Tujhe Kya Beeti Hui Raaton Se

Mujhe Kya Khoyi Hui Baaton Se

Sej Nahin Chitha Sahi 

Jo Bhi Miley Sona Hoga Ho

Gai Jo Dori Chhuti Haathon Se 

Lena Kya tute Hue Saathon Se

Khushi Jahaan Maangi Thuney 

Wahin Mujhe Rona Hoga

Na Koi Tera 

Na Koi Mera 

Phir Kis ki Yaad Aaee

Kiska Rasta Dekhe

Ae Dil Ae Saudaai

Meelon Hai Khamoshi

Barson Hai Tanhaai

Bhuli Duniya Kabhi Ki 

Tujhe Bhi Mujhe Bhi

Phir Kyon Aankh Bhar Aai

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"What!?"

Pallavi whipped around so fast that Farhad thought she might have given herself a nasty whiplash. He grimaced internally at the piercing look she gave him. It was as if she was trying to scan him through a laser lens and it was making him increasingly unsettled. Some of these expressions were so painfully foreign on his former sister in law's characteristically innocent face that it pricked him someplace unknown. 

"So you mean to say that you have not even been in contact with the man these seven years?"

Farhad sighed at the incredulity in her voice and looked aside trying hard to swallow the infuriating ache bubbling beneath his ribs at the thought as it had all these years. The pain of leaving Raghav had always burned like a fresh wound inside Farhad's soul whenever he would get reminded of it. He had consciously tried to move on from that feeling but in vain. It seemed like Raghav Rao was a dark twisted disease which had gripped into his system so irrevocably that to throw it out would be like amputating a limb or an organ which your body simply cannot do without. 

His former boss tends to have this supernatural effect on every person, irrespective of friends, enemies and loved ones. 

You simply cannot remain indifferent to him. 

It is impossible.  

The saddest part in Farhad's case was that like Pallavi he couldn't even transform his love to hatred and survive on that feeling. When the boiling fury of what his Anna had done to his Bhabi had subsided enough for him to remove that layer of red from his eyes, he had already slammed his resignation papers on the table. 

It had only been like a week since Jaya had moved out to live with Keerti and Sunny, three days after Pallavi's departure. He had been single handed-ly trying to manage all the affairs of the business and the personal messes and Raghav's uncharacteristic icy indifference to every situation and his infuriating habit to disappearing every day for hours on an end had been driving him up the wall. He had tried so hard to break through his boss's near unscalable wall of apathy and seeming disregard for every single person he kept on breaking with his absolute stone coldness and casual nonchalance but it had all been for nought. 

Raghav Rao had become impossible to work for, to live with, to feel any shred of empathy for. 

When he had not shown up for a very important meeting for which they had been slogging on for months prior, Farhad had lost his cool finally. He had raged at his boss for an hour whose conclusion had been Raghav calmly asking him whether he wants to leave too. That had been the last straw which had veritably broken the camel's back and Farhad's patience. He had drawn up the resignation papers that night itself and had slapped them on Raghav's desk next morning before banging the door as hard as he could on his way out. 

He still remembers the exact words he had spat at his former employer before leaving. 

"Had you ever loved her at all?"

And Raghav's ensuing answer had sealed that particular door seemingly forever for him and he had often wondered whether he had been so utterly wrong about the man he had once loved so fiercely. His tone had been so unusually chilling and his voice so peculiarly empty that it had branded itself on Farhad's mind and would ceaselessly repeat itself whenever anyone would mention Pallavi's name thereafter. 

"No."

Even years later at this very moment with Pallavi's curios gaze on him, that cruel syllable kept playing like a broken record player in his brain refusing to let him reveal the exact conditions of his leaving to her. 

"So neither you nor Amma or Keerti have any idea about his life after... that incident in particular?"

Farhad looked pensively at the looming mansion in front through the windshield of the car whose passenger seat he was occupying, beside the driver seat which had Pallavi seated on it. The Rao Mansion looked like it had been taken straight out of a gloomy Hollywood horror film. There wasn't any overtly physical changes in the building itself but there seemed to be an unsettling almost eery feeling to it. As if there was some unshakable evil lurking within it's murky depths. The garden around the mansion had become overgrown and unkept, the windows and doors were all shut and for some reason any glass partition had been deliberately blacked out. It seemed more like an impregnable fortress than a house. 

Farhad was sure Pallavi was feeling the same sudden trickling of an unforeseen apprehension at the current look of the building both had considered their home at one time. 

"N.. no Pallavi.. I. I don't... I don't know."

He uttered feeling completely lost and looked at Pallavi whose marble eyes showed a small bubble of fear in them for the first time since she had been back in their lives again.   

