Chapter 27: Breathless Conversations

He kept on stepping closer until he was on one side of the table and she at the other. Blood was continuously spilling out of her wound, but she cared less. The matter at hand was to escape him. His vicinity. Somehow, get out of his office. She didn’t want to be near a person who was close to cutting her fingers. She really needed to escape. She looked at the door with wondering eyes. She wished someone would walk in so she could be saved.

But what she didn’t know was that she stood in the vicinity of the mafia. She came here by her own will but would leave this room by his. And even if someone entered through that door, that person would be as helpless as she was. No one could help her unless he decided to help her. After all, he was the dreaded mafia lord.

"Please," she pleaded. She was mind-boggled. When she entered this office—

Placing both his hands on the table, he looked piercingly into her eyes.

"Don’t do anything to me. Let me go," her breathless voice said. "Please."

"Come to me," he stated, looking straight into her eyes.

"First, unlock the doors."

He pressed the button, and the door unlocked.

"Come here."

"Please, don’t do anything to me," she pleaded again, still standing in her position.

"Walk over here. The doors are unlocked. I won’t do anything."

"Do you give your word?"

He smirked. "I give my word."

She began to take baby steps toward him. Her panic and fear were as clear as water on her face. She wondered what more he could do. It was so easy for him to cut her finger. Just a bit more pressure, and her finger would have been lying on the floor. It made her think, were his threats really baseless, or not? Was he really capable of implementing what he said?

"Drop the glass," he uttered, straightening his posture, his hawkish eyes peering into her soul.

If Sheharzaad was afraid of him before, now she was petrified. She just wanted to run. Coming to his office was never a good decision in the first place. She had no idea things would turn out like this. She had deduced he was not an ordinary man at all. He was something else. He was indeed more powerful than he showed.

The look in his eye was enough for her to drop the piece of glass and keep walking toward him.

As she walked closer, he sat on one of the chairs and pulled the other one closer to him. She stopped in front of him when he directed her with his eyes to sit in the chair in front of him. She quietly sat down. She knew where she had made the error. The error was not in barging into his office; rather, the error was in not knowing who he truly was.

Not saying anything, he held out his hand for her, indicating she should place her injured hand in his, which she reluctantly did.

Picking up the antiseptic, he began to clean her wound. He could have made her bite her tongue in silence the very moment she raised her voice at him, but he knew she was too new to his dark side. It was just her day one of knowing him. At the moment, he would give her only what she could bear.

He wondered what could be so special about her that he, himself, was getting attracted to her. She was the first woman to whom he had offered to spend a night with him. And the first ever, too, who had denied him. He wanted to get her out of his system. She was on his mind 24/7. He was sure that after spending a night with him, it would be enough to clear his mind and remove all thoughts of her. He knew he just had a mere infatuation with her that would be over once he had her.

Her phone rang on cue, and she retrieved it from her pocket with her other hand.

"Ye... yes, Ahmed bhai?" her sore voice answered.

"No... no, I’m fine. Caught a flu, that’s why my voice is sore," she whispered, as she was in his vicinity. He didn’t look up at her. His eyes were down, busy with the task at hand.

"Why did you call? Is everything fine?"

"Amna? What happened to Amna? Is she fine? Why is she in the hospital?"

"What? But I talked with the doctor in the evening, and he said by next week..."

"That’s such a short time. How would we gather such an amount within two days?"

"Yes, yes. Do you have some savings?"

"I don’t either. I... I will try to do some... something else," she whispered, and at this sentence of hers, she found him moving his lashes up and staring at her for a moment.

"Okay, I’ll talk to you later."

She hung up the call. Her throat ached with the pain of her unreleased tears that made her chin wobble. She was on the verge of crying. Now, the deadline of a week was limited to three days.

"Is there..." she spoke, but her voice was cracking, so she stopped and cleared her throat. "Is there any other way, please?"

"Of what?" Shehryaar asked, acting oblivious, now applying the band-aid.

"Of... of a loan," she uttered. "I... I’m not that type of woman," her voice was cracking, but his face was stoic. He remained indifferent.

"What kind of woman are you, then?" he glanced up at her.

"Not the one who does... one-night stands," she asserted. Her heart felt heavy. This was the first time she had to prove her character to someone.

"Oh?" He cocked his brow and released her hand as he finished before standing up and retrieving Rafay’s phone. "I’ll give you a chance to explain yourself, as I don’t want to abruptly jump to conclusions."