Warm Love|✓

59

I gaze at the message, unsure of my next move. Reaching into my purse, I retrieve the crumpled piece of paper, carefully smoothing it out. I pick up my phone and begin searching for the names of the drugs and weapons. Each name I investigate reveals a market value in the billions, all supplied through illicit means by a criminal syndicate. The realization had never crossed my mind before, and my heart pounds loudly in my chest. My fingers tremble, and my eyes, which once pooled up with tears, now fixate on the paper with a dry, unblinking stare.

Wiping my sweat against the dupatta, I exist the washroom, existing from the backside of the campus, which opens to an isolated street. I hale a taxi, giving him the location. I fix my gaze outside of the window, watching the passing nature.

"Ma'am me are here." I started outside, covered with towering trees.

I climb out of the taxi, asking him the fare. The middle-aged man with dark, shakes his head, handing me a piece of paper, and zooming out. I stare at the paper, which gives me the direction. I turn to see the massive and intricate steel-framed building. My eyes divert to a white Bentley, parked in front of it at a corner, along with other black-tined car. I gulp diverting my eyes on the paper, which had the direction. I follow each arrow, inscribed on the paper, which leaded to the backyard of it, a stair welcoming me.

My hands shook, so does my leg, the rest of the steps hidden in darkness. Am I doing the right think?

Tears blur my eyes, and an ironic laugh escapes my throat. It's peculiar how, when I desire tears, they betray me, yet when I wish to hold them back, they grace me with their presence. Tear, both as a physical expression and as a metaphor for pulling something apart, holds two meaning in literature. Now I understand why it carries these two distinct meanings.

I descend the stair, my hands gripping the banister. A hallway welcomes me. The paper shows me to take left, and so I did, walking in the dim light hallway, when a voice pricks my ear, followed by pungent smell of smoke. I hide behind a pillar.

"Today, the boss looks so furious. He's relentlessly lashing out at the men with that nail-studded belt." One of them whispers.

His friend chuckles darkly, "That's nothing new. He's always been this way. You're a fresh recruit, that's why you don't know the depths of his cruelty. Once, he mercilessly killed a man, stopping only when he'd torn out his intestines." They walk away, their boss heroic story following them, then why they echoed in my ears.

My breath is turning shallow, each second turning me into a mess. Whatever the heck they sprouted, I'm sure it's not about Reyansh. I know he kidnapped me, forced me into marriage, and even threatened me. If he's that much cruel, he would've raped me, use his strength on me, hit me, not cherish me. I clench my fist against my heart, then why does it feel I'm giving excuses to me.

I wipe my tear I know my Reyansh, he is not like that. I blow a brave breath, forcing my feet deeper in the hallway. I halt at the end, before a creaked door, from where a loud cry of a man hits my sensitive ear. I gulp before shiveringly lift my eyes, and my world stops. It does. I instinctively cover my mouth to stifle any sound.

In front of me is a man tied to a chair, his face marred, his mouth oozing blood, and half of his face charred by burns. A dark figure looms over him, one leg pressed on the man's thigh, and a cruel hand wielding a sharp knife, digging it into the man's arm.

"Sorry, please let me go. Please." The old man begs, his accent thick, before him. The man doesn't have to turn around, my soul will never fail to feel him.

"Beg before your God, not before a Devil." Reyansh twists the knife in the forearm, drawing out a painful cry of agony. "Tie his mouth, he's too loud." The man standing surrounding Reyansh, ties the man's mouth muffling his screams.