Link to the 10th chapter : https://www.tellyupdates.com/where-secrets-lie-chapter-10-no-way-out/
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Riddhima’s mind had stopped working. All the people whom she had considered close to herself and whom she had placed her undying trust upon, had betrayed her badly. What wrong had she done to receive this kind of harsh treatment?
Helpless, desolate and hurt beyond repair, she bounced back on the bed repeatedly and screamed. The cuffs that had kept her hands tied in place had created deep red marks over her wrists.
The door of her room was thrown open and she saw that it was a nurse. Perhaps, she had come to check upon her after hearing all her shouts.
“She may inject me with something to put me off to sleep,” she thought dreadfully. She climbed up the bed until her back hit with the headboard and she couldn’t move further.
As the nurse began aproaching her, a narrow beam of light passing through the crack in the ceiling fell upon her revealing her face.
“Seher! What are you doing here?” said an astonished Riddhima.
She signalled her to keep quiet and murmured in her ears. “I’m here to save you.”
The hope that had died in Riddhima’s heart had awakened again. At least, there was someone in this wide world to call as her own.
“I am not mad, Seher! They all are plotting against me – Papa, Yash and…”
Seher cut her off, her hands working on unlocking the handcuffs. “Yes, I know everything. That is why I had to come to your rescue.”
As soon as the cuffs were done away with, Riddhima hugged her friend in gratitude.
“Shhh, shhh. It’s all okay. That’s what friends are for?” Seher cooed.
Riddhima raised up head with fear in her eyes. “But how should I escape from the asylum without anyone catching me?”
But Seher hadn’t come here without a plan. She peeked out of the room and found a sari clad sweeper-woman cleaning the dusty corridors.
Upon the pretext of cleaning the room, Seher beckoned the sweeper inside. Once she did that, Seher shut the door behind her and injected a needle into her neck, rendering her unconscious.
“Sorry Daaya Ma, but we had no other option left.”
Riddhima hurriedly exchanged her clothes with the sweeper. Donning the broom in her hands, she lowered the pallu of the sari over her face so that no one would identify her while eloping from here.
“You leave right away. I will come later after sorting out the things here,” said Seher looking at the sweeper-woman lying motionlessly in the bed, in place of Riddhima.
“I won’t leave you and go,” Riddhima protested.
“Don’t be stupid! Go away before anybody else enters the room and finds out what we’ve been upto. This is your only chance. Go!”
Riddhima scurried away with difficulty, her weak feet barely able to work properly.
Thankfully, no one took any notice of the disguised Riddhima fleeing from there with a vow to teach her culprits a very good lesson. She wasn’t going to be used as a mere pawn at their hands anymore.
______________________________________
Ajay was pacing about his room back and forth in worry.
“That Jeh is putting his nose too much into my business and past. This is not good at all. We need to remove him from our way.”
Yash was shocked to hear this. But he tried to keep his composure in the fear that he might start blasting him up again.
“Jeh is Seher’s boyfriend. How can we do something with him? She’ll be devastated!”
“And you will be devastated when you end up in jail! I’m sure you don’t want that, do you? ” Ajay barked at him. “Either you try to bribe him, or shut him up for good.”
Yash gulped. This was getting difficult. Just because he had committed a crime once didn’t mean he’d keep on committing crimes one after the other. He should have known that it was a trap before doing it the first time and there would be no backing off after that.
Ajay picked up the photo-frame from the mantel-piece. He caressed the picture that had his dearest daughter in it.
“I am sorry, Riddhima. I didn’t want to do all this. But I’m helpless, utterly helpless!” he mumbled sadly.
“Of course, we all know how helpless you actually are.” A gruff, masculine voice came from behind.
Yash clenched his fists on seeing him. A mere glimpse of him would be enough for his blood to boil.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
But the young, handsome man in question chose to ignore him and instead gave his attention to Ajay.
“Here it is.” He opened his palm showing the black button shining brilliantly.
Ajay’s eyes gleamed with delight. “Thank God Vihaan! Thank God you managed to get this. Or else, our entire plan would have been exposed in front of the whole world.”
Vihaan chuckled softly. God had been unfair to him by making him born in a not-so-fancy family. But God had showed him his side of kindness by giving him a face exactly like that of Vansh.
He had been working as a small-time swindler in another city, when a chance encounter with Ajay Sareen few months ago changed his fortune overnight. For some inexplicable reason, he bore a ditto resemblance to Vansh. And therefore, he was asked to impersonate him, in return of which he’d get a large sum of money.
