Betrayal and tears(Season 1) | ✔

Chapter Four

Khushi sat quietly, crouching herself against the recliner at the poolside and holding her phone tight in her fist. It's been already a few hours since she gave the officers the soup for lab testing after her conversation with Aman, where she told him what transpired and asked about how can she clear off her doubt. And so now, she is here, holding her breath in a sense of foreboding as she waited for Aman's message, to inform her about whether or not the soup was poisoned.

What if it was?

She suppressed a shudder at that thought, unwilling to know the answer to that question. Her mind anxiously wheeled back to when she had tiptoed towards the guards and had asked them whether they saw anyone any near to their house and they had refused. They were confident that no stranger was seen in the premises of Shantivan, which means, if the soup is indeed poisoned, it was poisoned by none other than someone from inside the house, someone from her family.

She gulped, hating the feeling she got that it was indeed someone from their family who has been doing all this. She didn't want to think so low of them but with the 360 degrees turn in everyone's behavior since Shyam's fiasco, she was somehow doubting such hideous actions from them and no matter what she did, she couldn't get rid of that intuition. 

She released the breath she was holding, feeling a touch on her shoulder and knowing well who it was, she masked her unnerved face with a smile and looked back at her husband, who in no way seemed convinced by her facade. He instead looked more perturbed and she knew that, but still, she tried her level best to fool him. 

"Why aren't you in bed already?" She asked as he sat himself besides and added whilst turning her gaze back to the serene water. "Shouldn't you be sleeping early?"

"It's too late for you to be up too." He said, cleverly dodging her attempt to escape his questions and she squirmed, feeling at discomfort under his scrutiny.

"What's wrong, Khushi?" He asked, letting out a bushed sigh at her. "Why are you acting so weird lately?"

"Weirder than usual." He added when she raised her eyebrows at him and she chuckled, leaning herself against his side profile. 

"It's just the lack of sleep I suppose." She whispered, rounding her hands around his muscular arms, which somehow gave her a sense of security and she exhaled, deeply before lifting her head to meet the two pools of concern.

"A few days of rest will set me back on track. Don't worry."

And though her words were not plausible enough for him to cease worrying, he nodded, pecking her forehead and rested his cheek on her head, enjoying the silence that prevailed afterwards and it seemed like hours when his soft voice pierced through the silence, waking her up from the sleep she was slowly slipping into.

"I was planning on visiting Di. It's been a while since I talked to her and I don't want her to feel left out. She might end up doing something crazy again and-"

"You don't need to explain." Khushi intervened. She squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds to get rid of the drowsiness and lifted her head off his shoulder to look at him, with a faint but assuring smile.

"You don't have to explain why you want to meet her. I understand."

Arnav gave out a strained chuckle, breathing out in relief that he didn't owe an explanation this time, for he wasn't good at that. He had been always terrible with words, especially when it came to explaining himself. He hated it, and it's ironic enough that this is what he has been doing since days - explain himself in thorough details so no one would misinterpret his words and actions, and end up doing something awful.

And on that crossroad, it was truly a blessing to have someone as understandable as Khushi, by his side, holding him tightly lest he crumbles down under the weight of increasing responsibilities. 

"Thank you." He whispered, pressing a chaste kiss of gratitude against her forehead before hopping on his feet. "I'll come back in a minute. Wait for me, we'll go to bed together."

He said and flashed a smile before retreating for his quick chat with his di, just to make sure nothing outward is cooking in her messed up brains.

The smile she reciprocated to him as a gesture of encouragement, faded in the anxiousness that had morphed her face before his arrival. She stared at the moon's reflection onto the clear water, glistening with the shining stars, her mind nowhere near the calmness that was presented in front of her.

She was just in the process of finishing drifting back to her thoughts when her phone beeped, the vibration of which coursed from her palm to her veins, and she jerked with a small yelp, then went frozen.

In fear.

She exhaled a shaky breath and moved her eyeballs to glance down at the lit up screen of her phone, flashing message from Amanji. Her stare was fixated on the screen for longer than she expected and she had to shake herself out of that trance to move her fingers over the notifications. Her heart pounded against it's rib cage and she gulped, tapping her finger lightly on the screen, and as the message popped out, she felt the phone slipping through her limbs fingers.

The soup was poisoned..

Words left her at that moment and she recoiled back, not caring about the harsh hit of her back against the recliner. Tears blurred her vision furiously, her hands gripped the fabric over her bent knee tightly as she breathed heavily, feeling the words as well as the meaning of those words sink in.

The soup was poisoned.

It was indeed poisoned.

It was meant to kill Arnav, by someone, someone from the house..

Her breathing ragged at that thought and she had to take deep long breaths to survive. She felt herself sagging more and more under the weight of realizations, till she felt trapped. And at last, as the horrifying truth managed to settle in her conscious, her mind clicked another notch, this time, fearfully. 

Arnav has been in front of his culprit's eyes this whole time, bare to their attacks.

She didn't even got time to worry over that as she caught the sight of their family picture across the room. Her heart thumped painfully as she looked at the smiling face of Arnav. The contentment on his face stabbed in her right in her guts and she clasped her hands over her mouth, shaking her head in utter disdain.

Her shoulders lifted as she took in a deep breath, then fell again, shaking violently as she sobbed in disbelief, unable to bear this blow from one of their family members.

Who was this far gone? Who was filled with hatred to such a point that they forgot everything Arnavji sacrificed for them?

Who?

The more she tried to think about it, the more her head throbbed, because almost everyone whom Arnav adores, seemed to be a possible suspect and that only broke her heart harder. She felt as if she was underwater, and not air but thick liquid was filling her up, to a point where she felt light-headed, as the new found revelation swirled in her rattled mind.

She always knew she had the strength of finding the culprit, she still has but the question now is, does she have the courage to withstand the revelation? Will she be able to save Arnav from falling apart, while breaking herself?

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