TWO HALVES OF A WHOLE

4. A PATRON or A PREDATOR?

Ms Sharma and I have been sitting in comfortable silence for a little longer now. Suddenly, my phone pinged with a message. I unlocked the phone and opened the message, and a smirk formed on my face when I read the message file.

"Aniket will be fine," I announced, making Ms Sharma look at me with glimmers of hope visible in her eyes. I handed the mobile to her, nodding her to look through the file. And I saw her wiping his tears as she had a hopeful smile forming on her face.

The file Mr Smith sent me was about all the dirty deeds of the social media fame Shilpa Rajvardhan. For the outside world, she may be the sweet and confident girl pursuing her career in modelling and content creation through Instagram or other social media platforms. But on the inside, being 23 at her age, Shilpa Rajvardhan played a prime role in all the illegal business of her father, Yash Rajvardhan. She is dating an Indian actor, Adhvik Agnihotri. That was the reason for her fame in the initial stage of her career. She is still seeing other people and cheating on him a few times behind his back. I don't give a fuck about her sex life. The crucial information was something else. She had contact with dangerous drug dealers in the country. The flow of drugs to the clubs and casinos her father owned was through her contacts with them. And most importantly, she was a drug addict herself.

"I will send the hard copy to you," I assured Ms Sharma and gave her a firm and promising hug.

"What's on your mind, Nilin?" She asked, breaking the hug.

"Now? Get something to eat." I said genuinely. Because right now, I'm hungry as a wolf, and to calm down the situation, making her not worry too much about the situation.

"I'm serious." She said in her chuckle.

"So am I," I said in my playful tone, which I use with very few people. And the few people only include her and Aniket sometimes. But mostly her.

"Nilin," She called, trying to be all serious.

"It's time I officially meet Shilpa Rajvardhan in person." I declared with a smirk, thinking about the treat I planned to organize for Shilpa Rajvardhan.

"Be careful at every step. Rajvardhans are not the ones we can deal with no troubles. They will lure us into hell if we ever try to burn them." She said, clutching my arm and eyes full of emotions of worry, tension and fear about my safety. I always felt so many things for her affection and concern, which I once craved but never got while growing up.

"I like to see them try, and I love playing with fire," I said in my sassy tone, holding her face in my palms and wiping the tears. I placed a gentle kiss on her forehead and gave her another reassuring hug. The growl of her stomach made us burst out.

"Let's get something to eat." Ms Sharma said in her laugh.

I nodded in mine.

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After discussing all the fuss about Aniket's marriage and my deals and upcoming projects while eating, I bid bye to Ms Sharma and took off from there in my car. Ms Sharma's house to my penthouse was a forty-five-minute drive. So I pulled the car to a shortcut that was a fifteen-minute shorter drive as it was already 11 in the night. As soon as I pulled the car to the shortcut, I watched a black Scorpio following my car from a distance in my rearview mirror. The next second, I knew, was a person firing towards my car. I cut off the car and took my license gun from the glove compartment as I always carry it for self-protection.

I triggered the gun to make sure it was fully loaded and prepared for shooting them the moment the Scorpio came side by side. But none came. Instead, I saw a Mercedez-Benz G-Class overtaking the Scorpio, and someone inside it pointed their gun out and shot twice inside the car, making it stop on the road. I watched the whole stunt through the rearview. I tried to note down the number of both vehicles. But I couldn't get the G-Wagen's. One cannot predict what happens in this industry. Most people try to take down the ones competing with them by erasing them from this world.

I finally reached the entrance of my penthouse. Just when I was about to enter the parking lot, I saw the same G-Wagen parked from a safe distance from me. The drained-out adrenaline came back rushing to me at a high speed. I stopped my car and took out my gun again. When I was predicting another attack, the person started the vehicle and got ahead of me at high speed, not giving me access to see neither the number nor the sight of the person or people in it. I thought about all possible options of who would be behind all this. Why did the second one save me from them, if they also came for me? Then why following me here without an encounter? So many questions bombarded my mind about the incident.

I texted Mr Smith the number of the Scorpio after parking my car and entered the elevator. I dialled the code, got inside and called it a day after a long shower, thinking only about Saturday's meeting with certain someone. And it annoyed me because I hated it to my core. But as soon as I got on my bed, deep sleep engulfed me, and I let everything slide to tomorrow.