Chapter 2: promise to saali comforting wife
The study was a fortress of polished mahogany and deep leather. The scent of aged whiskey and old parchment lingered like a secret, underlined by the acrid ghost of his last cigar. Towering bookshelves, stuffed with leather-bound tomes and first editions he’d never opened, flanked the massive oak desk. Its surface was a landscape of ordered chaos—a crystal tumbler, half-full of amber liquid, a gold lighter, a sleek phone. Near the brass-edged blotter, a single, faint ghost of a cigar burn marred the wood, a testament to a moment of forgotten carelessness.
Prem stood at the window, his broad silhouette blocking the view of the manicured gardens below. He wore a dark robe, the cord loose. The grey in his chest hair caught the dim light from the unlit chandelier overhead. In his hand, a fresh cigarette smoldered, the smoke curling toward the high ceiling in a slow, grey spiral. The confrontation with Prema hung in the room with him, a poisonous vapour he couldn’t dispel. Her words, “You’re thinking of her, in my bed,” were on a loop in his skull.
A soft knock, tentative, at the study door.
He didn’t turn. “Come.”
The door swung open on silent hinges. He heard her enter, felt the shift in the atmosphere before he caught her scent—jasmine and sandalwood, cutting through the whiskey and smoke. He took a slow drag, his back still to her.
“Jiju?”
Shilpa’s voice was softer than he remembered from the office. Smaller. He finally turned.
She stood just inside the room, the door clicking shut behind her. She wore a simple cream salwar kameez, her hair tied back in a loose braid. She looked tired. The defiant, knowing woman from his office was gone, replaced by someone who seemed frayed at the edges. There were shadows under her eyes.
“She came to see me,” Shilpa said without preamble. Her fingers twisted the end of her dupatta. “Prema didi. Last night. Late.”
Prem said nothing. He exhaled a stream of smoke, watching her face.
“She knows,” Shilpa continued, her voice gaining a thin, wiry strength. “Or she thinks she knows. She said… terrible things.”
“What did you expect?” Prem’s voice was low, rough from smoke and disuse. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
“Where else should I go?” The question was sharp, desperate. “My own cousin looks at me like I’m a whouse she found in her husband’s bed. My own sister. You told me not to tell her about the job, and I listened to you. And now…” She trailed off, her gaze dropping to the Persian rug.
Prem walked to his desk, stubbed out the cigarette. He picked up the tumbler, took a sip. The whiskey burned, but it was a clean pain. “She overreacts. She gets ideas.”
“Ideas?” Shilpa took a step forward. The soft light from the desk lamp carved the worried lines around her mouth. “Jiju, she hasn’t been your wife in weeks. She told me. She can feel the distance. And she thinks it’s because of me.”
He set the glass down hard. The sharp crack of crystal on wood made her flinch. “My marriage is not your concern.”
“It became my concern the moment you pulled Mohan off me!” The words burst from her, raw and sudden. She pressed a hand to her mouth, as if to push them back in. When she spoke again, it was measured, deliberate. “It became my concern when you started keeping my secrets from your wife. Our secrets.”
Silence stretched between them, thick and charged. The memory of that night—Mohan’s drunken rage, Shilpa trembling against him, the coarse feel of his chest hair under her cheek—was a live wire in the room.
Shilpa hugged herself. “Why, jiju? Why haven’t you touched her? It’s been two weeks, she said. More. Is it… is it because of me? Do you look at her and see… me?”
Prem’s jaw tightened. He turned to refill his glass, the decanter clinking against the rim. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Then what?” she pressed, a new edge in her voice. “Is it Roma?”
The decanter slipped in his hand, a drop of whiskey splashing onto the polished wood. He didn’t turn around.
“Roma. The dancer from the Blue Lotus. The one with the laugh that sounds like a bell.” Shilpa’s voice was flat now, a blade scraping bone. “I know about her, jiju. I have a friend who works at the club. She sees you. In the back room. Late.”
