Deception And Debt
"I will hurt you for this. I don't know how yet, but give me time. A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you'll know the debt is paid."
She cannot believe it, cannot fathom what just happened, how her world changed in a matter of moments.
She trusted him, god she trusted him so implicitly, so stupidly and he... he lied to her. He shattered her trust and played her like a toy.
More fool her for having done that, for putting her faith blindly in Raman Kumar Bhalla, may be, just maybe she should have seen this coming.
She should never have let that man in, never let her guard down.
All these days it seemed to her that with him there nothing would go wrong, no one could hurt her, not a hair on her head be ever harmed and today, today thanks to him her world just crumbled.
The man entrusted with her confidence stabbed her in the back. The man she relied on blindly deceived her brutally and here she lies in tears all crushed and all alone.
It never even occurred to her in her wildest dreams he would do something of this sort, betray her, deceive her, and shatter her.
She realizes she does not know him - this Raman Kumar Bhalla is not the man she married, not the man she began knowing over time. He is someone else, an entirely different man - one who is almost a stranger to her. It would be an understatement to say that he seems like someone from another planet entirely to her.
How could Raman ever do this? She is lost in her thoughts, amidst tears and heartache, almost pulling her hair when a shadow falls on her.
Looking up at the source of it, her eyes land on Ashok, Ashok Khanna.
The tall man is standing with a smirk on his face, his hands in his pockets, his eyes cold and calculated, his nose flared and an expression of gloating on his face.
Angry and mad at everyone but mostly herself she gets up, walks towards him, and stands a few paces short of where he is.
He tsktsks looking at her, shaking his head slightly, scratching his cheek with a finger as his face lights up with a smile.
"Won't you ask me why I am here?" He says mockingly.
"Get lost; just get out of my face before..."
"Before what huh, seriously do you think you are in any position to threaten me? "
She seethes with anger and humiliation, her eyes bloodshot look daggers at him.
"Oh come on, don't be such a sore loser you had to see this coming. I warned you not once, but repeatedly and yet, yet you chose to believe him over me. You chose to disregard everything I said. You chose to trust Raman, you deserve this." He says the last words with a sneer.
His features full of disgust, anger, fury and contempt.
"How dare you?" She hisses at him.
Suddenly he is laughing, laughing loudly at her. Pointing his finger and laughing at her.
"Shut up Ashok Khanna!" She yells loudly.
Suddenly he stops laughing and is in her face. The move startling and frightening her to no ends, she backs off two paces and cold sweat collects on her forehead.
The evident fear on her face gives him a perverse satisfaction, as his trademark smirk appears next on his face. His lips curling the next moment as he utters the next words,
"Foolish woman, you had this coming at you and believe me, this is just the beginning, you have no idea of what's up next for you."
She cannot hold herself back now she lunges for him to attack him, unfortunately for her the bars between them prevent her from even getting anywhere close to harming him since he moved back at the precise moment she came forth to attack him.
"Shagun, Shagun... you shouldn't have done that. You wanted a five-carat diamond now did you? Well spend the next five years behind these bars for trusting that ex of yours over me."
Hearing the words, she feels a sock in the gut all over again and is shedding tears as her countenance changes instantly.
"Ashok, I am sorry please. I am very sorry please forgive me, help me. You cannot let me rot in here, I would die in jail please do something. Five years... no they are simply out of question; I cannot spend the next five hours here. Please I love you baby."
"Oh wow, just wow." He says the words with his eyebrows shot up and continues
"You know Shagun... in my college we did this play once, Macbeth by Shakespeare... I assume you know who he is... well there was this line in it look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under it... at the time I was still not the Ashok Khanna I am today and wondered, how could this be possible... can there be people like that in the world? Today I have the answer. You scheming witch! You deserve all this and more... you lied to me, you tried to coerce me into marrying you. Do not think I could not understand your games all these days, the emphasis of you not being my wife being constant whenever we argued. For six years, I kept you like a queen in my home, fed you, clothed you and entertained all your tantrums and even that son of yours, but this is what I got for that. You repaid me by playing tricks with me, you lied to me, even me. So Shagun, today you deserve all of this rotting in jail, losing Aditya' custody and being the stinking looser that you are. Cos you know what, we are done... we are so over Shagun. Goodbye, that is all I came to say to you. Honestly, I never thought a day would come when I would say this but hell I am glad Raman won today. A woman like you deserves what she is getting."
"You bas***d... how dare you? I left my husband for you, walked out of my marriage, broke my happy family and lost my reputation and you still treat me like this? How can you say all of this?"
"Don't try to fool me Shagun, I know you and apparently so does your ex, which is why he could play you so well. Do not try to be a martyr it does not suit you, I never forced you to do anything - you left your husband on your own, broke your so-called happy family because you wanted to and you did not do it out of love... not the least. You wanted luxury and I wanted you... I... I was a bit in love with you true... but with time that became more of a habit than a feeling, staying with you but these past few days made me realize, habits, especially bad ones should be done away with as soon as you become aware of them."