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Pallavi stood at the foyer of the Rao Mansion and forcefully swallowed down the hurricane of emotions surging beneath her breasts. She has had some of her happiest and most painful memories from this place. A strange but unsurprising nostalgia spread within her as she advanced towards the humongous doors which opened into veritably the Devil's lair. 

What can be said of a woman who had found Hades's house as her haven once upon a sun and moon?

Pallavi smiled a bittersweet way and felt Farhad squeeze her palm once gently. She internally thanked her stars and her God for creating a man like Farhad Ahmed and thrusting him in her life. 

There was no one and both Farhad and her frowned as if in tandem at the shocking lack of security and it increased when the doors opened at the mild force of Pallavi trying to knock on them. This was getting more and more suspicious by the second. They entered silently and almost gagged at the stale air which seemed to greet them maliciously like that creepy yellow toothed centenarian resident every neighbourhood seems to possess. The musty air reeked of carbon dioxide concentrate and there seemed to be a thick layer of dust present all over. 

Pallavi stared at her companion in abject alarm and Farhad mirrored her expression perfectly as they took in their surroundings with a slow rising paranoia in their respective hearts. 

"What the hell has happened to this place?"

Pallavi asked rhetorically as she went around the hall carefully, her six inch Weitzman's, which matched with her cream coloured business suit luxuriously, periodic clicking on the marble flooring reverberating all around the seemingly abandoned hall like gunshots. Farhad who was miming his ex sister in law's moves subconsciously, roaming perplexed around the place suddenly stopped short gasping in shock. 

"Farhad what happened?"

"Pallavi... this.. see this.. what.."

"Wha..."

Pallavi's words evaporated on her tongue as her gaze fell on the massive photo frame which had housed Raghav's signature pose for what felt like forever. The only marked difference now being that it felt like it has been improvised upon by someone who really loathes the man in the picture. The sheer rage with which someone had scratched all over the photo with probably a knife, was utterly terrifying to behold. It had dried blood stained over the frame which had dribbled on the wall below just intensifying the effect even more. It looked like the work of a madman. 

Pallavi realised that she had stumbled only when she felt Farhad's deft hands steadying her respectfully from the back and somehow his fear also permeated into her skin to add to her own from the mild contact. 

And for all her bluster of being aloof and collected and all her internal claims of her supposed hatred and derision and revulsion for her former husband, she couldn't help but feel like someone is carving that exact same scars over her heart like that on his photo. She couldn't help the pain suddenly erupting in her chest which travelled like a shot putter to her eyes and manifested in the form of those dratted tears she had vowed to never shed for Raghav Rao again. 

But when has the heart ever listened to reason?

"Any particular reason that you both felt the need to trespass on private property?"

Pallavi felt her skin jump at the voice she had only ever heard in both her dreams and her nightmares alike for the past seven years. The cadence hadn't changed nor the intonation yet there seemed to be something sorely lacking in those words. Like an essential part was missing from within the ebb and flow of the syllables. There was also a slight roughness in that baritone which she was certain hadn't been always present. 

She composed herself with practised ease and turned around having masked her unsettled nerves with a hilarious yet tragic disposition and stared back at the man coolly. 

Raghav Rao had always had a magnetic appeal to himself. You simply had to acknowledge his presence when he walked into the room. He demanded that attention from his peers, foes, allies and even complete strangers with as much nonchalance as the sun would from the earth and it's residents. It didn't matter how he walked in or what he wore or what his body language screamed, the unofficial kingpin of the city had always turned heads his way. That was something so intrinsically Raghav Rao that even imagining him without his aura seemed impossible to say the least. 

So it came as a massive shock to both Pallavi and Farhad when they finally saw the man they had left behind almost a decade ago standing in front of them. 

This was not Raghav Rao.. this was not even one sixteenth of him. 

This was... some apparition who seemed to possess a shadow of his visage. 

 Raghav stood his usual six feet two inches tall yet there was not an inkling of his ever present arrogance in that ripped frame. He was donning slate grey trousers what looked like an overused faded nightrobe which might have maroon once upon a time, wrapped constrictively tight over his body hiding every inch of him like an armour way past it's prime, trying it's best to shield its wearer. For some reason he had his signature jet black sunglasses on which seemed ridiculous considering that half the hall was dark. He was standing on the staircase in front, a few steps above them and had leaned on the handle of the stairway. But there was none of his usual leopard like swagger, it seemed like he would fall face first without the support. His hands were tucked inside the pockets of his robe and he seemed to try to do his best to remain in the shadows. From what part of his face visible to the little sunshine managing to enter through the heavily drawn blinds, they could see his dishevelled beard which seemed to look alarmingly unkept and his hair which had increased a little in volume and fell in a mass of untidy curls on his forehead. 

