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Chapter 23
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2021-04-11 06:38:45Ten days later in San Francisco
Rafael, Eddy, and Aaron were at Rafael's mansion to watch a football game.
The family home is split into several interconnected villas with separate kitchens and entry exits. Ruhi's family was on the west side when they stayed for the wedding. Rafael's dad was more or less in the middle, grandma was in the south and Rafael lived on the far east end with Ruhi.
"Woah, that's a lot of plants. I thought we were in the wrong part of the mansion for a second." Aaron pushed a large palm leaf out of his way and headed toward the living room.
"It's all my little wifey's doing. She has taken over my space and turned it into a tropical jungle. And don't call them plants. They all came from her Florida home over the last one week, and she frowns when I don't use their proper names. This is Dracaena, the one that looks like swiss cheese is Monstera, and that one over there is called my ass!"
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"Hell no!" Rafael said without blinking twice. He was sure he would do something stupid and she will stay mad at him for eternity. Ruhi gulped in fear when she saw him shirtless. Now she understood why he wanted the heater blasting so high in such cold weather...so that he could roam around almost naked. She frowned at how low his waistband was before looking away. They fought indirectly more than twice last week about how cold she wantedher room to be because she liked to bury herself underextra thick blankets. The maid conveying the messages for them went crazy and called in sick the next morning. "Please... I don't want your bed. I just need you in the same room." The sky rumbled some more, and she looked at him with puppy eyes, hoping he would let her sleep on the extra foldable bed that she saw in the closet once when she was moving some of her stuff to his bedroom to confuse the maids. To cope with t
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"We are a conglomerate firm with the headquarters in New York. We have twenty-seven satellite offices and fourof them are in California." Ruhi nodded to the friendly brunettewhose name she forgot already out of tension.She wasn't sure why this lady seated in front of her was explaining things to her which she had already found outthrough her Google search."Would you like some coffee?" Another woman walked in to interrupt them. "We have some flavored hot chocolatetoo. Trust me, the raspberry dark chocolate one is awesome." She winked at Ruhi and left."That's Janet. She talks a lot. So avoid her when you have a lot of stuff to do." The brunette continued.Ruhi was confused whenthis person was talking to her like she was already hired. She was pissed for a second, thinking Rafael had something to do with it.There was another knock on the door and a tall blonde with blue eyes walked in."Hi, I am Caitlyn. Are yo
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Rafael was sitting at thedesk inhis Berlin office, looking out the window at the frozen ground sparkling in the winter sun. A little boy and his mom were standing on afaraway sidewalk wearing woolen hats. Each time ice crackled underfoot, the little boy's face lit up, and he kissed his mom's hand in delight.A gentle knock on the door brought Rafael's attentionback to his computer screen. He checked his watch and resumed typing. His personal assistant, Khloe, set his coffee on the desk and took some files with her to the conference room where Rafael was headed to in a few minutes.'Dry and bitter, just like you.' Ruhi's words rang in his mind when he took the first sip of his morning coffee.It hadbeen two days that he flew into Berlin with Khloe, and he mentioned Ruhi to her at least half a dozen times without knowing.When eating sushi at lunch the other day with his associates, he was thinking about Ruhi's&n
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Rafael's heavy jet, with elevenpassengers, took offthe brightly lit tarmac in Berlin two days earlier than it should have. As the engines roared and the strongwinds buffeted before the storm hit, his mind was racing with excitement.He watched the sun go down andlooked at his watch, wondering what Ruhi must be doing. There were thousands of miles to go before reaching home.It was around this time yesterdaywhen he realized it was soon going to be thirty days from the day he met Ruhi.'One month down and eleven more to go. Only eleven more,' he thought.The last four weeks went by in the blink of an eye. If time was going to run so fast, he wanted to make the most of it."I don't want to be in Berlin on the 30th. I can't be." He told his managing director and got everything canceled or delegated out of the blue.'Can't go a minute without thinking about her.' Admittingdefeat, he acknowledg
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Antonio looked at Ruhi with a scrutinizing gaze to see if she knew what he was talking about."Y-you are rivals with them.But they k-kill...They go to kill? I mean, I'd have never imaginedthey would go to the extent ofkilling someone." Ruhi was so uncomfortable she couldn't form a proper sentence when she felt her father-in-law suspecting her involvement in the foul play."YOU WANT TO GET US INTO AN ACCIDENT TOO?!" Antonio yelled at his chauffeur for jumpinga red light and almost getting T-boned by a Mazda CX-5. "No one asked you to speed like that. The chopper is still in the air."Ruhi, who was already very embarrassed about her sister's in-laws, wondered if Antonio wanted to yell at her but was using the poor driver to vent out.He had reasons to be mad. First, it was her dad striking a deal with Adira's dadagainst his business interests, and now, with them attacking Rafael, she was sure he was regretting this allian
