Chapter 32: Pawn

-Archi-

@-Archi-

The content of this story belongs strictly to the author, -Archi-. Any unwarranted use/copy of it is not encouraged and is strictly prohibited.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Pawn

– October 2019 –

“Come in,” Arnav muttered absentmindedly. 

It was a sunny Monday afternoon in Delhi, where Arnav was found locked away in his office, his mind completely occupied with the impending merger with Gupta and Sons. He was personally overlooking every word and every clause written in the agreement. Alok Raj Gupta was not known for his benevolence, and it would be stupidity on his part, if he walked into the deal blind. The deed was scheduled to be signed a week after his marriage with the Gupta heiress.

He tried not to think about that too much. 

To his surprise, Ryan –his best friend since boarding school days– walked in. 

“Damn,” he said, letting out a low whistle and gaping at the glass walls covering three sides of the room, giving them a spectacular view of the city. It was almost as though they were floating in midair. 

“This is one hell of an office man,” he muttered.

Arnav smiled and stood up, walking around his desk to pull him into a hug. “When did you get back from London?” 

“Just this morning,” Ryan answered. “And I was greeted at the airport with this.”

He pulled out a newspaper clipping from his pocket housing two large pictures of Arnav and his would-be father-in-law. The headline read: The Raizada-Gupta alliance: a desperate cry for help. 

Arnav didn’t have to look further to know what the article said. The whole city was buzzing about this for the last two weeks, when it was officially announced that he was to become Alok’s son-in-law. He didn’t understand why the papers were so interested in capturing every little detail of the impending nuptials. True, the Guptas were well-known, their influence was spread far and wide, but that didn’t mean everyone suddenly had the right to become personal about his life.

“So?” Ryan asked, impatiently. 

Arnav shrugged. “So what?”

“Care to explain?!” Ryan asked, staring at him incredulously. “You are getting married? First of all, where is my invitation? But mostly, why is the bride some Gupta instead of Myra? What happened to your restaurant? And why the hell do you look like you’ve stepped out of an episode of Suits?”

Arnav took a deep breath, wondering where to even start. 

After completing college together, Ryan had departed for London to pursue an MBA, while Arnav stayed in India, determined to follow his own ambitions. Although they kept in touch, especially with Ryan coming down to visit Delhi every few months, Arnav had actively avoided talking about his failing life. What was the point of burdening someone else with his problems? 

Deciding to start with the easiest of questions, he said, “Raghav wanted to sell the restaurant.”

Ryan frowned. “Wasn’t he the one who had the idea to open a restaurant in the first place?”

Arnav gritted his teeth, the point still raking him to pieces. “Yeah… But the restaurant was taking time to pick up, and he took that as a bad sign. So the minute someone offered him a good deal, he took it. And if I resisted, then the value of myfifty percent would drop… so we sold it.”

A sad smile spread across Ryan’s face, and he patted Arnav’s shoulder in sympathy. “I’m really sorry man… I know that restaurant meant everything to you.”

Arnav nodded, grateful. 

“So is that why you are here? Back to your father’s company?” Ryan asked. He wanted every last detail, it seemed. 

“Kind of,” Arnav muttered, walking to the windows and gazing out into the perfect afternoon. 

Ryan hesitated before asking the next question. “And… Myra? Where is she?”

“No clue.”

He snorted. “Of course you know. This is Myra – you literally breathe for this woman.”

Arnav’s hands curled into fists, the mention of his girlfriend bringing back her taunting words. 

You destroyed your career, you destroyed your restaurant and now you are destroying your father’s company… what do you even have left? With your track record, forget me, you aren’t worthy of any girl Arnav Singh Raizada. You were, are and will always be a disappointment.

Almost three weeks had passed since he saw her last, and yet, every inch of her face was seared on to his eyes. He couldn’t and wouldn’t forget her, because she was a living reminder of everything he had screwed up.

“Arnav?” Ryan called. “You’re seriously freaking me out… what happened?”

Arnav turned away from the window and strode back to his desk. “Nothing happened Ryan. We broke up. And I am marrying Khushi.”

