Shape of the Sun

Many fights at the station

Mahesh's demon refused to stay out back. It clamored to sit in a chair right next to him. Because there was no other way to explain how his world suddenly changed.

He really thought that he could get away with it. To his credit, Mahesh had been unconfident until the second he passed security and waited for his flight to begin boarding. He was going to Ecuador.

Jahaan had told him that it was a good place to lie low. Apparently, tourists early in the year weren't weird. Mahesh thought there was no better time to be a tourist apart from the present when every TV channel had something to say about his in-laws and Choti. If he knew his father and brother-in-law well, they were not going to let him be.

The moment that he had allowed Jahaan's prodding to get to him, the second he had signed away the last of his inheritance as payment for Choti's attack despite Prithvi's warnings, Mahesh knew that there was only one way to go.

Out. 

He needed to flee. He needed so badly to be out of the Indian space, where the Redds and their influence couldn't reach. And he was successful.

Not. 

All it had taken was a few minutes for his world to rock, something both loose and literal. An onlooker could say that someone had decided to throw a huge pile of rocks down on him. Mahesh felt it when the police entered the boarding lounge, passing security checks. He felt it the most when he was taken away in handcuffs, people whipping out their phones to take pictures, whispering how familiar they thought he looked the first time they had seen him. He was the Reddy son-in-law, wasn't he?

Bullshit. Mahesh ground his teeth, the hate for that tag pervading every inch of him. He hated how much he had been reduced to just that and a subtle pride took over, wiping out any trace of guilt left. 

Choti, that bitch, deserved all that she got, a twisted pleasure rising from deep within, knowing that she was in pain. He had videos, the receipts of her suffering on his phone. He was more perverted than the past him with an air of aloofness added so that he didn't even struggle on the way to the station.

That air was wiped out the second he stepped in there, doused with fear at who was seated, waiting for him. Mahesh tried to run but the officers held him, inadvertently allowing Rajkumar easy access.

"You sick bastard! I'll fucking kill you!"

The other man dragged Mahesh by the collar and gave him a heavy punch to the face, sending him to the floor, hand holding a broken and bloodied nose, writhing in pain from the impact. Despite all the commotion and attempts by the officers to pull Rajkumar away, he resisted and instead, got on all fours, straddling Mahesh so that he could hit him unperturbed. And he did, again and again. He didn't stop even with Manmeet screaming in the background, crying for him not to.

He didn't stop because there was no reason to. This was something that meant so much more to him than face value.

Rajkumar was intelligent. He knew. Forget all his talk in Bhairav's office, he knew the kind of stuff that Mahesh was made up of, the scum who didn't find it difficult to cheat on his wife with another woman. 

He was scum too, admittedly. 

When Choti had come to him at an impasse, he had advised her to go ahead. Mahesh Sharma would be so important in our fight against Prithvi, he said. And if there was anyone who knew Choti most in this world, it would be him. He could see the earnestness in her eyes, the affection in there that perhaps, she didn't even know that she had. 

His sister was blissfully unaware of her front, yet hyperaware of his advice on the matter. 

She had given him a deep, pensive look and Rajkumar had almost thought that there was pushback, a certain tightening in his chest loosening, a relief that was so small it was hard to notice. In the next minute however, Choti was back to talking about how she was going to accept Mahesh's proposal, and the tightening returned. Rajkumar remembered how he had downed a whole glass of red wine in one go when he was alone, conflicted about his passive complicity and the polarizing emotions of glee and regret that he felt.