Ajay patted him proudly. “This Yash is a literal nincompoop. But you…you belong to altogether different league, Vihaan. Thank goodness you had noticed the missing button from your coat…”
“And as soon I saw that, I realized that the button must be with Riddhima. It wasn’t surprising considering how harshly she was pulling my precious coat around,” said Vihaan. He rolled up his sleeves to show the long scratch marks. “Look, what your daughter did to me when I went to rob the button from her. I am telling you, I need extra money as compensation for that…”
He hadn’t even completed his sentence when Yash in a fit of anger, grabbed his collar.
“Bastard! You remember what she did with you, but have you forgotten what you did with her? Under the guise of being Vansh, you slept with her! You took advantage of her!”
Vihaan shoved Yash away. Adjusting his collar and smoothening his shirt down, he retorted.
“Oh hello, I didn’t take any advantage. In fact, I should be the one complaining since she was the one who got close to me despite my refusal. Ask her how many times I warned her to control herself and stay away. But that half-mad girl wouldn’t listen to me at all! She literally threw herself over me, what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t possibly tell her that I wasn’t Vansh but a doppelganger who was fooling her on her own father’s instruction? To be honest, I’ve zero interest in her.”
“Mind your tongue. Don’t forget that it is my daughter whom you are b*t*hing about,” Ajay let out a furious grunt. “Besides, I had paid you to trick my daughter, not to get intimate with her!”
However, he soon mellowed down. “But I’m willing to let that slide after your splendid acting, and not to forget the witty intervention you showed today.” Peeping down through the windows, he continued, “Also, you shouldn’t have come here. If anybody spots you around, then our entire hardwork would go down into the drains. Both Jeh and Seher are already getting suspicious of us. I want you out of this country as soon as possible.”
“As long as you fill my bank account with lots and lots of money, not only this country, but I am even ready to leave this planet too. But only if you sponsor my trip and safe stay in outer space.” Vihaan started laughing heartily at his joke, expecting the others to join him. But when no one did, he zipped up his mouth.
“Don’t worry about the money. You will get enough of it. Just wait until the property gets transferred to my name,” said Ajay.
Feeling thirsty, Vihaan searched around the place for some cold water. He found Yash holding a water bottle and deftly snatched it from his hands. He sipped the water from it as if he hadn’t drunk since ages. Yash on the other hand, was left raging with his nonchalance.
After he was done, Vihaan wiped away the droplets from his lips.
“Actually, I kind of feel sad for Riddhima. Her own father is playing games with her for a worthless piece of land. And not to forget, she has lost Vansh forever. It seems like she really loved him a lot once upon a time…”
“I am doing this for her own good. But obviously, you won’t understand. Besides, she is my daughter and I am there for her. You don’t need to think much about her.”
“I am not crazy to waste my time dreaming about a crazy girl,” said Vihaan coolly. When Ajay rolled his eyes at him, he continued, “Yes, crazy is what she is! Didn’t you see how she loses it all at the mere mention of Vansh’s name? In fact come to think of it, you didn’t even have to do all this drama of proving her insane. She is already from before.”
“Shut up you jerk!” Ajay growled. “I agree that Riddhima was madly in love with Vansh, but she was never insane. After his death, she had lost her memory of him, but that wasn’t enough to label her as a mentally insane person. That’s the reason I had to resort to all this.”
All of a sudden, the sound of intermittent clapping of hands began echoing in the room. The three men turned around and were horrified to the core to see the very Riddhima standing before them.
A broken smile on her face and looking to and fro between the three shocked faces, she continued to clap further.
“Indeed, what a mastermind you are, Dr. Ajay Sareen! What a well-orchestrated plan! But in all this process you forgot that you are playing against your very own daughter.”
Ajay stood rooted to the ground while Yash tried to walk towards her.
“Riddhima, you aren’t well. Just sit down. We can talk…”
No sooner he said that, a loud slap landed on his face. He held his reddened cheek and buckled up in pain and most importantly shame.
She warned him, “You better stay away from me you scoundrel! Or else even I don’t know what I may end up doing.”
Next, she turned towards Vihaan making him the brunt of her ire.
“And what do I even tell you? When my own father and my childhood friend could betray me, then how can I blame you?
You just have my Vansh’s face but you can never have his heart, his character and his personality. He was a noble man. Whereas you are someone who can get sold for a few pennies!”
Vihaan hung his head down in shame, each and every word of hers piercing his heart and soul.
Ajay finally found his lost voice back. “How did you escape the asylum?”
She smirked, “Unfortunately, I have the same bad blood running in my veins that runs through yours. So I did inherit some amount of cunningness from you too. But how I wish I wasn’t your real daughter and didn’t have your wretched DNA in me!”
“Riddhima!” His voice was laced with pain. “Do not forget that I am your father.”