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Ruhi was in the kitchen within minutes after checking the recipe to get an idea. The new chef got all the stuff ready for the dessert while the old chef was whipping out delicacies, one after the other."Ooh!! Garlic wine shrimp, braised short ribs, Cajun blackened fish, and what is this?" She pointed to yellow rice that smelled different from what she was used to."Geelrys. It's South African yellow rice which the bossloves.""Of course." Ruhi wondered if Alisha introduced it to him. She ignored feeling jealous and focused on the task at hand.While she was caramelizing the sugar in a saucepan and stressing about how she was going to get it all done in under three hours, the dogs ran out to the front door, going crazy with excitement."Crap! Don't tell me he's here already!!"She tucked the wandering strands of hair behind her ear and straightened her skirt. As the cake required at least seven distinct layers, baked one by one, she ha
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Rafael got up to follow Ruhi and kiss her until she melted in his arms, but there was something else that bothered him ever since he returned, his grandma's complaint about the housekeeper's behavior.He had known her all his life, and she always had a solid reason to like or dislike people.After talking to the housekeeper and finding out that Ruhi was in her dad's room two days after he left town, he called his security unit to get a hidden camera installed in his dad's living room. He had one in his living room already because he never trusted anyone who helped around the house. His dad hadruled it off as unnecessary when Rafaelsuggested it to him several times.The housekeeper mentioned that it was on January 25thin the afternoon when she saw Ruhi coming out of his dad's room. It was either the same day or the next day that some information about tender responses and proprietary methodologies got stolen from his dad's office and passed on to
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"Oh finally, Mira! Fifteen minutes before 7 PM." Nikki passed the drinks menu to Ruhi. It took Ruhi a week to make them stop calling her Amber because Mirambika was a mouthful. The guys still called her Ruhi because she accidentally told them, but no one really recognized who she was and that’s all she cared about."Did you know that the Beacon Enterprises has finally opened for outsourcing their consultation services?" Ava said as Ruhi's drink arrived."What? No! I mean, that's awesome," Ruhi replied in a panic. That was one of Rafael's companies she deliberately avoided applying for jobs at."Yup. We will try our luck from tomorrow before some other company swoops the deal. And can you imagine how awesome it would be to bag such a big client?""I guess..." Ruhi prayed that she never has to go to talk to their boss about her company's consulting services. Rafael would make her go through a lot of torment and humiliation before making the offer.&nbs
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SEVEN YEARS LATER It was a quiet Sunday afternoon with some cooling summer showers pouringdown outside the window whileRafael spent a good amount of time in his study. He was lagging behind quite a bit because he spent all day at the water park yesterday and left work early even on Friday afternoon to attend his daughter's ballet performance. He got up from his seat and stretched before stepping out to see what Ruhi and his little Snookums were up to. Even though he wanted to finish all the piled up stuff, he had gone two hours without seeing them and it felt like too much on a Sunday. He walked down to the kitchen to see what all the excitement was about. Ruhi was watching something very seriously on her daughter'spink laptop while the little girl was busy whisking butter and molten chocolate. She got chocolate mousse on both her chubby cheeks while Ruhi got a good amount on her nose. "Papa! You were not supposed to come out until w
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Rafael had always imagined death to start with some blinding light where all the best moments of his life wouldflash by him and then follow with an abyss of darkness. At least that's what he heard people say it would be like.The gunshots were still ringing in his ears long after the darkness, but the blinding light never came. The pain and the hopelessness sure felt like death.Among the many regrets he had, he regretted not being able to say a proper goodbye. Ruhi had never believed how unconditionally he loved her. He knew he did a poor job showing his feelings toher, except that he could prove that he would die for her, willing to do so over and over.He wanted to hear Ruhi's voice one last time before falling unconscious. His body was going numb, but a shooting painunfurled in the deepest pit of his stomach when he thought about the image of Ruhi lying on the floor.Was she conscious? He couldn't remember. Everything happened too quic
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"Oh, I seriously loved what you fed me. I don't know what this is.""Well, let me fix something light so that you don't go hungry. The doctor will be on his way if you throw up again." His voice trailed off as he walked back into the kitchen.Pushing the stray locks of her hair out of her sweaty forehead, she looked at the time on her phone and groaned, her head still slightly spinning. She slept for almost ten hours last night after getting rid of her dinner and felt exhausted at barely ninein the morning.Rafael stepped into the bedroom with a bowl full of chicken soup forty minutes later, and she was in for another surprise. She wished she knew how to cook a soup withthat perfect consistency and flavor he achieved seemingly effortlessly. Watching the heavy raindrops hit the window panes persistently, she stared out at the dark sky while sipping on the warm liquid."Huh, so no sightseeing today?" She asked Rafael, who was looking at her with
