Divulging Remorse ✔

Chapter 33

The next day, she went back to work. It seemed like she had been away for months! At first, she was a bit nervous as to what her peers might make out of that absurd attack and her spying skills which she expected would be making rounds in the entire office.

Thankfully, none of it happened. People usually forget and the only voices that we hear are just in the head. Though, the one person who did come up to her was the nerdy software engineer who wasn't too happy that she had utilised his tactics to break into Younus Hadad's room. She waved him off saying that she had a lot to catch up on and didn't have a minute to spare. It was a lie, of course.

She had no clue about the terms she was now on with her boss. He obviously didn't regard her as the best after what she had tried to intervene and interrupt in his matters which were "personal". Other than that, nothing looked clear. It was all fuzzy, with no concrete aims to be on this job. She was now working for NIB; for Moutasim. The pretence was getting too thick, there was a guilt of not being sincere to her job; to herself, she had been trying to shove it ever since she had agreed with him. Riya had almost given up her dream job, her career goals just to help the investigation bureau.

After all, that was more important but she couldn't really accept the altitude of her behaviour. What if it was some other agent and not Moutasim? Would she still do what she had done with almost zero persuasion? That was certainly debatable. He didn't have to push very hard for her to agree and somewhere deep inside, she knew the reason.

She smiled helplessly, remembering his reluctant gaze on her. She knew he was fighting himself to not look her in the eye while the whole discussion in his office the other day. Some ruffling of papers jolted her out of her daydream. Drake stood beside her desk, scribbling on a small sticky note that was stuck to a printout document.

The note read, 'Give this medical application to your boss and tell him that you have a Doctor's appointment during the lunch hour. Cheif's order.'

She blinked in bewilderment and looked up to ask him. He had already left. She quickly scanned the busy office to see whether someone had noticed the much secret activity, but to her relief, everybody was working away in their own cubicles, too occupied to be nosy.

She started reading the medical application which was well-scripted and nobody could tell that it was a sham. As she read on, her eyes widened in shock. She read a particular line over and over again to make sure the words weren't defying her.

"To hell with their chief!" She muttered angrily to herself as she scrunched up the sticky note, tearing it mindlessly.

Sitting motionless for a couple of minutes, she stared into space so that her nerves could gel back together. When she finally calmed down, she looked at the other side of the picture. This application was a necessity for all the reasons she didn't know yet but she couldn't leave work without a damn good one for them to think of her otherwise. By now, she was in habit of people stalking her all the time, just to check if she was up to something. It was obvious, Riya Jahangiri was a major threat to the murderer. If only she knew more details about the case, she wouldn't have needed NIB to babysit her.

What if NIB is a hoax? She thought suddenly, glancing at the printout.

Moutasim had been playing a gangster all these years, it surely wasn't hard for him to pull on another character and make everyone believe the newest story on the block. But why would he do that? Professionally, her thoughts were reasonable but her heart had a different vibe altogether. Aside from the much-talked-about murder case, Moutasim was taking a mysterious shape for her. Though she knew NIB existed for real, it was still hard to digest that he could be one of them. His picture of a bad guy from the past was taking too long to dissolve. Part of it was because she had no idea of what he wanted her to do, his strategic plans weren't widely revealed to her, just some brief idea about the whole situation on how to get the evidence together so that the case could go to trial without any deliberate constraints.