Prem remained utterly still, his back to her, watching the slow spread of the alcohol droplet on the desk.
“So it’s true,” Shilpa breathed, the revelation draining the remaining color from her face. “You’ve been with her. While Prema didi lies alone in your bed, thinking her husband is lusting after her pathetic cousin, you’ve been fucking a cabaret dancer.”
He finally turned. His expression was granite. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t I?” A bitter, mirthless smile touched her lips. “My friend is very descriptive. She says Roma looks… familiar. A certain turn of the neck. A way of holding her head. She’s younger, of course. But there’s a resemblance.” She let the words hang, watching him. “Isn’t there?”
Prem took a long drink, emptying the glass. The fire in his gut had nothing to do with the whiskey. It was shame, hot and acidic. And beneath it, a darker, more brutal truth he could not articulate.
“You must promise me something,” Shilpa said, her tone shifting from accusation to a desperate plea. She moved around the desk, standing close enough for him to smell the jasmine in her hair. “You must be good to her. To Prema. Go to her tonight. Be her husband again. She deserves that. She has given you everything—your children, your home, her life. This distance… it’s killing her. And she blames me.”
Prem looked down at her. The cream fabric of her kameez seemed to glow in the dim light. The curve of her neck. The particular arch of her brow. The resemblance was not a coincidence. It was the entire, sickening point.
“There is no affair with Roma,” he said, the lie smooth and automatic from years of boardroom politics.
Shilpa’s eyes searched his, and he saw she didn’t believe him. But she also saw something else—the torment, the conflict, the jagged need that rode him like a demon. She saw the man who had saved her, who had built a cage of secrets around them both.
“Promise me,” she whispered, her hand rising, as if to touch his arm, but stopping just short, her fingers curling into a fist in the air between them. “Promise me you’ll take care of her. That you’ll end whatever this is with that… that woman. For your family. For your wife.”
He looked at her pleading face, at the lips that formed the words he knew were right, and all he could think about was the cabaret’s private room, the thud of bass from the main floor, the dim red light. He thought of Roma, with her dyed hair and cheap perfume, her practiced moves. He thought of the way he would close his eyes as she danced, and in the darkness, with the music pounding, he would not see Roma at all. He would murmur a name into the sweat-damp skin of her shoulder. Shilpa. And she, well-trained in the fantasies of powerful men, would whisper back, her voice a pale imitation, Jiju.
It was a consummation of nothing. A parody of a hunger he could never satisfy. A relief that was its own kind of torment. The sexual frustration wasn’t from an inability to perform; it was from the inability to possess the one thing his wealth and power could not buy. The one person his respectability forbade. So he rented a facsimile and tried to lose himself in the lie.
“I promise,” he heard himself say to Shilpa, the words ash in his mouth.
She searched his eyes for sincerity and found only a profound, weary defeat. It seemed to be enough. She nodded once, a short, sharp movement, and took a step back, breaking the magnetic field that had held them.
“Good,” she said, her voice firm now, a decision made. “Then I’ll go. And you will go to your wife.”
She turned and walked to the door, her steps silent on the thick rug. She paused with her hand on the handle, not looking back. “Thank you,” she said, her voice thick, “for the job. For everything.”
Then she was gone, the door closing with a soft, final sigh.
Prem stood alone in the fortress of his making. The scent of her perfume lingered, overlaying the smells of leather and betrayal. He looked at the empty glass, the cigar burn on his desk, the shadows thrown by the unlit chandelier.
He had promised.
He picked up the gold lighter, flicked it open. The flame leapt, a tiny, defiant sun in the gloom. He thought of Prema, lying awake in their emerald-silk bed, her beauty a monument to his failure. He thought of Shilpa, walking away, carrying the weight of his corrupt devotion. He thought of Roma, who would be waiting tomorrow night, in the red light, expecting him to call her by another name.
The promise felt like a shackle. The need felt like a disease.
He snapped the lighter shut, plunging the room back into deeper shadow, and reached for his phone.