“Oh yes, my father you are. The same father who didn’t think twice before proving me mentally unstable and getting me admitted in an asylum. The same father who snatched my love, my Vansh from me by killing him and his family ruthlessly. And all this for what, for a stupid, parched land?”
Vihaan turned aghast when he heard about the crimes that Ajay had committed. He had indirectly involved himself with a freaking murderer? What the hell had he done?
Ajay screamed in equal anguish. “If that land was as stupid as you claim, then why didn’t you ever agree to transfer it on my name? I had asked you umpteen times to sign the papers, but you never agreed to it.”
“Because that land belonged to my dear mother, who in turn passed it on to me. She had lent out the house on that land to her friend, that is Vansh’s mother. She didn’t want her property to be used for any business endeavours. That was her last wish. And that was what I was trying to do, being her daughter!”
Riddhima stopped in between to cry and then continued once again.
“In fact, I’m beginning to think that you even killed my mom and your wife to obtain that land. Isn’t it? Tell me, Dr. Sareen, did you do it or not?”
“No, I didn’t! I didn’t kill her!” Ajay wailed in exasperation. “Uma was my wife, God damn it, and I loved her. How could I?”
“But you burnt Vansh’s family down? You brutally stabbed Vansh to death?”
“Yes, I did that,” Ajay said slowly.
Riddhima felt her entire world crumbling down. Even though she had long known that her father was the one behind this deed, but hearing him admit to it himself hurt her tremendously. Her father was a cold-blooded murderer and she’d have to live with this label forever.
“Why?” she asked. When no reply came, she shouted louder. “I asked you something. WHY did you do it?”
Ajay slumped down into the chair, getting drained out by all the questions.
“It all started twenty years back. We were living as a happy family – me, Uma and our seven-year-old daughter Riddhima, that is you. It was around that time that I had bought the said land and gifted it to Uma on her birthday. Everything was running smoothly, when out of the blue, one of my patients filed a false case of malpractice against me. My name as a noble psychiatrist was destroyed, and I was also on the brink of being jailed. With no way out of this mess, I approached one of the powerful and notorious gangsters in the city, Chang.
“Chang agreed to help me, but on the condition that I handed that particular property to him. Having no way out, I agreed to him. As per his promise, the case was taken back and I was proved as innocent.
And since he had fulfilled his part of the deal, he wanted me to do the same.
“When I told this to Uma, she blatantly refused to give away her property to an underworld Don. Also, she had already rented it out to Vansh’s family, whose mother happened to be her close friend. Handing over the land to Chang was equivalent to rendering her friend’s family homeless, and she didn’t want that.
I tried my best to convince her, to explain to her that Chang was a dangerous man and we shouldn’t mess with him. But she never listened to me. And one fine day….he got her killed.”
Riddhima gaped in horror. She never knew that her mother was murdered. She never knew!
Ajay continued getting a little emotional. “I was completely shattered after her death. Chang had killed her thinking that the property would pass on to me after her death. But that never happened. Instead, she had made a will stating that the property would pass onto Riddhima as soon as she attained twenty-five years of age.
“Only I knew how much I had to beg Chang to not kill off Riddhima too. I finally managed to persuade him to wait until she came of age. But when Riddhima finally turned twenty-five, another problem was on my back. Vansh’s family had refused to vacate the property at any cost. I did everything within my capacity to make them agree, but they just wouldn’t. And…”
“And you put the house on fire?” Riddhima’s eyes blazed about. “You pushed the entire family to their death!”
“I didn’t do that myself. But I surely gave the idea to Chang whose goons carried out the deed. Besides, what other option did I have? Chang had started threatening me that he’d kill you too, Riddhima. I had already lost my wife, and I didn’t want to lose my daughter too.
“But Vansh had escaped the fire and for a few months, he had disappeared to God knows where. He suddenly reappeared and this time with a determination to find out the culprits of his family. Soon, he got to know of my involvement in the entire fiasco.”
Ajay gritted his teeth as he remembered Vansh. “That son of a….! A mere pauper, he had the audacity to fall in love with Ajay Sareen’s daughter. Would I ever marry my princess to a man who wasn’t fit enough to be the servant of my house? No, never!
Moreover, he also threatened to blow up my cover. So I had no other option than to kill him. And Yash helped me in that.
“Under the pretext of talking something important, Yash called him to his house. I was waiting there and stabbed him. We drove the body to the jungle, and threw it off the cliff. When his body was found by the two woodcutters, we bribed the officials to change the autopsy report as per our convenience…”
A lone tear escaped Riddhima’s eye. She had already cried so much before that she couldn’t cry anymore. Perhaps, even her tears had dried up.
