telling me. My whole body was urging me to do and hold my kids and protect them.

"Do you trust me Manvi??" Virat shouts into the phone.

"MANVI, DO YOU TRUST ME OR NOT??"

"I do..I do." I am sweating and my heartbeat was going haywire.

"The shooters will NOT expose themselves until they get a shot of you."

"How can you say that?"

"MANVI, DO NOT MOVE!!! THEY SEE YOU - THEY WILL SHOOT ALL OF THREE OF YOU. STAY PUT!!! DO YOU UNDERSTAND, STAY DOWN!!"

"Sir, we have a shot of all three of them."

"Blanco, I am going to grab the kids on three and you will take them down."

"Roger that sir."

"You are going to hear shots fired baby. Don't move. We got this!!!!!!! Manvi??? You there??"

"Yes."

"One, two and three." I hear three gun shots together.

I go into a deep shock. I have no freaking idea of who shot who. I raise my head and run to my kids - so does Virat. The kids are shocked and are crying. Nikki is fine, Ria is fine and Virat is holding both of them.

"This way Manvi." he says going out of the living room.

"All three?? He is speaking onto the cordless balancing it in his neck holding both our crying babies. I take Ria from him.

"That's Good. Thank god." He sighs leading me through some stairs I have never seen before.

"We got them Manvi. We are fine Buddy. Ria, everything is fine. Shhh!!!! Manvi this way." he says putting his hand around me.

"Get Swetha and staff in the basement shelter too and call the cops" He tells Martin, while going down the stairs. Martin says something into his head set and he was following us behind.

"There is a basement shelter?" I ask Virat.

He doesn't reply, he just leads us down. We get off the stairs and right when we enter into the basement to go into a door which was the size of a security vault, we see another gun-man. Initially, I thought he was our own security, but then he is pointing a gun at my head - point blank. And immediately, there are three sets of guns pointing towards his head around him - Martin, Tim and another person. I look at Virat from the corner of my eye - he is nervous with tiny beads of sweat all over his face. Ria and Nikki were wailing and hugging us tightly.

In that minute, that second, I realize he is going to shoot me!!!

"I am just going to give my daughter to my husband. You can shoot me after that." I tell the gun-man.

"DON'T MOVE LADY!!!" he warns me.

"Steve? Is it?" Virat asks.

"Why do you care?"

"Steve, you will not go out of here alive if you pull that trigger - you are surrounded." Virat tells him.

"I don't care about that." Steve says indifferently.

"Do you really think killing her is more worth than you own life?"

Virat is talking with him. It must be to distract him. And I think it is working.

"I think completing my mission and making my leader proud of me is worth a lot more than my own little life."

"Which leader? Peter Cunns?" Virat cries with an outrage.

"Do not take his name in vain. He is the lord - he will soon be the ruler of the world. And then I am going to be remembered for my sacrifice in a world of order and peace." He says in reverence, as if he was uttering a prayer - never removing his finger from the trigger.

"Peace???? Virat laughs mocking him. "Your leader is a f**king asshole." Virat blurts to his face with vehemence - each of his words clear with an undercurrent of morbid disgust.

Steve's lips twitches and his face is furious. He removes the gun from my head and moves it shoot Virat and while he moves - in this time-frame of a millisecond when he is taken over by his feelings - his rage - we hear a stifled gunshot. I look at Steve and there is a bullet in the center of his forehead - he collapses on the carpet and Martin takes away the gun from his hand. I raise my head and look at the source of the bullet - it was Blanco - he was standing in the corner of the room, revealing his presence. I close Ria's eyes and Virat closes Nikki's as they both gape at the collapsed body in shock. Their face is as pale as a white flag.

In the next few minutes, the house is flooded with cops, NYPD, detectives and forensics. I was sitting inside Virat's study. Ria and Nikki were hugging me as tightly as they could - as if their life depended on it. They didn't utter a single word after the whole shootout. My own brain was completely blank. What had happened in a matter of a few minutes? This is going to haunt us for the rest of our lives. We could all have been dead by now. Virat was speaking with the cops and Swetha was speaking with Virat's parents on the phone - the whole news is out in the world, flashing in every single news channel.