He snapped the lighter shut, plunging the room back into deeper shadow, and reached for his phone. His thumb hovered over a contact labeled ‘Roma,’ a dull throb of temptation pulsing beneath his sternum. The silence of the study pressed in, thick with the ghost of Shilpa’s perfume and her desperate plea. With a harsh exhale, he swiped the screen off and shoved the phone into his robe pocket, the decision a physical weight.
The drive home was a tunnel of blurring streetlights. He replayed Shilpa’s words—Promise me you’ll take care of her—until they lost meaning, becoming a stark, rhythmic command in his skull. The grand facade of his house loomed, its windows mostly dark. Only their bedroom light bled a faint gold into the night. He let himself in, the marble foyer echoing his solitary steps.
Upstairs, the door to their room stood ajar. He pushed it open. Prema was sitting upright in the emerald-silk bed, a book open but unread in her lap. She wore a simple ivory nightdress. The chandelier was off, only her bedside lamp casting a warm pool of light that gilded the edges of her hair, her shoulders. She didn’t look up as he entered.
“She came to see you,” Prema stated, her voice devoid of its earlier fury, sanded down to a flat, exhausted truth.
“Yes.” He shrugged off his robe, letting it fall to the floor. The cool air touched his skin. He walked to his side of the bed, the space between them a frozen lake.
“And?”
“And nothing.” He sat on the edge of the mattress, the frame creaking under his weight. He could feel her watching his profile, studying the tension in his neck, the set of his jaw. “She’s upset. You scared her.”
A dry, quiet laugh escaped Prema. “I scared her.” She closed the book, set it aside with deliberate slowness. “That’s all you have to say?”
He turned to look at her then. The lamplight softened the fine lines around her eyes, the tired curve of her mouth. He saw not the accusatory wife from the night before, but the woman who had built a life with him. The mother of his children. A profound, aching fatigue washed over him, followed by a surge of something else—a need to erase the distance, to burn out the ghost of Shilpa and Roma and all the twisted secrets with a simpler, physical fire.
“No,” he said, his voice rough. “That’s not all.”
He reached out, his hand—broad, capable—cupping the side of her face. His thumb stroked her cheekbone. She flinched, a tiny recoil of surprise, but she didn’t pull away. Her skin was soft, warm. Her eyes, wide and dark, searched his, looking for the lie, the deflection. He didn’t offer one.
“I’m here,” he said, the words simpler than any excuse. He leaned in, his other hand coming up to cradle her head, his fingers threading into her hair. He kissed her.
It wasn’t gentle. It was a claim. A press of lips that held weeks of silence, of suspicion, of separate beds. It was heat and insistence. For a moment, she remained rigid, a statue in his arms. Then a shudder ran through her, and her mouth yielded, opened beneath his. A small, broken sound escaped her throat, and her hands came up, not to push him away, but to clutch the back of his neck, her nails digging into his skin.
He guided her back onto the pillows, the emerald silk whispering beneath them. His body covered hers, a familiar weight she had missed. He kissed her neck, her collarbone, the swell of her breast above the neckline of her nightdress. He tasted salt—her tears—and felt the frantic beat of her heart under his lips.
“Prem,” she whispered, a question and an answer.
He didn’t speak. He showed her. His hands pushed the delicate straps of her nightdress down, baring her to the warm light. His mouth followed where his hands led, rediscovering the slopes and curves he knew by heart yet had treated like foreign land for weeks. She arched into his touch, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps. Her own hands were frantic, pulling at the towel around his waist, seeking the familiar terrain of his back, the coarse texture of the hair on his chest.
There was no tenderness, only a driven, passionate urgency. It was a collision, not a reunion. A desperate attempt to fuck the mistrust out of their minds, to sweat out the poison. The bed groaned in protest. Silk sheets tangled around their legs. Her cries were sharp, punctuated by his own guttural sounds. He moved in her with a focused, punishing rhythm, each thrust an anchor to the present, a hammer blow driving out the image of another woman’s face, another woman’s hair, another woman’s whispered jiju in a dark room.
