Pravar, who had poisoned his sister Mala and Madhu who kept her, had succeeded in misleading Shakeel into believing that it was my handiwork, and that set me on a ruinous course. Oh, failing to make me sign on the dotted line for his credit of cracking the case, the cop developed an urge to get even with me, and on the pretext of collecting clues, how he routinely took me out and raped me at gunpoint. Worse still, he began sharing me with a magistrate to let him illegally detain me, and how I endured the ordeal before I was let out on bail that was after both of them had had their fill, I only knew.
When I saw that live coverage of the telecast, in which Shakeel claimed Pravar as the kingpin of the counterfeit racket, though I felt the latter got his just desserts, I was seized with an urge to avenge against the former. As if guided by the hand of combined destiny - of the prey and its hounds - I chanced to see Detective Dhruva’s ad for a lady assistant. Sensing that a stint as his assistant might lead me to the avenues of avenge though rendering me vulnerable to the detective’s charms, a welcome prospect for a single woman anyway, I ventured into his amorous arena to get even with my tormentors.
When I saw Dhruva, it was love at first sight for me, and as he too was enamored of me, I wanted to forget about the past and build my future with him. But how I were to know that afflicted by Stockholm Syndrome, Kavya would be pushing Ranjit and Pravar back onto my anvil of avenge, and if anything, as my proximity to Dhruva brought Shakeel too onto my radar, I found myself drawing the triangle of revenge. As if their fate had beckoned me, I laid my hands on that potion of slow acting poison; in a way my fate had combined with theirs to play foul with my life that I was recasting it in the mould of love! Sadly, my need for a guinea pig to test its potency and to calibrate the right dosage to seal their fate made Dicey the first collateral victim of my vengeance.
When I heard about Kavya’s affair with Pravar, I gloated over her fall, for it would hurt Ranjit no end, before I would see his end, and seized with an urge to see the turmoil of a cuckold, I contrived to meet him. When he begged me to forget the past and grant it to him again, I led him up the garden path; what a vicarious pleasure I had as I tortured him before I ended it all for him with that fatal dose! By then as my love for Dhruva began to rule my heart and mind quenching my thirst for revenge, I forgave Shakeel and forgot about Pravar. But at Dhruva’s behest, as Shakeel began probing Ranjit’s past, I saw the need to catch him before he caught me, if only not to lose my love and he fell into my trap when I invited him to share some clues to tie Kavya’s hands with Ranjit’s murder. When we met in my Red Hills house, I induced him to have some drinks with me, and he agreed, hoping that the rendezvous might end up in my bed, only to end up dead in his own bed. What with my old wounds having opened up, I wanted to train my guns on the ‘malicious magistrate’ as well, and to my peculiar disappointment, I came to know that the blackguard was dead and gone.