Yet he himself looked disturbingly stark. 

Almost cadaverous, the lines of his cheekbones and his nose standing out too sharply on the dusky planes of that conventionally striking, classically handsome face and his lean musculature looking at the brink of being sickly thin from the definition through the silk robe. 

Pallavi came instinctively closer, half in thinly veiled horror and half in faint curiosity. 

It was just like nothing had happened since all this time. 

As if there was not an unreachable chasm drawn between them filled with his betrayal and her grief. As if she hadn't been cursing herself every second of her new life for loosing her heart to a monster of a man. As if her body had made it it's mission to betray her yet again and she couldn't physically keep herself away from his proximity.

As if he wasn't exuding the danger of a rabid wild animal backed into a corner. 

It was ironic how their roles had reversed. 

Their meeting in a new era and she seemed to be the one with all the power this time. 

"Anna are you drunk?"

Farhad broke the ominous silence quietly, his words artificially steady even as Pallavi could sense his faint trembling beside her. Raghav turned his head towards his former secretary and tilted his head. It was frightening. The lack of expressions on his typically super expressive face. Pallavi hated the fact that she couldn't read his eyes. 

Is that why he had decided to wear sunglasses inside the house?

"Is that why both of you decided to grace me with your unwanted presence? Asking me whether I am drinking?"

He retorted tonelessly. It was disconcerting. This atypical behaviour. 

"Fortunately we have enough work to keep ourselves busy than to come and harp behind a worthless idiot who clearly cannot differentiate between night and day anymore."

Farhad winced at the sheer vitriol in her tone yet Raghav only seemed unmoved. He just turned his head at an angle and seemed to look at her through the glasses. Pallavi stood ramrod straight, her beautiful face displaying a feigned sheen of disgusted pity at the seeming downfall of a king even as her intuition was screaming foul play somewhere at the back of her gut. 

"Pallavi Deshmukh. Just as feisty as I remember. Long time no see. How are you keeping nowadays?"

Raghav acknowledged her directly for the first time and she who had been once intrinsically familiar with her former husband's wordplay caught onto the almost negligible waver in his crafted indifference. 

"Pallavi."

"Huh?"

"Just Pallavi. I belong to no one."

She snapped sharply and felt Farhad shift uneasily at her side who at this point had been made just a spectator in their invisible battle. 

"You never did."

Raghav answered quietly suddenly looking away from her in that instant. Pallavi, not the one to ever back down from a verbal war spat back at him with a ruthlessness which her past version would have been appalled to see in her at present. 

"Listen Mr. Rao, I am not interested in breathing the same air with you for too long, it will make me sick. I need some information and then you can rot here in peace and I will be on my merry way. So let us cut the crap and come to the point."

And for the first time she noted with perverse pleasure, the man in front seem to recoil involuntarily which was definitely unexpected. 

Round one to Pallavi. 

"What do you want to know?"

He almost whispered the next words. 

"What happened that night in Warangal."

He straightened from his slouched position at the handle of the staircase at that and she saw a muscle twitch on his left cheek suddenly. 

"I told that to you that night."

"You lied."

He jerked slightly and waved a hand listlessly at the air as if cleaning some invisible smoke from his face.. or was that from her's?

"I told you what I knew has happened Pallavi. I.."

"Bullshit! Don't f**king lie to me Raghav. Don't you have any ounce of shame? Esha had told you everything about that night, how she was raped by that f**king bastard of an ex and then left beside you. Sumit apparently told her that both you were out like light when he had come to pick her up from your room and you were wearing your clothes and still unconscious when he had come back to keep her. And before you try to concoct any other nonsense let me make you aware that I know you both were drugged. Esha had found traces of LSD in her blood. There's valid evidence of that claim as I have checked. So I ask you again, what the actual f**k happened that night and more importantly why the f**K didn't you try to find me and tell me the bloody f**king truth you moron!"

Farhad whipped towards her, shock writ large on his deathly pale face. He wasn't sure what had shaken him more, the revelation of such a radically different version of events he seemed know or the crassness and violent delivery of the same by the least likely person to adopt such a technique. Pallavi found herself breathless at the end of her rapid and wrathful rant as her words seem to bang against the dusty walls of the hall like the echo of despair. 

Raghav on the other hand was shockingly unanimated still. He seemed to observe her for some seconds while she drew in the breath lacking in her lungs from the rank air beside and then spoke with an eery calm. 

"I had sex with Esha after that Pallavi."

Now it was her time to stumble and Farhad caught her arm punishingly tight, balancing her. 

"She rolled over me like you used to do when we would be asleep and I.."

"Shut up! Shut the f**k up!"

