fool? Don’t I know that the moment I turn my back, you’d go running to your sissy brother and complain? And then he would come after me with everything he’s got. Tell him I am not scared of him. I am Nishant Kapoor and I am not scared of anyone. Especiallyif that thing is merely 5 feet 5 inches.” With that, Nishant started his raucous laughter.
He paused suddenly and said, “OK, I’d let Nidhi go. You are right. We can send her to boarding school.”
He left Nidhi slumped next to a chair and came close to Neelima. He held her arms tenderly, stared at her shapely breasts and then hugged her.
Neelima looked at Nidhi over Nishant’s shoulders. She could see her daughter bleeding from knees and ankles. Neelima merely closed her eyes and started to cry silently.
“Don’t cry now Neelima. I will not hurt Nidhi. I swear,” Nishant said. He was now caressing her back.
Neelima was still naked and despite her husband’s embrace, she was still scared. She tried to take a chance. “Thank you Nishant. Let’s… let’s please go in. It’s very cold out here,” she said.
Nishant nodded. He held Neelima’s hand and said, “Yeah, it’s cold. Let’s go in.”
Just when Neelima thought that the nightmare was coming to an end, Nishant did the unexpected. He pushed Neelima in the swimming pool. Neelima went down with a loud splash. Neelima knew how to swim but the shock of cold water on her bare skin and the enormity of what Nishant had just done was making it difficult for her to breathe and stay afloat.
Nidhi, at the sight of her mother disappearing in water, rushed to help. She flung herself towards the pool but Nishant caught her deftly. Nidhi stumbled and fell on the cement pavement lining the pool, headfirst.
“Look at your mother. She is such a good actress.” Nishant was still laughing.
Unlike her mother, Nidhi did not try to reason with him. She kept struggling and kicking against him. Most of her shots hit Nishant in the fleshy part of his thighs but one of her misdirected kicks hit Nishant in the groin. He screamed out in pain. He hurled Nidhi like he was shrugging a bug that had bitten him. She landed on her forearm against metal base of a pool lounger. A fountain of blood gushed out from her forearm. Despite the deep cut, she kept crawling towards Neelima. Neelima by now had struggled to the shallow end and had found her feet in the pool. She walked to the edge of the pool but a surprisingly agile Nishant ran the length of the pool and kicked her back in the pool.
“You shall remain in the pool till the time I please. Or I will kill the two of you.” He pulled out a pistol from somewhere.
∗∗∗
Nidhi Kapoor, twelve at that time, took a beating that would have left a fully-grown man begging for mercy. She was red with bruises; her yellow night suit was torn from the shoulders and had turned orange from the blood from the cut in her arm. Neelima was still naked and was half-dead from physical and mental agony. She struggled out of the water. Nidhi removed her night suit and covered Neelima up, as much as a twelve-year-old’s t-shirt could.
The mother and daughter then somehow dragged themselves away from the swimming pool and lied downin the comparative comfort of the grass bed. Going indoors was not an option. They knew Nishant would have locked the entrance and would’ve threatened everyone against helping them. The mother and the daughter embraced each other and waited for the sun to come up and end what had been probably the darkest night of their lives. Hoping that when the sun did come up on the other side of the night, it would bring freedom from the tyranny of Nishant Kapoor.
The two Kapoor women stared up at the moonless night.
Throughout the ordeal, while Neelima cried and mumbled, Nidhi Kapoor, twelve, did not shed a single tear.
7. Day 1, Evening. Vie Lounge.
Just when the jeep was passing through the busy Juhu Tara road, Rujuta spotted the Vie Lounge and she realized that
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