“However, Vansh’s death was too much to handle for Riddhima. In order to cope with the stress, she lost all her memories of him. This was actually a boon in disguise for us. I went with the flow and ordered all of Vansh’s previous treatment files to be removed from the hospital.
But there was yet another problem waiting for me.
My initial idea was to get Riddhima to transfer the land to my name so that I can give it away to Chang later on. But my plan was tarnished when Riddhima declined to do so. Of course, she did not pay much attention to the whereabouts of that property while reading the papers. All she knew was that she had to keep her mother’s last wish in consideration.
“Thankfully, Chang was arrested and kept in police custody for a few months. Without the pressure of his constant threats, I got ample amount of time to think over an alternative plan, since I knew that Chang wouldn’t be stuck in jail forever and would soon be out.
And that’s what happened. He fleed the prison and started harasssing me once again. To this day I still don’t know what is there in that land that has got Chang so damn obsessed with it.
“I was in a fix. That’s when I came up with this idea of proving you as insane, so that your property automatically comes in my possession. Even though you had completely forgotten about Vansh, somewhere his memories as well as the love for him were still stored in your subconscious mind. Making use of that, I decided to trick you.
“I found Vihaan in the neighbouring city and hired him. Our plan started with influencing Jeh to take you to the same jungle where Vansh used to reside as part of camping trip.
The tiger you saw there was a fake, robotic one. It was used to scare you to run deeper into the woods and meet with Vansh, aka Vihaan.
“As soon as you saw Vihaan in front of you, your subconscious mind recognized him and began throwing those feelings of déjà vu to you. You began feeling immensely drawn towards him. So much so that, you even started sleepwalking and reached all the way to the jungle by yourself in the night. Yash who was keeping a constant watch over you, informed Vihaan to take his position in the jungle and start the next part of the drama as and when required.
“Vihaan was asked to maintain a mysterious aura around him to puzzle your already muddled mind even more. He was instructed to wear plastic wraps to avoid leaving footprints in the soil to add to much more confusion.
Our last step was to make Vihaan jump off from the cliff, which he did using a parachute. All these incidents made you believe that you were hallucinating.
“But we also needed few strong witnesses to prove your insanity. I decided to use Dr. Sharma for this purpose. The blood that you saw in his cabin was actually made up of vanishing ink which becomes colourless a few seconds after it comes in contact with air.
Your car which had gone out of control? It was fitted with a device that causes rapid fluctuations in the speed.
Once Dr. Sharma saw your madness, he decided to give his nod for your admission into the asylum.”
Riddhima looked on like a lifeless soul. “You misused your knowledge and powers as a psychiatrist to play with my mind.”
“A psychiatrist’s job is to play with minds. The difference being, normally they do this to make their patients better, while I did this to worsen your mental health,” said Ajay solemnly. “I know I was wrong, but whatever I did, I did it as a father…”
“You are NOT fit to be called a father!” she yelled at the top of her voice. “You killed so many people for that property, today you should kill me off and finish this job. Just kill me!”
“How can I kill you, Riddhima? You are my daughter, my own blood…”
“What is there to live for, huh? My mom died because of you. I even lost my first and only love, my Vansh because of you. My father is a murderer, my friends are equal accomplices in his actions….why should I even live?”
“To give justice to your mom, Vansh and his family,” Vihaan said all of a sudden making everyone around him surprised. “You need to live for all those people who lost their lives unjustly.”
“Stop acting like my well-wisher, because I know you are not,” she snapped at him. “You played with my emotions, made fun of my love, helped them to make me look crazy…”
Vihaan said, “I know I did that, Riddhima. What I did was so wrong that even a lifetime wouldn’t be enough to make up for my mistake. But trust me, I had no idea that Ajay Sareen and Yash were murderers! I am a simple conman, who deceits people to obtain money from them. But killing people is an extremely big crime. I would never have gotten involved with these two had I known about their reality.
You need to punish these monsters for the atrocities they did on others. If you want, even I will surrender myself to the police for duping you. But you cannot give up like this.”
Riddhima who had stumbled to the ground in her plight, looked up to find Vihaan kneeling down and staring at her. For a split second, her heart skipped a beat thinking it to be Vansh. But later, she explained to herself that it wasn’t.
Vansh was already dead and how much ever she wanted, but dead people could never come back.
“Come, let’s go to the police station,” Vihaan said holding her arm.
He tried to help Riddhima to stand, but went still when he found something cold and hard grazing against his head.
“Not so soon, Vihaan. Not so soon,” said Ajay as he kept a pistol right at the back of his head.
*
Hello everyone! I tried to put down the things to the best of my ability, but sorry if it still seems confusing.
Do comment.
Peace out!