“I’m not here on vacation,” Rito blurted the moment they stepped out of the house for a walk after tea.
“I know.” Abhijat looked back to make sure that the front door was shut behind them, before taking his sister by the hand and leading her out of the main gates.
“Where are we going?”
“To get ice cream.”
Rito frowned. “Why?”
“Because I haven’t seen you this jittery and nervous in years. It’s not like you to be nervous.”
“Then you should buy me a drink.”
“I would, if I didn’t think our mother would disinherit me. And we both know who has the real money in this family.”
Rito giggled as they stepped out into the street. “I’m sorry you had to come back, Abhi. I know how much you hate Qayit.”
“I don’t hate it. And you’re changing the subject.” He let go of her hand. “What happened at uni?”
She shrugged. “Nothing happened. Not in the way you’re thinking. ‘Cause I can tell what you’re thinking, Abhi, and it wasn’t like that. There’s no one you need to murder in Weritlan.
“No one told me to leave, not outright. And I could’ve stayed if I’d really wanted to. It’s just…it got uncomfortable, you know.” She sighed, picking at one of her many beaded bracelets as she walked. “After the scandal broke, it was like everybody wanted to see me, talk to me, tell me how it wasn’t my fault.
“Gosh! It’s not even that they were mean or spiteful or anything like that. Most of them weren’t. And I didn’t care about the ones that were. They weren’t the problem.”
“I’d think not,” Abhijat grinned, forcing himself to keep his tone light, despite the ringing in his ears. “You never had a problem giving as good as you got.”
Rito laughed as a car sped by them, a shaggy dog gazing out at the world from one of its rear windows. “I learned from the best, after all.” She bumped her shoulder against his. “But no, it was the sweet, sympathetic ones that were the problem. God, if anyone ever tells me something isn’t my fault again, I think I’ll smash a vase on their head.”
“I’ll buy you a new vase. But why did you leave? Don’t tell me you left ‘cause you couldn’t handle the awkward solicitousness of misguided graduate students, because I wouldn’t believe you.”
Rito sighed, raising a hand to snag a flower from the low-hanging branch of a nearby tree. She smelled it, then stuck it into her messy ponytail. “Professor Ishika said my presence could cost the university grant money from donors who wanted to get into the good books of the new Prime Minister. Which, let’s be honest, is pretty much all of them. The former lead scientist of the Amven project at the Qayit Research Institute? The academia loves him. And the corporates don’t want to cross him. At least not for now.”
Abhijat saw red. He clenched his fists, and for a second, genuinely regretted not shooting Fasih the moment he’d first laid eyes on him. The firing squad would have been worth it, for this.
He could forgive Fasih the loss of his own military career. But not this. Not his sister’s dreams. Her passion. Rito had wanted to be a professor for as long as he could remember. She’d always loved education, little freak that she was. Never missed school for anything less than a broken bone.
And she deserved it too, he knew she did. With their family’s connections, she could have had her choice of universities, could have enrolled into any program that caught her fancy.
But she hadn’t. She’d studied diligently for every exam and taken every test as one of the millions of anonymous students vying for a PhD seat. And when the University of Weritlan had offered her a seat after extensive rounds of interviews, she’d taken it and flown off to Ishfana, despite the fact that she could have gotten into some of the most prestigious programs at Qayit University with little more than a phone call from their grandfather.
And now, just as she was within touching distance of the goal that she’d worked for all these years, Fasih had to come along and destroy everything. And for what? To become the ringmaster of the circus that was Parliament House? He certainly didn’t seem to care about the job – or the country – any more than Abhijat cared about being his bodyguard. If anything, he seemed to think this whole bloody mess was one big puzzle that’d be fun to solve.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
Well, that wasn’t a good enough reason to destroy so many lives. To tear down his family’s reputation, his mother’s smile, and his sister’s lifelong dream. And if it was the last thing he did in his life, Abhijat would make sure Jehan Fasih paid for what he had done.
Rito snapped her fingers inches from his eyes, pulling him out of his thoughts. “Earth to Abhi. Who’re you planning to kill now? Professor Ishika? Jehan Fasih? Well, curb your murderous instincts, brother mine. It wasn’t as bad as you’re imagining. Professor Ishika likes me, you know that. She always has–”
“She’s the Vice Chancellor of one of the country’s largest universities! How could she–”
“She could because she had to,” Rito cut him off, skipping past him and through the doors of the ice cream parlor. By the time Abhijat followed her in, Rito had already snagged a table and was looking through the menu card.