"You tempted me with all of that. You did it."
"And you choose to accept temptation, sweetheart, don't put the blame of your sins on me... I have enough of my own as it is. Hasta la vista baby."
With a flying kiss and a wink, he is out of the cellar.
Chagrined and angry she collapses on the floor, as she recalls the past few hours.
She remembers walking confidently in the court with Raman by her side assuming it will all be over and she would be walking out with a smile on her face glowing with victory.
Only for things to change inside the courtroom and how, she never saw it coming; Raman' betrayal.
Ishita' lawyer was the first to go and the woman was average as far as she could make out. She was confident about Raman and his lawyer, she had seen the man in court previously after all but she should have known better than to place her trust in her ex.
Deliberately Pathak was poor in defense of her, she screamed and yelled she is innocent but nothing came of it. Instead, evidence mounted against her somehow, the mechanic who did the job on the car identified the vehicle and gave his statement, witnesses who saw the accident, the man Ashok planted as the fake buyer all somehow came up against her but she still chose to cry wolf.
She tried to scream time and again that all of it was a lie, a scheme to trap her, even proclaimed Ishita has a problem with her because she is Raman' ex-wife, the woman he still loves even if he may have married Ishita for their daughter Ruhi. She tried it all and in some bout of insanity, she had screamed at the last moment about the CCTV footage the police records proving she is innocent.
As soon as the word of the footage had left her mouth she had been horrified but could not take it back, she remembered an instant later the footage was destroyed by Pathak on Raman' orders and relaxed once again, only for it to turn out as her greatest mistake.
The footage came forth and the video revealed she was in the car all right, but the driver who had caused the accident was her son Aditya, she took on the wheel only once he had rammed the car into the tree post the accident.
The court sentenced her on various counts for five years. The sections levied against her were hit and run, rash driving, negligence as well as attempt to destroy evidence, which was on two counts - for the paint job on her car done to hide any traces of the accident, and the man who sold the footage to Pathak revealed she tried to bribe him to destroy this evidence.
Citing this to be an instance of the rarest of rare cases, the court heard Pathak' plea to not take any action against Aditya, since she was the adult present in the car... she was the one wholly responsible for the accident and for being a negligent parent.
Out of nowhere, Pathak took her by surprise with his next move. He requested the court to allot Aditya' custody to his father since it was now obvious with Shagun' negligence she is an unfit parent for her child since she not only caused the endangerment to the life of a senior citizen and many others by allowing a minor to drive, she even endangered her own son' life in the process.
She pleaded with the court and screamed that she had been allotted Adi' custody because Raman is an abusive father, however even that was in vain.
Raman had thought things through carefully A few well-established people who knew him well and some of their neighbors vouched for Raman and Ishita. Mrs. Srivastav, the lady judge who presided over Ruhi' trial also was present in the court and she had at first no idea what was the woman doing there, but it became apparent when she came to stand and in her capacity as a member of the bar, had given her statement. She revealed how Ruhi was scared of her and the fiasco that had happened when she had informally approached the court and tried to malign Ishita and Raman' image as parents, lied about them and their marriage falling apart.
The plea was accepted and Aditya' custody was granted to her ex, who had looked up at her with a smile on his face, and it became evident to her... she had been played.
Raman had been playing a game all along with her, and she, she had let him make a pawn out of her.
All those tears, all those promises of his were fake, all of it.
When the police officers escorted her to take her into custody, he had walked up to her quietly and with ease revealed his plans to her as well as his motive.
"I had promised you Shagun, I won't spare you... the day you took Adi from me, proved me an abusive father. I could have forgiven you Shagun for cheating on me, for breaking our family, for walking out of our marriage... or at least tried to do that had you not done what you did. You instigated my son against me, you brainwashed him and turned him against his own father. I warned you repeatedly not to use my son against me, not to fill his mind with poison yet you continued to do just that. But the last straw was you being so careless with Adi' safety... how can you call yourself a mother after what you did? Do you take me for a fool? I know you Shagun in and out and understood that Adi was behind this all the day you lied to me. You the woman who was shameless enough to lie to me for ages, who used her tears and fake love to manipulate me when you had an affair accepted in a moment your fault. Nah I could not believe it and understood... understood its Adi. I had said I would have my son back and now I do.
I had vowed my revenge upon you one day and today I have it."
She angrily hits the floor with her fist as she finds herself in the dark cellar and cries bitterly for a while... she vows revenge upon the two men because of whom she finds herself here Raman for playing her and Ashok Khanna, for being the man; who could leave her to rot in prison.
She vows to ruin the two for being the men who betrayed her, vows that they would pay for their crimes against her.
They owe her a debt.
Edited by EkPaheli - 11 years ago
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