Rao Mansion, Jubilee Hills, Hyderabad

Pallavi woke up abruptly, the vestiges of her dream escaping her brain like sand through fingers. She yawned sleepily and got startled feeling her cheek rising up and down in a rhythmic pattern automatically. Then her senses peaked at a high alert when he she finally understood that she was lying half over another person and not the bed. 

She raised her face slightly upwards and saw the golden chain hit her cheekbone lightly and the cool metal made her almost wince softly. Then it became clear why she was feeling like there was a trunk fallen over her waist. 

Sometime during the night her husband had returned. 

And she was currently lying over him, her head on his bare chest and one of his arms wrapped loose over her waist. 

Pallavi felt embarrassment sizzle in her nerves as she wondered what he must have thought seeing her wrapped in his nightrobe, lying over his pillow. She raised herself slightly to peer at his sleeping face and felt a foreign feeling starting to bubble in her heart. 

Raghav Rao looked as innocent as a babe, all sleep soft with the morning sun splattered over his coffee coloured skin. Who would say that this man is called the Terror of Hyderabad? A few strands of his silky hair had fallen over his forehead and Pallavi endeavoured to lightly brush them off without waking him up in the process. 

It was a difficult task, when she knew her husband was the lightest sleeper she had ever seen. He would wake up at the slightest noise and it took him a few nanoseconds to remove the lingering sleep from his senses while she would need at least half an hour to stop feeling disoriented at the same time. 

"You cannot sleep like a log when you have multiple people out for your blood twenty four hours of the day."

But the way he kept slumbering even with his wife shifting to lie completely over him and playing with his hair seemed to counter his words strongly. 

Slight Matured Content (16+)

Suddenly Pallavi felt an interesting part of his anatomy wake up against her waist and she blushed furiously. She had heard it's called the morning wood and tried to dismiss it as a very natural physiological reaction. But Pallavi was a young woman devoid of the pleasures of the flesh for long, even having been married to another man before. Her curiosity had been awaken now. 

She wanted to see Raghav's reaction to her proximity. Specially when the man himself had always made her feel impossibly weird things with his horrible habit of roaming around the house with his impressive torso on display most of the time. 

His natural fragrance was a hundred times better than the scent he left on his clothes. 

Pallavi mustered up her much talked about courage and slowly rubbed herself over him. Much to her naïve delight, he frowned in his sleep as an almost inaudible groan left his shapely lips. Now she wanted to hear it again and she repeated her previous action. 

But what she didn't predict was his eyes flying open the next second, those hypnotizing obsidian gaze shooting into her own body like an jet stream of liquid fire. Pallavi found herself getting fluidly flipped on her back and feeling her husband's entire weight on herself the next instant. 

She squeaked in surprise and felt the embarrassment from her face spread to her entire body. She squeaked again when this time he rubbed himself over her and there seemed to be something throbbing in her core. 

"R..aghav..."

"Hmm.."

She felt his rough finger mapping the outline of her cheekbone and her jaw to reach her collarbone. She turned her face at the side, her entire body trembling like a mass of naked nerves. 

"Is your curiosity satisfied yet my little kitten?"

Pallavi whipped her head back and glared at him and pushed him with all her might to the side, using her impressive yoga practise and the rigorous martial art workout she did diligently to sit up on him. He chuckled fanning the flames of her temper and she bent down and bit the skin at the centre of his chest sharply. 

Raghav gasped making her blood thrum in satisfaction. 

"I am not a kitten."

Pallavi declared proudly, her dishevelled mane falling over their faces like a soft curtain. Her husband raised his hand and ran his lithe fingers through her hair, a wildfire burning in the pits of this usually empty eyes. 

"No. You are my Goddess."

Pallavi hated it when he would say things like this which would make her feel instantly like a little fool and like a literal Goddess at the same time. She felt her blood rise to her cheeks again and dislodged from over her husband to lie beside him again. 

"No need to feel so embarrassed Saree ka Dukaan. I am your husband and you have all the rights to take advantage of me any time you want."