“I figured that. What I’m asking is why?”

“Because apparently I run away when things get difficult, because I am immature, impulsive and selfish. Because her parents want marriage and she, stability and my parents, this business. I can go on and on… I’m not really sure what you want to hear.”

If Ryan was shocked with that, he didn’t let it show. Sitting across the mahogany desk, he asked quite calmly, “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”

Arnav rolled his eyes. “I don’t need therapy.”

“I don’t plan on giving it to you… I am just trying to understand. Last I checked, both of you were happy. You finally got your restaurant, she got that promotion… and you were even living together! Something that deep doesn’t just fall apart in one day.”

“Well it did for me,” he muttered desolately. “My restaurant shut down… I was struggling with what to do, and one fine day, Myra decided that she can’t put up with me any longer. That apparently I haven’t been giving her the commitment she deserved–”

“You mean marriage?”

“Apparently. As if I was some playboy who just wanted to sleep with her! If I didn’t value her, why would I stay with her for six years? Why would I ask her to move in with me? And why would I introduce her to my family?”

Ryan sighed. “Did you tell her that? Explaining yourself to me is not the solution.”

“Of course I told her! But it didn’t matter… she walked out anyway, my father had a stroke and–”

“What?!” Ryan exclaimed, sitting up in his chair. “Uncle had a stroke?!”

“Relax, he is fine. He is getting some movement back in his arm–”

“Seriously?! Uncle had a stroke and you wait three months to tell me? And that too, only when I ask? What has gotten into you Arnav?!”

Arnav rubbed his temples. “I’m sorry okay? Things haven’t been easy around here… and the last thing I wanted to do was call you in London and tell you my sob story–”

Ryan shook his head. “If only you cared ten percent about me as much as you did for Myra–”

“That’s not funny.”

“Okay, sorry. But more importantly, I’m sorry about Uncle… it’s like everything came at you at once. Is that why you really took over the company? Because there is no one else to run it?”

Arnav nodded. “Our numbers aren’t doing so well… someone has been trying to buy us out for weeks now. That’s whywe kept Papa’s stroke under the wraps… and also why it had to be me. If I took over, it will seem like our family is not interested in selling to a third party… a united front more or less.”

“So why the merger then?”

“Oh come on, you know about these things better than me. You actually paid attention in class.”

Ryan rolled his eyes. 

“Our stocks are at an all-time low Ryan! With this takeover news, no one’s willing to continue business with us and for good reason – if we do indeed get bought over, then there is no guarantee the new owner will keep their contract. It’s risky, and with my father gone from the company, these investors don’t have much to keep their faith in.”

“Okay fine, you are merging to save the shares. But why the marriage?”

Arnav averted his eyes. “Because we only get the merger if I marry the daughter.”

Silence followed that confession.

Ryan stared hard at his friend, perhaps debating how best to chastise him without being too rude. That was one of many things Arnav appreciated about his best friend, he knew how to put forth his case without overstepping. 

“I’m sorry,” Ryan finally muttered. “That you feel so much pressure to make sure things are alright, but marrying someone, especially when you are in love with another, just to keep your company alive is wrong. I hope you know that man.”

“I knew you would say that,” Arnav replied, shaking his head. “But you are not in my shoes.”

“So you think your situation is a good enough excuse for this stupidity? You love Myra–”

“It’s over. How many different ways do I have to break it to you Ryan?! Myra left, on her own free will! And when I begged her to come back, when I put aside any and all semblance of self-respect to ask for forgiveness for mistakes I did not make, she laughed in my face and called me an utter disappointment!”

Ryan appeared horrified. “She said that?”

“Yes! And after all that, you are expecting we will get back together?!”

Ryan didn’t have an answer.

“So save me the morality lecture!” Arnav fumed. He was tired of justifying himself to everyone. “I know what I am doing!”

It was a few minutes before either of them spoke. Ryan it seemed was trying hard to digest all the shocking twists as calmly as possible. But Arnav could tell, with the disappointed looks being passed his way, that Ryan disagreed with everything about this situation. 