She climaxed with a choked, shuddering cry, her body tightening around him like a vise. He followed, a harsh groan ripped from his chest as he spilled into her, collapsing his weight onto her before rolling to the side, spent and breathless.
The room was silent except for their ragged breathing. The air smelled of sex and their shared sweat, overlaying the last traces of his cologne. Moonlight had shifted across the floor. Prema lay on her back, one arm flung over her eyes. After a long while, she spoke into the dimness, her voice husked and raw.
“Was that for her?” she asked, the words barely audible. “Or for me?”
Prem stared at the intricate pattern of shadows the chandelier cast on the ceiling. His body was sated, heavy. His mind was anything but. The promise was kept. The act was performed. The ghost, however, had not been exorcised. It lingered in the corner of the room, in the scent of jasmine still clinging to his memory, in the echo of his wife’s terrible, perceptive question.
He didn’t answer her question. Instead, he pulled her closer, her back against his chest, his arms wrapping around her. The heat of their bodies mingled under the rumpled silk. “It was for you,” he murmured into her hair, his voice a low vibration against her scalp. “It is for you.”
Prema lay still, listening to the thud of his heart against her spine. She wanted to believe the solidity of his body, the finality of his claim. The physical evidence was a convincing argument. Yet the ghost of his hesitation, the brutal efficiency of his need, left a cold hollow beneath her ribs. She closed her eyes, feigning the peace of sleep until his breathing deepened into a rhythm.
Morning light, sharp and accusing, revealed the rumpled sheets and the space where he had been. Prem stood at the window again, already dressed, watching the gardener below. The previous night’s performance hung on him like a tailored suit—convincing from a distance, but constricting. He felt Prema stir behind him.
“I have meetings all day,” he said, without turning. “Late.”
“Alright,” her voice came, soft and hollow from the bed.
He turned then, fastening his cufflinks. She was watching him, her dark eyes pools of quiet assessment. He leaned over, kissed her forehead—a dry, paternal gesture. “Try to rest.”
The moment the front door clicked shut behind him, the performance ended. In the cavernous silence of his chauffeured car, the memory of Shilpa’s plea twisted into something else entirely. Promise me you’ll take care of her. The words curdled, transforming from a moral injunction into a perverse permission. Taking care of Prema meant sating himself elsewhere, didn’t it? Keeping the turbulence away from her. He was a man of considerable appetite, of deep reservoirs. He was masculine enough for two women. The thought, arrogant and corrosive, took root.
By midday, seated behind his massive oak desk, the ghost of the cigar burn staring back at him, the urge crystallized into a sharp, specific ache. It was Shilpa’ face he saw in the dim corners of his mind, Shilpa’s neck, Shilpa’s reproachful eyes. Not Prema’s. The promise he had made felt like a shackle on a pulsating instinct. He picked up his private phone, the one without a company logo.
“Roma.” His voice was flat, businesslike. “The usual place. 5:30.”
The secret apartment was in a nondescript, modern tower across the city, purchased under a shell company. It was a sterile, elegant space—all cool marble and floor-to-ceiling glass, devoid of personal history or familial warmth. By 5:25, Prem stood inside, a glass of whisky in hand, already sweating beneath his crisp shirt. The city sprawled beneath him, indifferent.
At 5:30 precisely, the electronic lock chimed. Roma entered. She wore a simple peach-colored salwar kameez, her dark hair straightened and pulled back in a way that was unmistakably familiar. The resemblance was the entire point of her hire; it was what he paid a premium for. She smiled, a practiced, demure curve of her lips.
“Jiju,” she said, her voice pitched softer, a studied imitation. “You called.”
The sound of the word, coming from her mouth, sent a jolt through him. It was a key turning in a forbidden lock. “Shilpa,” he answered, the name leaving his lips like a sigh of release. He didn’t move from the window.
