I was shy at the idea of people talking about me behind my back. I knew I stood out from the typical Sethi Tech employee, but I guess I hadn’t realized how noticeable I was.
“Don’t worry,” he continued. “People only ever have good things to say about you. You don’t seem to be the typical snobby upper-management type that they normally hire. You come off as a genuine hard worker.”
I felt relieved hearing that. I was a hard worker, and I didn’t want anything to tarnish that reputation. “That’s good to hear. I still feel a little out of place here. I usually find it difficult to meet new friends.”
“I’m not so sure of that. You seem perfectly comfortable making new friends.” He offered me an encouraging smile that lit up his whole face, then scrunched his napkin up before placing it on his tray.
It felt good to have a new friend.
XXII. Shyam
Jai must have been able to tell by my tone that it was important and that I needed him as soon as possible, because he came within five minutes of my text— a rarity.
“What’s wrong?” he said as he rushed into the lab. He found me staring at one of the computer screens. He pulled up a chair to see what held my attention.
Salena. She was dressed in the finest dark-pink and gold fabrics, like she was getting married. I had seen her dressed like this once before, at my side. Her lengha, or skirt, shone with jewels and beads in intricate designs. Her choli, or blouse, matched her skirt, but it fit so loosely on her frame. Salena had always had a curvy frame, with full breasts and ample hips. But in this photo, she was as thin as a rail. Her eyes were sunken in like she was under stress and hadn’t slept well. Her fair skin, which she had inherited from her mother, was bruised with black marks that looked fresh, like she had just been through a fight. A dupatta, or veil, covered her head in the traditional way that brides wore it, but it couldn’t hide her expression—or lack thereof. Her eyes were vacant. She looked like a corpse propped up to pose for a photo.
I looked down to her hands and saw that they were adorned with traditional henna and glittering gold bangles. The vibrancy of her adornments made her skin look even paler.
I noticed something odd as I looked closer. She wore gold handcuffs in addition to her bangles, a chain connecting the cuffs. They were the most elaborate and expensive handcuffs I had ever seen.
“What the fuck happened to Salena? What is this?” Jai asked, enraged. He had been close to her when we were engaged, so I knew seeing her like this upset him just as much as it upset me.
“This was sent to my email address. Read the file name.”
He read the title. “’Salena and Tarun—Engagement.’”
My jaw clenched tighter hearing him read it aloud.
He looked up at me in confusion, as if he had read a foreign language that he didn’t understand. “How did this happen?” he asked.
“He’s going after everything that was once mine.” Tarun wanted to prove a point with what appeared to be a forced engagement with my ex-fiancée. Salena looked anything but consenting. I found it hard to believe that her father had let this happen, but then again, he wasn’t against giving his daughter away if it meant filling his pockets with money. Piece of shit.
“Let me see if I can find the IP address from where it was originally sent,” Jai said as he took control of the mouse and keyboard. He clicked on a tab and typed something into the search field.
“Well?” My patience was waning.
His eyes flicked back and forth as he read the data he needed on the monitor. “The IP address is showing that it was sent by your computer in your office.”
I shook my head, truly perplexed. “That’s impossible. No one has access to my computer except for you.”
“Whoever sent it probably altered the address and used yours to throw us off. Hackers do it all the time to get through firewalls.”
“What about the coordinates of where it was taken?” If we could get the coordinates, then we could move men to scour that location.
His fingers flew across the keys again. “Dammit. It’s encrypted,” Jai exclaimed as he banged on the keyboard.
Of course, it was encrypted. If this had been sent by Tarun or his men, they wouldn’t have made it easy for us to solve. They liked working in riddles.
“Can you decrypt it?” I asked.
“Yes, but it could take weeks. Tarun has a good tech team behind him, so I’m sure this won’t be easy to crack.”
“We don’t have that kind of time. We need to locate this asshole now. He’s fucked with us one too many times.” I clenched my hands into fists, trying to contain my frustration. When I was frustrated, I punched shit.
“He probably used a newer and more complex method of encryption to encode the coordinates, but decryption that way can take a long time if we’re trying to hack the location,” Jai said.
I didn’t know much about encryption techniques. My technical knowledge was limited. I relied on Jai to fill in the gaps for me. “How sure are you that he’s used this type of encryption?”
“Fairly certain. It’s the most common method people use these days because of its level of security.” Jai clicked the mouse a few more times and opened a new program. After inputting some information, a status bar appeared, signaling that something was being processed.
“There. I’ve set up the decryption cycle. The system will alert our phones to let us know if coordinates were decoded.”
