Page 41 of Born in Sin (Phoenix #3)
Chapter Twenty-One
VIRAT
Virat pulled out a highlighter and stood before his whiteboard, gathering his thoughts.
Behind him, Ishaan groaned. “Not another one of your charts.”
“The man does love his whiteboards,” Kabir mused, taking a sip of black coffee from an extra-large mug.
“That shit is going to eat through your stomach lining if you keep chugging it like that.” Amay’s disapproving doctor drawl cut through the low hum of chatter filling the room.
“Cut me some slack, Doc,” Kabir replied goodhumouredly. “I’ve been up all night.”
Virat’s hand clenched around the highlighter. Up all night. Of course, they’d been. She was at his house when he’d called first thing in the morning. They. Had. Been. Up. All. Night.
“Are we ready to get to work?” he snapped, his carefully groomed control snapping like a twig under a boot.
“Hate to bring it to your attention, mate,” Kabir answered. “But you’re the only one working. The rest of us are doing this for kicks.”
“Kicks?” The low, guttural growl that erupted from Virat’s throat had even Ishaan looking at him alertly.
“Kicks was the wrong word,” Dhrithi interjected. “Kabir didn’t mean it. I’m sure.”
“Kabir can speak for himself,” Kabir butted in, wicked amusement dancing in his eyes. “In case you’ve forgotten Mr. Jha, I’m the one out there fraternizing with your enemy. I have no skin in the game and yet, I’m the one-“
“No skin in the game?”
The words were a blade sheathed in silk.
“Your girlfriend, the woman you love, was destroyed by these men and you say you have no skin in the game? What the fuck kind of love is this anyway?”
“I-“ Kabir began but another voice entered the conversation.
“I’ll answer that.” Cara pressed a hand into Kabir’s shoulder as she rose from the arm of his chair where she was seated and walked over to where Virat stood clutching his highlighter. She came to a stop in front of him, her clear, furious gaze meeting his.
“It’s the kind of love that has a man staking his fame, his career, and his reputation to help the woman he loves get vengeance on people who wronged her years before he ever met her.
It’s the kind of love that has the same man joining rave parties, a fact that could land him back in rehab after being three years sober.
It’s the kind of love that has him contemplating a sex orgy with people he has no interest in seeing naked. ”
“Are you sure about the last bit?” Ishaan asked, his cheeky tone clearly intended to lighten the mood.
“I am.” Cara spoke without breaking eye contact with Virat. “Why would he be when he has me?”
Virat took the hit, the pain scouring through him like demon’s talons dipped in poison. She turned, looking away from him and sweeping her gaze over the people gathered there. She smiled at Kabir who shook his head at her, like an admonishing teacher.
“Oh and one last thing,” she added, glancing over her shoulder at Virat. “The Dusty Devils did not destroy me.”
Virat nodded tightly. “Noted. And I apologise.” His gaze moved to where Kabir sat. “To both of you.”
“It’s all good man,” Kabir said with an easy smile before shooting a strangely reproachful glance at Cara.
“So.” Mayukhi spoke for the first time that morning, her sharp gaze moving between the various faces. “Shall we get to it?”
Virat cleared his throat, willing the emotions constricting his throat away. “Two days ago, Majid’s CCTV cameras, the ones that monitor the perimeter of his home, malfunctioned. When the technicians fixed it, they left behind a little return gift.”
“You hacked his cameras,” Amay translated for the rest of the room.
“Yeah we did!” Ishaan crowed.
“We now have eyes inside his home,” Virat acknowledged, making notes on the whiteboard as he spoke.
“Why him specifically?” Cara asked, tension lining her body. “Why aren’t we doing this to Naveen or Ashish? Or all of them for that matter?”
Virat forced himself to meet her gaze, keeping his own calm and steady, no evidence of their earlier altercation visible to her or anyone.
“It would be weird if everyone’s cameras stopped working at the same time,” he answered.
“And?” Cara was relentless, her gaze boring into his.
“And because this is only Phase 1. We’re setting this up for Phase 2 and that phase hinges on this whole plan pivoting around Majid.”
“What is Phase 2?” If ice had a human form, it was Cara Ferns in that moment.
“This plan only works with Majid for a reason. You’ve initiated contact with him and Majid has been relentlessly asking to meet you, for proof that you are Celina.”
Cara frowned but nodded. “He has.”
“So, we’re going to give it to him.”
She didn’t move, not a muscle. She looked at him and then at his whiteboard. Back to him, then to the whiteboard. He waited patiently for her to reach the point where she explodes. And it came in about four seconds.
“He cannot meet Celina or see proof of her,” she gritted out. “Celina doesn’t exist anymore.”
