270 That excessive guil
On her way back to the airport, she didn't speak a word. There was a continuum of daze in which she was embedded in and there was no way back from there. Lying semi-conscious in her brother's arm, Akira was still holding on tight to her Ganesha Idol.
Her lips were moving in a silent prayer to keep him safe, while her eyes were crying the tales of sadness for he had departed from her life like an unsung hero, whose whole purpose was to give a definition and meaning to her life.
After immigration, when she went inside, the first thing that caught her attention was a Starbucks store, and the past memories came flooding in. That fateful flight journey, that spilling of coffee, that first contact when she had applied the cream on his scalded hand, that sharing of chocolates came back all haunting.
She tried to look all around, hoping against the hope to find him somewhere inside the airport, but all her search led to nothing but sheer disappointment. Her phone buzzed continuously with calls from David, Katherine, and Shawn too, but she didn't bother to pick. She was not in a state to pick any call and answer to them.
Somehow seeing her in such a state bothered Vikram a lot. It was true that he was happy internally in a way that Raymond had been removed away from his path, but the more he saw her, the more he realized that replacing him was not going to be easy.
Sitting behind her in the flight, he could clearly hear the deafening slap of pain that had been plastered on her face and directly or indirectly deep down he knew that he was the doer behind it. The more he saw her, the more his heart was laden and gripped with guilt.
"Did I overstep?"
"Did I go wrong?"
"What have I landed myself into?"
Gripping his head in his hands he went into deep thoughts. All the old memories of the past started hounding him.
He remembered the day Akira had lost her parents. She was exactly devasted today in the same way. Just that instead of leaning on to him, she was leaning on to Mike. Today she wasn't crying over his shoulder, today she wasn't expecting him to caress her back as she sobbed, today she literally wanted him out of her life, out of her sight.
The evil in him was getting defeated every passing second.
So before the flight took off, he immediately took out his phone and texted Peter,
"Make sure the sniper is paid off well. Even though he didn't do anything, no one should know that we had hired him in the first place". - [Vikram]
Then he walked back to the economy section of the flight and asked the search party which had accompanied him to stay back and search for a few days more.
The search party people started walking ahead to alight from the flight and seeing all of them walking ahead of them carrying their bags back, Mike asked,
"What happened? Did you guys hear about anything? Where are you going?"
"Oh, no no. Nothing has happened. Mr. Vikram asked us to stay back and search for a few more days. We will come back later."
Saying the crew head left with his members.
Coming back to his seat, Vikram expected her to be a bit pleased with her, probably expected her to say just thanks or just look at him. And true to his expectation, she looked up at him.
But instead of gratitude, there was anger, there was resentment and sarcastically she asked,
"What happened? Your guilt became too much for you I guess".
Visit freewe𝑏(n)ovel.co(m) for the b𝘦st novel reading experience