“What if this doesn’t work?” I asked.
“It’s very possible that it will not. This type of encryption is difficult to hack. The program will either just keep running in a loop and never end or it will error out when it exhausts all of the possible combinations of bits to make up the coordinates.”
I stared at the picture. My ex-fiancée sat in front of a window that overlooked lots of tropical green trees. She could have been anywhere in India from the setting in the background. Nothing specific stood out to me about her location.
She looked so broken—a shell of the woman she had once been. I hadn’t spoken to her in years, but I still felt protective of her. I cared about her and didn’t want her to be the subject of Tarun’s abuse because of his vendetta with me. She deserved better than this fate. She’d had a free spirit when I knew her, and to see her like this was difficult. She was just another casualty of this business, a game piece used by the men who controlled the board.
Jai’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “I downloaded the photo to the cloud so that Amelia can access it too.”
Dread filled my gut. What if Amelia was next? Her vacation request had just been approved for Thanksgiving next week. She was taking a week off to fly back to Seattle.
What if Tarun tried to take her while she was away? She had no idea how much danger she was in. If something happened to her, I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.
Tarun would stop at nothing to take whatever was mine. And Amelia was mine.
XXIII. Amelia
My vacation request had been canceled! What the fuck?! I was supposed to be flying out to Seattle this weekend to spend the week with my mom for Thanksgiving. I had already booked my tickets and started packing.
I was stunned as I sat staring at the email from HR saying that my once-approved request had been “canceled due to increased staffing demand.” What does that even mean?! It was Thanksgiving week! What could possibly be so important that they would need staff in the office?
I didn’t even really work for the company. My job had nothing to do with anything related to keeping it running smoothly. This had Shyam written all over it, and I was enraged.
I marched down to his office and demanded his secretary let me see him. She said that he was in a board meeting. I was more irritated that I couldn’t storm into his office and tear into him immediately like I wanted to. His secretary asked if I wanted to leave a message, but I spun away, too enraged to reply to her. It was rude, but I wouldn’t have been able to form a coherent sentence anyway.<
br />
I stalked down the hall to the group of conference rooms where I knew he held his meetings. Only one room had a “RESERVED” sign on the digital monitor outside of the door. The privacy blinds had been drawn, so I figured that was the room that he was in.
I put my hand on the doorknob, and for a moment, a sliver of clarity broke through. This is way too dramatic, Becker. The good angel on my shoulder was probably right. But the bad angel on the other was fucking pissed at being bossed around by a control freak. I turned the knob and pushed into the room.
Eight men in perfectly tailored suits and with leather portfolios and fancy fountain pens on the table in front of them drew their attention toward me. Shit. Maybe I should have listened to that good angel.
I knew all the men sitting in the room because we had offices on the same floor, and I had seen them in passing. They stared at me with confusion and interest.
Jai was seated at the far end of the table. Judging from his expression, he was trying to suppress a laugh. He knew who I was looking for and was totally here for the show about to take place.
Shyam sat at the head of the table, glaring at me. He did not find my intrusion as amusing as Jai did. I stood my ground and faced off with him wordlessly, glaring back with such fire in my eyes that he finally rose to his feet and pressed his knuckles into the table before him.
“Leave.” His voice was low but full of venom. No one questioned him, or even spoke. They left their belongings behind and filed out of the room in silence.
Jai remained seated and crossed his ankle over his knee, getting ready for the drama about to unfold before him.
“Get the fuck out,” Shyam growled at his brother without even looking in his direction.
“Shit. I never get to stay for the fun,” Jai joked as he strolled toward the door.
He stopped to nudge me playfully with his elbow on the way out and whispered, “Godspeed.” He closed the door behind himself.
I started before Shyam had a chance to talk. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
He raised his eyebrow at my choice of words. I rarely ever cursed aloud, so I was sure he was surprised by what had come out of my mouth.
“Your boss,” he replied, asserting his dominance over me. “Care to explain to me why you interrupted my meeting?”
“You had HR cancel my vacation!” I said, pointing an accusatory finger at him.
“What makes you think I had anything to do with it?” His voice remained steady, unlike mine.
I threw my hands in the air in exasperation. “Why else would they approve it and then deny it?”
“I need you to work next week.”
“Over Thanksgiving? That’s bullshit,” I snapped, resting my hands on my hips as I waited for a better response.
Trying to distract me from the purpose of my tirade, he said, “That mouth of yours has certainly become dirty, hasn’t it?”
I ignored him and pressed on. “I had plans! My mom is expecting me. I already booked my tickets.”