"Do I?"

"Yes."

"Does that give you the right to take advantage of me?"

Raghav looked beside at her and saw the slight insecurity and a little fear in those marble grey eyes. He took her hand and brought it to rest on his chest casually while looking back at the ceiling again. 

"No."

There was silence in the room for some minutes or maybe it was an eon before Raghav heard the rustle of silk and Pallavi got up from the bed presumably to go the washroom. He sighed and started mentally calculating the number of meetings he had to attend. 

Suddenly she turned from where she was seated at the side of the bed, feet on the ground and her back to him and bent down over him. Raghav felt his lips part slightly in shock as his wife kissed over the bruise she had left on his chest from earlier and she was gone in a rustle of fabric and raven hair the next instant. 

She was quite a woman, his Saree Ka Dukaan. 

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Undisclosed Location in India

"It is all in place Boss. Now we have to wait and watch."

The man smirked and took a long puff from the Cuban cigar clutched in his tobacco stained teeth. 

"Good. Make sure that your boys do not get caught in the border. It is too big of an order to give up because of the greed of some idiots."

"Don't worry Boss. I have all the cash we need for an easy and smooth transit. Once we get the goods into the ships, we'll be safe."

The man stood up and walked towards the single window in the room, his yellow irises gleaming in the late morning sun as the leaves played a game of light and shadows on the dry forest ground. 

"And call that whatsisname Sunny. I need the results as soon as possible."

"Will do Boss."

The other man nodded and walked out knowing that he was dismissed. The older man grinned like a maniac catching sight of the metal ring kept on the table in front, the light glinting off it's smooth edge. 

"You have made a grave error my beloved child. Now you will have to face the consequences."

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Deshmukh Nivas, Hyderabad

"Pallavi! Beta bring the flowers quick. We'll be late for the Puja. Pallavi!"

"Kaku! What happened? Why are you shouting?"

Amrutha came from inside the kitchen as Sharda looked up surprised at the youngest of the house. She looked around as if a trance had broken and saw everyone look at her concerned. She sighed and looked down, hiding the tears which had appeared in her eyes. 

"Vahini... can't we call her?"

"No Milind."

"But.. we have never celebrated Janmashtami without her.. it will be so.."

"No Milind! She has chosen her life and we have to respect that."

Sharda said quietly and got up quickly from her place to bring in the basket of marigolds from inside while Milind looked on pensively. 

"You had gone to visit her yesterday hadn't you?"

Vijay's sharp retort brought his younger brother back to the present and the latter stared back at him unflinchingly. 

"Yes. I had."

"I had told everyone in the house not to contact that girl ever again, hadn't I?"

Vijay yelled startling everyone else badly and Nikhil got up from where he was seated at the cot, filming the process of decorating their house and went inside, slamming the door of his room with as much force as he could, declaring his take on the issue clearly. 

"Sorry Dada, but I will again remind you that you are my elder brother and I respect you for that. But I think you keep forgetting that you do not own me. Or any of us. So please stop throwing your orders around at us like we are your slaves."

Milind spat back equally sharply and left the house before the conversation could blow up into a full blown argument. Vijay muttered under his breath in Marathi and stalked back inside his room leaving Sulochana sitting at the courtyard alone with the leftover things for the Krishna Puja.

"Looks like Pallavi has effectively fractured this family Kanha. Thing is I do not know whether I should be happy or sad?"

She thought to herself worriedly, while painting her nails listlessly. 

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Jayati Jewels Main Showroom and Office, Outer Ring Road, Hyderabad

"Vedhava!"

"Anna please calm down. You'll burst a vein at this rate."

"I will rip his limbs off and feed it to him!"

"Anna.."

"What kind of security do we keep Farhad! How did this happen? He was right under our bloody noses and we.."

"There has to be a leak somewhere."

"I want that man Farhad. I don't care what you have to do, who you have to shake. Call in any and every favour we are owed, comb the city, set up appointments with any official you need, beg, plead, grovel, manipulate, threaten, blackmail do anything but I need Pillai within this week at most!"