“Have you ever considered what happens to the girl?” he finally asked. 

“Which girl?”

“The one you are marrying… she is walking into this marriage, expecting you to give her your hundred percent. What will happen when she realizes she is nothing but a pawn?”

Arnav’s face hardened. “That’s her father’s concern, not mine. He should have thought twice before knocking on my door, taking advantage of my father’s bad health and the company’s low shares.”

Ryan looked down at the newspaper clipping he brought. “You mean this Alok Raj Gupta?”

Arnav gave a curt nod. “He is a vulture… Remember that hostile takeover I was talking about? He is the one behind it.”

Ryan was stumped. 

“Exactly,” he continued, a look of deep loathing covering his face. “Alok had an eye on this company for months now… so the minute our sales dipped because of a slow economy, he pushed our competitor to buy us out. Of course, they didn’t succeed, but to our investors and customers, it created an image of bankruptcy that only further decreased our revenue. The cherry on top, of course, was that he waited for our funds to dry up before swooping in and making a deal that he knew we could not refuse!”

It took Ryan a few minutes wrap his head around that. “Okay, even if all of that is true–”

“It is true.”

“–why would Gupta get his daughter married to the owner of the company he tried to bankrupt? That makes no sense!”

Arnav stood up, his hands curling into fists. He had spent weeks trying to dissect Alok Raj Gupta’s motives, and it was only when his father put forth the alliance that he finally understood. 

“He wants power,” he explained simply. “If Alok Raj Gupta offered a merger when we were doing well, Papa would refuse. If he directly starts buying us out, we would be hostile partners. If he got someone else to play his dirty game and he pretends to be the ‘saviour’, we would be grateful and not to mention loyal to him. What more could he want for his daughter? A family that even if it tries, cannot break the marriage. It’s all about control.”

“This is messed up!” Ryan exclaimed in outrage.

Arnav snorted. His best friend didn’t even know the half of it. 

“How sure are you that these Guptas are behind this whole takeover business?”

“It’s obvious. Papa was receiving threats persistently for many weeks… why would someone be so interested in buying usout? There are many businesses out there who would be more than willing to merge, so why us? Jeejaji and everyone thought it was easy to take over this company because Papa doesn’t have an heir so to speak, but I felt it was all targeted.”

“Targeted for you?”

“Maybe not initially… but it cannot be a coincidence that Alok Raj Gupta is the one who is funding the company that was trying to buy us out. He is much too experienced and much too manipulative for that!”

“But–”

“But what Ryan? You know I am speaking logically, because why else would such an established businessman give his daughter in marriage to a family that is going broke? The only reasonable explanation is that we were never supposed to be bankrupt, it was all just a ruse for him to manipulate things into the way he likes. And this is not the first time either… all the companies Alok has acquired over the years conveniently lost their shares just a few months before he took over.”

Ryan held the bridge of his nose, reminding Arnav sorely of their college days. He used to do the same during exams, while trying to recall a difficult answer. 

Taking his silence as his surrender in their argument, Arnav went back to his laptop. He still had many pages of the merger agreement to get through. 

Ryan finally spoke. “So you have decided to punish the daughter for her father’s mistakes? Is that what you are telling me?”

Arnav shrugged. “For all we know, she might be with her father on this,” he muttered, not taking his eyes off his laptop. “The Guptas are ancient and it makes sense now why they have survived so long. Their marriages are contracts, their children are manipulators… They want a pawn, not a son-in-law.”

“So even a better reason to call off the marriage then!”

Arnav looked shrewdly at his friend. “Stop chastising me like I’m a small kid–”

“That’s because you are!” Ryan burst out. “I know you Arnav! You love Myra… Six years is not a joke! Anyone who saw the both of you in college wouldn’t even be able to imagine you guys breaking up, that’s how crazy you were about her! 