Everybody was out looking for Peter Cunns - apparently he wasn't looking for money - he was trying to keep the cover on an underground circuit or a terrorist organization that he was running behind the facade of Burn's steel industry.

Virat comes and sits beside me looking at me with a calm relief in his eyes. "Ria, you okay??" he asks.

She doesn't speak.

"Come here." He takes her and hugs her tightly, patting her back.

"Its okay honey. Daddy is with you. It's all just like a video game, like the ones we play on the computer. It is over now." He explains calmly.

"What happened to that man?" Nikki asks.

"He is fine buddy. He was just playing. Come here." Nikki goes to him and Virat hugs him tightly.

"I don't like the game. It is very scary." Nikki says.

"I don't like it either buddy - we are never going to play it again." Virat tells him.

"Ria, look at daddy. Manvi, what is wrong with her? Why isn't she speaking?" Virat asks me all the panic and tension returning to his face.

"She is fine Virat. She is just in a shock."

"Make her say something." Virat asks me nervously.

"Give her a few minutes...she will be fine."

"I hate video games." She suddenly shouts at Nikki, making Virat's strained face relax a bit, bringing in a small sad smile on his face.

~~~

Next morning, we were sitting in Virat's office with three lawyers and a fourth person who was apparently Mr. Burn's brother - Mr.Phil Burns. He was receiving 20% of his brother's property and the rest was for me. The lawyers insisted on reading the entire will, even though Virat had already read it. I signed on the documents and Virat then called on Swetha and couple of his own lawyers into his office.

"Now that all the formalities are done, we would like to inform you, more importantly to you Mr. Phil Burns that we are donating this whole property to a charity foundation run by Manvi's friend, Ms. Swetha Jain. She is willing to change the name of her trust to 'David, Payal and Jain Foundation' and focus more on adopting and educating orphan girls in India and other third world countries - like how David adopted his daughter, Payal. I think this will honor his memory in every sense." Virat told them.

"Are you sure, you want to donate the whole thing?" Phil asks with his mouth open.

"Haven't been more sure about anything else in the recent times. Actually I am having the whole property liquidated before transferring to Swetha because I don't want to put her in any kind of danger. She has agreed to take it only after we got the news that Peter Cunns is in federal prison - that is how much we all are scared about dealing with this cursed treasure." Virat smiles politely.

"Well, what can I say?" Phil looks away. I have lived with Peter since the last five years. Anything remotely related to him is cursed, but David didn't see it - not until his last day anyways. He was blind when it came to Peter.

"You mean David came to know of all this?" Virat asked Phil surprised.

"Yeah, we came to know of everything - right from how Peter had taken over the Triad and changed it to serve his own means. David talked to me the night before he died. He told me how he had nurtured a monster in the name of Peter. David never suspected Peter wanted his money and he was right about that. Peter was not after his money; he was after power. He wanted to have his mafia network in the entire world.

When he came to know that Burn's changed his will to your wife's name - he was worried that his secret underground activities running behind the covers of Burn's huge steel business will be out. He was far too comfortable to move and shift his activities somewhere else. So, he sought to do the easiest thing - remove Manvi from the equation. He studied your entire background. He found Tanya who was burning in jealously after you broke up with her and gotten married to Manvi. He courted her and changed her into his strongest pawn. Your partner Karan was also hungry for sole control on your company so it wasn't hard to manipulate him either. But, make no mistake, both Tanya and Karan had their own agendas - Tanya to seek revenge from you and separate you from your wife and Karan to remove you from the company's workings. All Cunn's had to do was unleash the the evil in them.

Peter knew David adored you like your own son but he also knew David was more fond of Manvi. He had gone to David with pictures of you and your secretary to fill David's mind against you. David was angry at you, but he was not a fool - he tried to do his own research and was trying to get in touch with you about this. Peter just got impatient and tried to kill him. This was about three years ago. He assumed Manvi died in that car crash that night and if David is out of the way - he figured - he would have everything to himself. Luckily, David survived but he had gone into a coma; Peter didn't think too much about David since then and left him to his plight. Afterall, he got what he wanted.

Three years down the line, he was enraged when he saw the pictures of you and your wife at the airport. He devoted all his energies for a few days to get Manvi killed, again. But, I guess he wasn't able to."

"You started suspecting things and became cautious with strong security around the house and your wife. Tanya tried to convince him that she will take care of it - that she had Meredith in her control who could create differences between you both and that if Meredith kills Manvi - it can be projected as a murder of revenge and jealously and nobody would suspect foul play on her part and even on part of her brother or Peter.

But I think things didn't work out: Karan was behind bars; Meredith was always weak and became crazy eventually. But, Burn's had gotten his consciousness back and Peter thought he could make Burn's change his will but how much ever he tried, he was not able to convince Burns - my brother was hell bent on giving his everything to Manvi.

Peter tried with all his resources that day, when you suspected him for the first time in Chicago. To his utmost dismay, you somehow survived. He racked his brain and spend hours together to work out schemes to get to you both - he had the entire blue-prints of your house and all he needed was an entry into the house. He tried to dig into Manvi's past and find you a bait - to keep you distracted. Your ability to see through him used to freak him out. Tanya and him coached Ashish to keep you occupied while they worked on something completely different - entry into one of the most secured forts - your house.

On his last day, David confronted Peter about something. I suspect that Peter might also had something to do with David's demise.

I personally, would give the all of my acquired money from David away, if I could just see the look on Peter's face right now. His brilliant twisted mastermind plan that he had been working on since the last few days - back-fired - so magnificently to land his ass in federal prison - and you both escaped out of it without a scratch." I summarized with an impressed look on his face.

"How did you figure it out?" he asked Virat curiously.

"It was all about a cookie." Virat stated with a mysterious smile.

All of us looked at Virat puzzled.

He didn't explain any further.

"What are you going to do about Karan and Tanya?" Phil asked us.

"Meredith agreed to give a statement about everything to the cops. She must be talking to them, as we speak. They will take Tanya in shortly."

"Perfect." Phil got up.

The meeting was over.

"Yes, thanks Phil. I had a skeleton of everything - but you cleared so many of our questions." Virat got up and shook his hand.

"You are welcome." Phil smiled.

"Have a nice life, both of you. David really did love you like his own daughter, Manvi."

"No offense but after everything, I'd rather he didn't." Virat stated in a contemplative tone, more to himself than anybody else."