Ishaan raised his hand like an irritating student trying to be the good one in class. “Except for the fact that you’re sitting right there,” he pointed out.
“Shut up Ish,” Virat and Cara snapped.
“We have a computer generated picture of Celina, one that extrapolates what you would have looked like after you aged and if you hadn’t had any work done.”
Kabir swallowed a laugh. “You’re a brave man, Virat Jha, if you’re using the word aged in connection with her.”
“Artificial intelligence is a fucking marvel,” Ishaan said, beaming proudly as he walked over to the table beside Virat and opened up the laptop placed there. He tapped on a few keys and then spun it around, so they could see the screen.
Virat’s breath hitched in his chest as she looked at the picture, her face expressionless.
There she was, the girl he’d loved, the girl he still loved, the girl he’d always love.
In this avatar or any other, he would love her.
But still it burned like a debilitating poison swarming through his veins to see that hopeful, innocent smile on that sweetly pretty face.
A face that was similar to the one he watched now, and yet, different on so many levels.
“Beautiful,” Kabir murmured, kissing Cara’s arm and rubbing a hand up and down her back, automatically gentling her and offering comfort. “In every iteration.”
Virat bit his tongue, the salty tang of blood flooding his mouth as he kept his agreement to himself.
“So, we’re going to send him this picture.” Cara leaned into Kabir, seeming to need his warmth to steady her.
“We are,” Virat confirmed, adding a hard copy of the picture to the whiteboard. “Along with an old school picture of you, preferably one with him in it.”
“I don’t have any pictures with him. I burned all my school pictures a long time ago.” She rubbed her arms like she was freezing and desperate for some warmth. Kabir added his hands to the effort, gently stroking her arms.
“The school yearbooks,” Dhrithi murmured. “I’m sure there are some class pictures with all of us in the frame.”
“Perfect,” Amay murmured. “So we’re sending him the picture of Celina from the past and the present. And then what?”
“We’re not just sending him the pictures. We’re embedding them with a virus. Once he clicks on it, we will have complete access to his phone. And with that, between the cameras and his phone, we’ll have eyes and ears in his home and on his every movement, physically and virtually.”
“What if he doesn’t click on it?” Cara’s voice sounded disconnected from the present. She looked like she was running through a million scenarios in her head.
“If you send him a picture of yourself, do you think he won’t?”
She stayed silent, looking down at her hands, fingers twisting in an endless spiral.
“You’ve been egging him on, your messages escalating the tone and tenor of your conversations until he’s half out of his mind with worry. My best guess is he’ll click within seconds of receiving the attachment.”
Cara continued to stare at her hands, her gaze turned inward, her thoughts making her frown. And then she looked up at him and said, “Do it.”
Virat held out his hand for her burner phone and she handed it over, her fingers grazing his palm, the precious contact a delicious burn that overrode the intensity of the moment.
He tapped out the message, keeping it simple.
It’s me.
The message and the attachment went out into the ether on a soundless whoosh. Ishaan sat down at the laptop, his feral gaze on the screen as he worked the keyboard like a lunatic on steroids. A second later, a fierce grin spread across his face.
“We’re in.”
A quiet cheer went up in the room, the palpable tension dissipating slightly.
Cara came to stand beside Ishaan whose fingers were still flying over the keyboard.
An inscrutable expression on her face, she watched as Majid paced on the screen, the camera from his living room giving them a bird’s eye view of his agitation.
He tugged at his hair and shook his head as he walked the length of the large hall.
“We’re in,” Virat echoed quietly, his words for her ears alone.
“We are,” she agreed. “Congratulations. This is a stroke of genius.”
Ishaan’s gaze darted between the two of them and he rose to his feet with a muttered ‘Excuse me’ and disappeared in Mayukhi’s direction.
“I apologise for earlier,” he told her.
“Don’t apologise to me.” Cara nodded towards Kabir. “Apologise to him.”
“I will.” Her protectiveness towards the other man was familiar and painful. He’d lost the right to her loyalty but he was still glad she had someone who warranted it in her life.
“You guys are good together,” he added, though the words were shards of glass in his throat. “I’m happy for you.”
“Are you?” she asked, her eyes, flaming embers as they met his. “That’s a bit rich coming from you.” She stepped closer, her voice dropping. “The Dusty Devils didn’t destroy me but you came damn close, Vir.”
He nodded, not looking away.
“You don’t know what you did to me,” she whispered, stepping away.
She walked away from him and to Kabir. He stared at the picture of an older Celina that still smiled out at him from the center of his whiteboard.
“You don’t want to know what I’ve done for you, Celi.”
The words were an unvoiced, broken whisper that lay between him and his conscience; never spoken, never heard.