“Cancel them. She’ll understand,” he said as if it were no big deal. Maybe it wasn’t to him, but my mom was important to me.
“No! Practically the entire company is on vacation next week, except for me? That’s not fair!”
“I will not be on vacation. I will be working too.” He probably never took a vacation. I couldn’t imagine him snapping pictures on the streets of Rome with gelato in hand like a tourist.
“Shyam, I miss my mom. I want to see her. Why are you doing this?” I pleaded.
He stayed quiet, deep in his own thoughts. He was hiding something from me.
I walked around the table to where he stood. “Hey,” I said gently as I put my hand on his bicep. He turned his face to look me in my eyes. “Talk to me.”
He let out a huge sigh. “Salena is engaged to Tarun.”
“What? How do you know?” I knew he didn’t talk to her anymore, so I was confused about how he’d know that. Was he bothered that Tarun was involved or that his ex-fiancée was taken?
“Someone sent an untraceable photo of her in engagement clothes,” he said, sounding almost detached.
“Was Tarun in the photo?”
“No.”
“Were you able to figure out where it was taken?” Maybe it had coordinates associated with it that we could use to find Tarun through her.
“No, the coordinates were encrypted. Jai is running software to decrypt it right now,” he said.
“That could take weeks or even months to figure out,” I said, thinking aloud.
He grunted in frustration. “If we can even decrypt it at all.”
“What does this have to do with me leaving?” I still didn’t see how this affected my trip home.
“Amelia, she had bruises. She didn’t look like herself. She’s being held prisoner.” His eyes were filled with worry.
This was worse than I’d thought. “She’s being forced to marry him?”
“I’m sure of it. He’s trying to prove a point, taking everything that I’ve ever had.”
I didn’t want to be presumptuous, especially after he had blatantly told me how he viewed our relationship, but I itched to ask what was on my mind. “Is that why you don’t want me to leave?”
He didn’t say anything, but concern showed heavy in his eyes.
My heart softened at his silent admission. He was worried about my safety. He wasn’t one for many words when it came to his feelings, so I didn’t expect him to say anything in this moment.
I moved into his body and wrapped my arms around his waist.
“I promise, nothing will happen. I’m taking a direct flight to and from Seattle and going straight to my mom’s house when I get there. I promise to check in with you every day.”
He embraced me back, holding my hips with his hands. “No going anywhere alone. Understand?” he ordered.
“I promise,” I said as I rested my cheek on his chest. He relaxed a little and his chin rested on top of my head, encasing me in his warmth. “You have to trust me with information that you know, Shyam. I’m in this fight, too.”
“I know,” he said, holding me tighter.
Now, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to leave him for a whole week. There was no place safer than in his arms.
XXIV. Amelia
Seeing my mom again after so long was amazing, but it also made me feel sad. The resemblance between us had always been remarkable, especially with our matching red hair. Except now, she looked older and more tired. It broke my heart that she was working so hard and lived alone all the way out here.
We spent hours catching up and reliving old memories. I missed her so much. She had been such a devoted mother when I was a child. The relationship had changed as I got older and we had become friends. I could trust her with anything.
Thanksgiving was a small affair in our home. It was just Mom and me, so we cooked just enough for two people. Instead of a huge turkey, we opted for a couple of small Cornish hens, cornbread, roasted vegetables, and mashed potatoes with gravy—because who didn’t love mashed potatoes?
I was by no means a great cook like my mom, but I could hold my own in the kitchen. I was busy prepping the vegetables for the oven while Mom was making the marinade for the hens. We, of course, indulged ourselves in a few glasses of wine while we cooked and chatted.
“So, have you met anyone special in New York?” she asked as she worked.
I hesitated at her question, unsure of how to answer. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to share the news of my complicated relationship with Shyam. I was usually honest with her and valued her advice when it came to guys, but Shyam wasn’t like the others—definitely not the type you’d bring home to meet your mom.
I decided to rip the bandage off and tell her. She’d know if I was lying anyway.
“Kind of,” I replied without looking up from my cutting board.
She set down her bottle of olive oil and clasped her hands in front of her chest. “Oh! That’s wonderful,
sweetheart! How long have you been together?”
“Just a few months.” Things had escalated quickly in the few short weeks that I had known him.
“And I’m just hearing about this now?” She sounded a little offended that I’d kept the news from her.
“I’m not so sure he’s the right person for me.” I kept my gaze low to avoid eye contact with the woman who could read me like a book.
Concern washed over her face. “Why do you say that?”
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