Sure she may not have loved you as much as you did her, sure she may have had other priorities, sure she walked away in search of a more stable life, but none of that makes all of your feelings disappear! I know what you felt for her were genuine, and that’s honestly what I admire the most about you… you are so forgiving and so accepting of her. It didn’t matter what or how Myra was, you loved her just the same. So how the hell can you just forget all that?!”

Arnav didn’t flinch in the slightest. “You are quite sentimental today Ryan.”

He glared at him “And you are just pissed off that Myra called you all those things! You are not getting married because you are over this relationship, or because Alok Raj Gupta has got you into a corner – you want to win at something Arnav, even if it is with your father’s company!”

“Of course not–”

“Dude, wake up!! You are okay with this now, but the minute Myra calms down and calls you back, you will go back to her! And at that point what will happen to your marriage?!”

Arnav steeled his shoulders, before saying in the most emotionless voice he could manage: 

“I frankly don’t care. It was a low blow for Alok Raj Gupta to mix business with family. He should have thought twice about forcing this alliance, not me for accepting it.”

– Present Time –

Arnav watched the sun disappear behind the horizon, a new sense of clarity overcoming his usually befuddled mind. He was standing in his office, grateful that he got through the day –his first day back after two weeks of absence– without anything blowing up out of proportion. It seemed his family had covered up his rather abrupt withdrawal well. 

After hearing Khushi’s malicious words less than twenty-four hours ago, Arnav could no longer ignore the inevitable. So he woke up before sunrise the next day, got dressed and came straight to his office, where he called the one person he knew could help. 

His request was completed before lunchtime. 

If truth be told, Arnav didn’t need the medical records now sitting innocently on his desk. Whether Myra really did have an abortion or not didn’t hold much meaning, considering the fact that their relationship was in pieces much earlier than that, and for different reasons. 

Ryan, his blessed best friend, had been right after all.

Six years’ worth of feelings don’t just disappear. They need time to be worked through, time to be understood and most of all, time to be resolved. And Arnav, in his stubbornness, had ignored all of that and just dived headlong into what came next. 

So perhaps, it really wasn’t a surprise that the minute he had received Myra’s call, an hour before his wedding, he stopped seeing reason. All his emotions, the love, the care, the passion… they all came flooding back, washing away all of Myra’s harsh words and leaving behind nothing but a desire to get her back no matter the cost. 

Because Arnav didn’t know about a world that existed or a life that he could live without her. She had shaped so much of him, especially the parts he had prized the most, that it was just easy to have her back. Easy to forgive, and yes, easy to accept. Perhaps that’s why it had taken all that yearning, all that pain and all that loss for him to finally understand reality. 

The easy way is not always the right way. 

The choice to have a child, at the end of the day, was solely a woman’s – married or not. But what had hurt him in the whole ordeal was the fact that Myra didn’t think he was important enough to even be informed. She didn’t trust him enough to support her decision, even if it was abortion. 

The medical reports –which costed him a hefty amount to obtain– were exactly what he had been expecting. Myra had been seven weeks pregnant, when she was admitted for a termination. She had refused to state her reason, although the hospital had made sure she understood all the risks involved. 

The date of the procedure was marked to be a few days after Arnav’s own marriage was announced, so maybe there was some truth to Ira’s words. And yet, he couldn’t believe that Myra didn’t know about the baby when he had gone to see her last September, asking for forgiveness. Was she really ignorant? Or had she decided not to involve him in the decision by then?

Not that it really mattered. She had made it clear in their final argument that she was done with Arnav. He highly doubted the existence of their child would have changed her mind. 

Perhaps it was easier for her to discard him like the morning newspaper, rather than acknowledge him as an equal partner. Perhaps it was easier for her to blame him for jumping onto another woman, rather than accepting that she acted selfishly. Perhaps it was easier for her to pretend their relationship didn’t exist at all, rather than accept the responsibility of it. 

Whatever the case may be, to Arnav, it boiled down to the same thing, which was why he decided not to pursue her any further. Whatever her reasons were for taking such a drastic step, he had no interest in figuring it out. 

Myra was a chapter in his life he never ever wanted to visit again. 

____________________________________________________