~~~

Two days later, I was staring at myself in the mirror - I had dressed myself in a really pretty pink saree that Virat had gotten for me recently. I fixed my hair for one last time and went to find Virat. He was sitting in the TV room with Swetha, Ria and Nikki. Swetha was reading something and Ria and Nikki were building a fort with blocks. Virat was sitting by Nikki working on his laptop.

"Swetha Masi, that your boy friend." Ria points out on the TV.

We all look at the TV. There was clown who was entertaining the kids in a resort. We remembered the resort from before. We had been there. It belonged to..what was his name? Ishan's brother, Ritty Patel.

Why is Ishan working as a clown?

Swetha was holding her tummy and laughing like a school girl looking at him speak like a parrot in front of little kids.

Virat looks up at her and smiles.

"Did you have anything to do with this Virat Vadhera?" Swetha asks.

"He deserved a lot more, I leaked a rumor that he had leprosy and he is going to die in the next three months at his work. They fired him - because, it was obviously infectious and everyone black-listed him. Last I know he was in a mental asylum. His brother must have hired him in his resort." Virat smiled changing the channel.

Swetha looks at him sadly. "Thank you Virat. You know I am really sorry - I misjudged you so much!!!" she said with tears in her eyes.

Virat gets up and goes to her. "Hey!!! I am just glad you were there with my psychopath wife and kept her alive." He laughed hugging her.