Raghav swallowed the rest of the words which would have yet again injured her non existent heart just as mercilessly as it had all those years ago. Tears gathered unwittingly at the corner of her eyes as the scars from the battleground which was her chest burned anew like the flames of regret. 

Hope being broken was perhaps even worse than a heart break. All those little demonic voices soothing her eternal pain from the past few days raising doubt and trying to somehow redeem the man she had once loved so irrevocably were finally quietened cruelly and once again she was empty. 

As empty as the day she had walked out of her Haven which had turned into Hell seven years ago.

It was a Deja vu moment. History repeating itself in a grief-stricken cycle. 

Pallavi turned around faster than Farhad could comprehend and was swiftly walking down the stairs and towards the exit, her heels clacking over the hall frantically, as if desperate to fly out of it's ivory cage towards the open. 

She heard reluctant footsteps following her out and deduced Farhad might be too shocked to even realise what he should be doing at the moment. Not that she would recommend him to stay behind. Not for him. 

Yet her feet stopped at the foyer, just before she could step out of this boundary a second time but forever for this time. She had to finish reading the last line of this chapter of her life even if it breaks her even more than she already has been, even if the agony steals the last of the residue of softness in her soul. 

"Did you ever even try to find me at least? Was I so easy to forget, so easy to let go?"

Pallavi hated how weak she sounded, she hated the years of suffering which showed clogged in her throat, she hated the crack in her voice, she hated the old Pallavi peeking out of her little cage which she had locked herself in. 

His words were depressingly stoic and humiliatingly insensitive and unbearably agonizing in it's brutal honesty. All these years, it seemed there was only one thing he had still retained. His unflinching, cruelly stark frankness. So sharp at the edges that it almost cut into her. 

"You cannot find back what you have lost for forever Pallavi. I am sorry for what happened with you, for what I did. I am sorry for breaking your trust.. your heart. But more than most I am sorry that I could not love you enough."

 Pallavi hated how she could not hate this man. 

And for that thought alone, the person whom Pallavi hated the most was probably she herself.

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Pallavi chuckled seeing her younger sister's two year old pull his father's hair happily as the latter struggled to make him eat his dinner. It was a most hilarious and entertaining sight to go with at dinner time with her extended family. 

Jaya and Keerti had visited the Deshmukhs early that evening on Pallavi's request as she wanted to meet them once before she left. Everyone had tried their level best to keep her here now that she had come back but she was adamant. 

Hyderabad no longer felt like her city. 

It seemed like her soul had decided to discard the very place along with the memory of the man who had once claimed it for his own. 

No, she wont think of Raghav Rao any more. She had closed that chapter firmly and wasn't interested in dwelling in those painful waters any longer. She has much to experience in her new found life, with her new found identity. 

Pallavi Raghav Rao was dead and she will lie in the dust of the Rao Mansion along with her broken dreams and a shattered heart for the rest of her life on earth. 

Pallavi will lock her proverbial horns happily with the new world and wield the reigns of her life on her own f**king terms, thank you very much. 

But then wasn't there something about the Universe poking it's unwanted nose in other people's business unrequired. Or was it something about God and how He disposes of what man has generally proposed. Or a woman in this case. 

Pallavi was startled at the sudden ringing of her phone and excused herself to go out in the backyard as the mirthful rumble of happiness from inside her home soothed her frayed nerves like the cold wind blowing outside.

She grimaced seeing ACP Singh's name flashing in the caller id. She had completely forgotten about the information she had wanted from her in lieu of not disclosing the documents of her being a bigamist to the concerned authorities. Classic blackmail which almost always worked more wonders than the usual grind of the Indian Governmental system ever did. 

She was now in a dilemma. 

Does she even want to know the info? It didn't seem much important now that she had the answer to her question. But again, blame the people talking about cats and curiosities and how it can get them killed. 

Pallavi sighed and caught the brink of her nose in frustration, again unconsciously copying her former husband and picked the call at the last ring. 

"Yes Mrs. Singh."

"I got you the info that you wanted. Now please.."

"Yeah yeah, get me the scoop first and then I'll decide whether to mail your marriage certs and unsinged divorce papers to the High Commission and the paparazzi or not. Maybe I will hold onto that like the Sword of Damocles."

Pallavi smirked at the heavy breathing on the other end. 

Little did she know that her entire world was about to slip from underneath her comfortable over used chappals. 

"The man, Ved's friend, whom I helped escape jail that night is Mandar Deshmukh."

 TO BE CONTINUED. 

A/N:- A lot of people requested to continue this in the comments and also PMed me. So I decided to try and finish this. Tell me in the comments, how did you like the twist. A lot more is awaiting at each turn of this story. But let me warn you, the ride isn't very smooth... its a pretty dark and twisted thing and I cannot guarantee a happy ending.