She set her bag down, the performance beginning. “Prema didi will be waiting for you, no? You shouldn’t keep her worrying.” She poured herself a glass of the expensive white wine he kept there, moving with an approximation of cultured grace.
“She understands her husband has needs,” he said, turning finally. The game of jija-saali banter was a script they’d refined, a dark pantomime that stoked the fire before extinguishing it. “And her saali is far too tempting to ignore.”
Roma—Shilpa—sipped her wine, her eyes watching him over the rim of the glass. “You’re a bad man, jiju.”
“You knew that when you came.”
He closed the distance, the scent of her perfume—a cheaper, sharper version of jasmine—assaulting his senses. He didn’t kiss her. He simply took the glass from her hand and placed it on the table, his movements deliberate. His fingers traced the line of her jaw, then gripped her chin, tilting her face up to the grey evening light. He studied the features he paid for: the similar arch of the brow, the shape of the eyes. In the dimness, with his hunger blinding him, the forgery was enough.
He pushed her back towards the stark, modern sofa, his mouth finding her neck. There was no pretense of tenderness, only a driven, consuming intensity. His hands were rough, pulling at the delicate fabric of her kameez. She complied, whispering “jiju” into his ear, her fingers working at his belt with professional haste.
He fucked her there on the cool leather, with the city’s lights twinkling mockingly outside the glass. He smoked a cigarette during, the ash dropping onto the pristine floor, his other hand tangled in her hair. He sweated, his shirt clinging to his back. He drove into her, a punishing rhythm meant to exorcise a ghost and summon it simultaneously. He chanted the name like a profane prayer. “Shilpa. Shilpa.”
Roma, for her part, seemed to enjoy the apartment’s ambience, the expensive wine, the power she wielded in this parody. Her cries were theatrically passionate, a perfect soundtrack to his own delusion.
Afterwards, he lay beside her, the leather cold and sticky against his skin. The emptiness was immediate, a vacuum more profound than the frustration that had preceded it. He looked at the woman beside him, her makeup smudged, and saw only a flawed copy. The itch remained unscratched; it had only been aggravated.
Without a word, he stood and walked to the lavish bathroom. He turned the shower to near-scalding, scrubbing every inch of his skin until it was raw. He washed away the smell of her perfume, of sex, of transgression. He dressed again in the clothes he’d arrived in, now smelling only of soap and steam.
He returned to the living room where Roma was sipping more wine, wrapped in a sheet. “I’ll call the car for you,” he said, his voice devoid of all earlier heat. He was already slipping back into the skin of Prem, the respectable man.
An hour later, he was home. Prema was in the living room, pretending to read a magazine. The children were upstairs. He walked in, the picture of a weary executive. He placed a hand on her shoulder, bent down, and kissed her cheek. “Long day,” he offered.
She looked up, her eyes searching his freshly scrubbed face, his neatly re-knotted tie. “You’re home early.”
“I wanted to be here,” he said, the lie smooth and warm.
Later, alone in his study with a fresh drink, he picked up his phone again. This time, he called the real number. It rang four times before she answered.
“Shilpa.” He didn’t use her name often; it felt dangerous on his tongue.
A pause. He could hear her breathing. “Jiju.”
“I kept my promise,” he said, staring out at the dark garden. “I am taking care of her. She is… happy.” The word tasted like tin.
Another silence, longer this time. It stretched, filled with everything unsaid: his visit to the sterile apartment, her visit to his study, Prema’s accusations. He could almost hear the conflict crackling down the line—a volatile mix of relief, jealousy, and a dark, thrilling excitement at being the unspoken center of it all.
“Good,” she finally said, her voice a whisper. “That’s… good, jiju.”
The call ended. Prem remained at the window, the phone warm in his hand. In her modest apartment across the city, Shilpa stood in her dark kitchen, the phone pressed to her chest. A shudder ran through her—part shame, part a fierce, electric jealousy that his touch had been given to her cousin, and part a corrupt, pulsing excitement that it had been her name on his lips in the heat of his secret, stolen passion.