He sat down on the seat across from her and she passed him the spare menu. “Prof has more to worry about than the career of a single student, Abhi. She couldn’t risk everything just for me. Besides, it’s not like she told me to leave. She didn’t, really.” She reached out to squeeze one of his hands under the table. “I left of my own volition. And when I told her I’d be returning home, she said I could come back and complete my PhD in a couple of years, after things had quieted down a little bit, you know.”
They gave their orders to the waiter, who emerged from behind the counter in a bright pink apron embroidered with ice-pops and waffle cones. Or rather, Rito ordered for the both of them. She was going to eat half his ice cream anyway, and they both knew it.
“And Nikita? What did she have to say about all this?” Abhijat had never liked his sister’s girlfriend. He’d never told her that, however, because he wasn’t even sure why he didn’t like her. It wasn’t that she was ever impolite or inattentive, to Rito or their family. Quite the opposite, actually. She’d always been too polite, too considerate, too obliging.
Abhijat hadn’t wanted to believe it, but somewhere at the back of his mind, he’d always had the sneaking suspicion that Nikita only liked Rito because of who her father was.
To his surprise, his sister threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, she fucked off weeks ago. The day that Papa resigned, to be exact. Said the coursework had gotten too hectic for her to focus on a relationship right now. She’s always been a career woman, as you know. Although she did postpone the submission of her thesis by a year ‘cause she didn’t want to leave uni without me.”
“That fucking–”
Rito waved a hand. “Don’t bother, Abhi. I know you thought I was an innocent who didn’t know what she was getting herself into, but I’m not, okay? I know what Nikita is, I always did. You think I care she broke up with me?
“You think that’s what I’m worried about right now, when Papa is a hair’s breadth from full-blown depression, Maa is falling apart at the seams pretending everything’s okay, and you’ve left the army to become the shadow of the man who started it all? Really Abhi, is that how little you think of me?”
“Of course not. I just,” he swallowed, closed his eyes. “I just thought you loved her.”
Rito snickered. “Loved her? That parasite in human form? In the three years I’ve known her, she’s never once remembered to take her purse on a dinner date.”
“Then why–”
“’Cause she had a nice ass, okay? Gosh Abhi, stop being such a prude, will you? Next thing I know, you’ll be telling me to take a vow of chastity.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“And you’re a virgin. So we’re even. Now, on to the important stuff. How do I tell Maa and Papa that I won’t be going back to Weritlan without causing the shitstorm of the century and ruining what semblance of peace they’ve managed to find?”
Abhijat sighed, rubbing a hand over his eyes. “If Papa finds out–”
“He’ll blame himself, I know. He’ll think it’s his fault I had to leave uni.”
“Yeah. He already blames himself for me coming back to Qayit. And now springing this on him so soon after–”
“Wouldn’t be ideal, I can imagine.” Their ice cream arrived, and Rito tucked in with gusto. “It’d be better if I could find something else before breaking the news to them. But I can’t imagine what other university would want to incur the wrath of the current Prime Minister by offering me a seat so soon after the whole blowup.”
Abhijat sighed around a spoonful of his own purple-and-green concoction. It was surprisingly unrevolting. “Don’t worry about it. Just…I’ll find a way. Just trust me, okay?”
He was nine again, helping a five-year-old Rito onto the swing, telling her he wouldn’t let her fall off, wouldn’t let her get hurt. Telling her to trust him.
He was her big brother, and he would always find a way. It was his job, after all.
Rito hummed and stuck her tiny plastic spoon into his ice cream, removing a massive chunk of purple cream and shoving it into her mouth with a sigh of contentment. “I do trust you, which is why I’ve been saving the most important question for last.” She waggled her eyebrows. “How’s our new pretty-boy Prime Minister?”
Abhijat rolled his eyes before popping another spoonful of ice cream into his mouth. “You’re incorrigible. And he’s a man. Just in case you hadn’t noticed.”
“I had,” she said mournfully. “Face like that is wasted on a man, don’t you think? Still, aesthetic appreciation can’t be confined to a gender, of course. And he seems to have taken quite a shine to you, from what I’ve been seeing on TV.”
Abhijat pointed his spoon at her and said in as threatening a voice as one could manage with a tiny plastic utensil for a weapon, “Finish your ice cream, young lady”.