Farhad nodded typing furiously on his mobile, having already started the onerous task of searching for a needle in the world's biggest haystack the moment his Boss had started speaking. Raghav flopped down on his seat and slammed his hand down on the black glass table in front. 

The late afternoon light having entered from the heavy ceiling to floor length double glass partition from behind him showed the cityscape of the Cyber City of India. 

Raghav sighed and leaned at a side, pinching the bridge of his nose with a hand trying to resist the mighty urge of having a drink with a Herculean effort. There were times when he wished he never managed to erect such an Empire which he had. He would have been immensely happy with a small nine to five job, a simple middle class life and a small family of his own. 

There was time, when that was all he wanted. 

But if only, wishes were fishes. 

"Anna.. I was thinking.."

Farhad began nervously as Raghav looked up from the desk to stare at his secretary inquisitively. Farhad was rarely nervous so when he showed even a slight uncertainty it was usually something extremely serious. 

"Anna, I was thinking maybe we should tell Bhabi the entire truth. I mean, it feels wrong keeping her in the dark about something so essential."

"Do you remember what was the first thing I had taught you Farhad?"

"Trust someone as far as you can throw them."

Farhad said like a robot on autotune. He could repeat the three most important lessons his Boss had given him even in his sleep. Raghav was seated with his hands crossed in front of him now, his charcoal gaze fixated at some indistinct point behind Farhad's head. 

"Hmm. The second?"

"Emotions should be the garnish not the main course of your spread."

"Very good. Looks like you do listen to me sometimes."

"What are you saying Anna... you know it very well that I listen to everything you ever say."

Raghav cracked a half smile, still lost in his own world. 

"And the third..?"

Farhad was quiet for some time and when he spoke it was with a resignation almost painful to behold. 

"Jo pyaar ko jaan le, ye pyaar uska jaan le."

There was an uncomfortable silence at the wake of his answer which was rudely broken at the door slamming open all of a sudden which sent Farhad almost flying over his Boss to shield him from any rogue bullets with his own body while Raghav had instantly leaped up, a gun having materialized seemingly out of nowhere pointed straight at the woman standing in front of them. 

Raghav gaped at the lady having recognized her the next moment while Farhad still had his own revolver pointed at her. 

The woman who was clad in a blood stained black tank and what looked like Army pants, sighed and sauntered in from the door to casually sit on the chair in front of the desk and raise her booted feet on the table like she owned the place. She lit a cigarette and put in between her blood split lips and shook her bruised face to remove the dirty mass of chocolate brown hair which was shielding a part of her angular frame. 

Another second and twenty men armed to the teeth skidded inside room to come to a breaking halt, their rifles pointed at her. 

The woman groaned gave seemed to give Raghav a look. 

"Okay, number one. Please upgrade your security, these people are idiots. I just came in like I own the place, right from under their noses. Number two, tell your bodyguard cum secretary to take a chill pill. Had I wanted to kill you, he can rest assure, you would have been dead. And number three, I had to go without food for three days, haven't bathed in a week and my left collarbone is definitely broken. You owe me one darling."

Raghav had shaken off his men by then with a annoyed wave of his hand and squeezed Farhad's shoulder to indicate that she was harmless. Apparently. 

He came and shook off her legs from his desk and balanced himself against it to glare down at the woman irritated. 

"How many time do I tell you? Use the back door when you have to come. Now what have you got for me?"

The woman grinned like a crazed killer letting a ring of smoke directly on Raghav's face making him shake off the air in front with a disgusted look. 

"Diamonds mio cucciolo. I have got you the biggest, shiniest, priciest diamond of the lot."

Having said so, she dropped a pen drive the size of half a thumb on the table top making his eyes widen. 

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A/N:- The first few chapters will be a filler kind. Please be patient for some time till we reach the actual fun stuff. Till then keep speculating.. I will try to update frequently for a few days as my holidays are going on, after that.. I'll have to maintain a schedule. 

Comments will be appreciated.