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No matter how much Rafael hated to move to a different room, Ruhi was super adamant, and hehad no other option but to leave the room. He hoped the next morning to be better and planned a day full of fun things to do. He missed the good old times where all she wanted was to eat a good meal with him at a restaurant and make him watch some kids' movies.She answered his call after deliberately missing it the first two times. He assumed she was sleeping. Sleep was the last thing on her mind. Without him by her side, she tossed and turned until the stormy predawn sky gave way to some daylight outside the huge glass windows."Wake up, sleepyhead. We have reservations for breakfast at a lakeside cafe here.""What makes you think I'm still in my bed. I ate breakfast already."Rafael's face fell when he heard that. It was barely 9 AM and Ruhi was still in bed on weekends, so he didn't expect her to be out already when on vacation."Where are you
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"Do I really want to talk to her? I don't think so." Ruhi crumpled the paper with Adira's number on it."Well, we can't trust anything she says, but I think we should hear her out. Also, I need to track her location. So just talk to her for a few minutes and---""I don't want to help you kill her, Rafael."Rafael entered the number into Ruhi's phone and made the call before turning the speaker on."Ruhi... I-I'm sorry. Please, please, help me. There are some half a dozen men with guns chasing me. I feel scared. Ruhi? Are you there?""How could you lie to Gus about something like that? Don't you know he still hasn't moved on?" Ruhi asked reluctantly,confused about how she felt when talking to her sister. She never wanted to talk to her again after finding outshe wanted Gus to kill her."It was... Um, it was Alisha's idea. I just told her Raina had a sister. She came up with this idea to make a deal with him
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It took a lot of courage for Ruhi to utter those four words, knowing full well Rafael wasn't going to let her go that easily. If he was a person to reason with and walk away with mutual understanding, she would have never tried so hard to run away from him. As she expected, his eyes flared, smoldering with what seemed to be fury, and his body grew rigidabove her, taut with tension."What?"He rolled onto his side and forced her to meet his gaze."You heardme. I can't live like this anymore. I want out, and I mean it."He flinched slightly at the steely resolution in her eyes. His gaze was feverishly raking her up and down, with disbelief clearly written all over his face. She was equally baffled that he hadn't seen this coming. She wondered if he was being deliberately dense."Ruhi, I know you didn't deserve the treatment you got from me." He stroked her cheek back and forth with hislong thumb. "It's not fair that I make a mistake
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"A honeymoon..."Ruhi quietly pushed Rafael's hand away and put her seatbelt on. He expected her to put up a fight orrun out of the car and was shocked to see her stare out of the window in resignation.Zack approached the car but was blocked by Harry. He handed Ruhi's cellphone, laptop, and money back to Harry. Rafael told him to hold on to them as he believed Ruhi wouldn't run without those things. He also wanted to make sure she didn't call her sister and ask her to run instead."Drive!" She told him in an impatient voice when he stalled inside the car, checking his work emails quickly."Ruhi, I don't mean to force you into---""What part of my intentions isnot clear to you? Doyou really think I'd run away from you to show you I want to go on a honeymoon? What kind of logic is that?"Rafael opened his mouth to defend himself but closed it when he saw the look on her face. She was royally pissed, unlike all those ot
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"Are you serious?" Ruhi couldn't believe her ears.He ignored her and focused on his phone when Zack texted and then called him."No, no weapons and none of his men. He can go back if he doesn't agree."She waited for him to finish talking on the phone while peeking into the coffee mug he left on the table."Was that dark rum or black coffee? Didyou really mean it when you said I can go?""Pack your stuff before I change my mind."She darted upthe stairs but stopped when she heard Zack enter the house with a pissed off face and announce something to Gus. When did he ever look happy? She wondered and turned back to the room but stopped dead in her tracks when she thought she heard Rafael's name.Climbing back down the spiral staircase, she walked towards the door to listen to their conversation."Just one then. Check thoroughly.""Check who?" She asked Gus, who ignored her again and went to grab some stu
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"Gus, she's gone." Ruhi held her breath when she heard Zack's infuriated voice. She was surprised to hear him address his boss by his name.Gus closed the bathroom door and walked over to the bed. Unlike Zack who wanted to kill Ruhi if he saw her again, Gus was relatively calm as he picked his cellphone up from the bed. Checking his messages on the locked screen and dismissing them, he opened the 'Tracker'."I'll get Nash to check the surveillance camera. She may still be on the premises if---""She's right here." Gus cut him off whileRuhi's heartbeat skyrocketed. "You can get back to work. I'll take care of this."Leaning down a bit, he grabbed Ruhi's wrist firmly and pulled her out from under the bed. She didn't dare to meet hiseyesand stared at the door Zack exited from.Gus moved a strand of her hair from her cheek while she froze.'Crap, crap, crap! He's probably twenty years older than me and wants to either kill me k