My heart just went flying into the space. Two of my most favorite people in the whole world are nice to each other now - almost friends!!!

"Heeey!! That's ok Swe. His own wife misjudged him." I tell her walking in and hugging her too.

Virat glares and me and rolls his eyes. "That's where Ria gets it from!!!!!" I tell him accusingly.

"Are you going somewhere Manvi?" Swetha asks looking at me all dressed up.

"Glad someone finally noticed!!" I tell her glaring at Virat. "I need to take Virat somewhere. Can you please watch the kids tonight?" I ask her nicely.

"Sure." She looks at me curiously. "You look really hawwwt" she whispers in my ears.

"Where are we going?" Virat asks me.

"We are scheduled for time travel." I tell him with a small smile.

He raises his eye-brows. "Okay?"

Before he asks me anything further, I drag him to our bedroom and close the door.

He looks around with an astonished face. The room was dark with candles, and stars in the balcony as the only source of light. I had put two big bouquets of daffodils and roses in the room. There was a small table with dinner for two by the window which was open letting in a cool stream of pleasant breeze.

"Manvi????" he whispers looking around the room. "Is today my birthday?" he asks amazed.

I switch on the music and hold his hand. He looks at me a little amazed, but takes my hand and we dance slowly. I rest my head on his chest and his hands were lying around my waist.

"Virat.."

"Hmm.."

"I love you."

"I love you more." He smiles into my hair

"I got you something." I tell him.

"I got everything in my arms baby." he whispers.

I smile widely - he is right about that. I look up at his face resting my chin on his chest "That time machine we ordered, finally got delivered today." I whisper.

"What?" he looks down at me puzzled.

I go to the table, take out a wrapped gift and take it to him. "Surprise" I tell him.

"Aren't you full of surprises today?" he says while opening it with a raised eye-brow. "It's a shirt!!" he says. He opens it and he gives me a dazzling smile looking at it. "World's best dad!"

"Yes!" I blush.

"Thank you. I have always wanted one of these." He says putting it away.

"You look so amazing in this pink." He says pulling me close.

I roll my eyes. "VIRAT!!"

"What?"

"You are really a tubelight!"

He looks at me more confused.

Sometimes for a bright man, he is amazingly dumb!! Jeez! I actually have to spell it out!!!

Ok! I can do this. I look at his even more confused face and take a deep breath.

"Jaaan!!" I stand on my toes and lean in to whisper in his ears slowly. I am nervous for some reason. "We are going to have more trouble in our house, because I am pregnant..with your baby.." and just to make sure he completely understood, I add "..again." And move back and look away smiling.

I have been through this before, but I had never gotten a chance to tell him my first time and I am strangely very, very shy.

I raise my eyes and look at him. He is frozen to the spot, his eyes never leaving mine. "Really?" he asks his eyes become slightly moist.

I nod my head slowly.

He is still frozen in the spot and looking at me in a unwavering spell-bound eye-lock.

"Just hug me Virat. I am dying here." I tell as I feel a red hot flush in my face.

"Oh baby. You have no idea how happy you just made me." he says taking my hand and pulling me closer. He leans his forehead onto mine and looks into my eyes with two drops of tears falling from his eyes. Looking at him go so emotional, my own tears ducts betray me. "We are going to have another baby?" he asks, wrapping his head around the news.

"Yes" I whisper with a shy smile.

"I will be able to hold him and be with him from the beginning."

"yes Virat."

"We are going to have another baby!!!!!!!!!!" he shouts.

"Virat!!!!!!"

He suddenly lifts me up and twirls me around in his arms, as I laugh and puts my arms around my neck. He is happy, really really happy and I am so happy for making him this happy.

He puts me down and hugs me tightly and kisses me on my mouth. "I love you so much." He says and there comes another song on the ipod - our own personal favourite!!

Baby, I am addicted...

(I loved writing the update to this song, hope you like reading to it😊)

THE END

Lots of love

- Anu ❤️