Chapter Twelve Rajneet

MONDAY

AJAY:We never talked about business.

RAJ:That’s because you were either feeding me or screwing me.

AJAY:You can’t blame me for that. You’re irresistible.

AJAY:Tomorrow night?

RAJ:Late meeting. Wednesday is good.

AJAY:Have a conflict. I’m dealing with our Europe properties. It’ll go on forever. Thursday after eight?

RAJ:I’ll get back to you.

TUESDAY

RAJ:Thursday is a no-go.

AJAY:I can clear my schedule for Friday?

RAJ:No, I have an off-site.

AJAY:This weekend?

RAJ:... Maybe.

AJAY:What? What is it?

RAJ:I’m supposed to go look at a puppy on Saturday.

AJAY:At the shelter you volunteer at? Is this the puppy that the woman who you work with called about?

RAJ:Yup. Apparently said puppy has had shots, has been spayed, and is ready for visitors.

AJAY:Then let’s go see it. Tell me what time you want to go, and I’ll clear my schedule.

RAJ:You want to come with me?

AJAY:Yes.

If someone had told Raj three months ago that she was going to meet Ajay Singh, go toe-to-toe with him after her husband went to work with Bharat, Inc.’s biggest competitor, then start an affair with the man, she would’ve laughed. But now, after their first time in the Fire Lounge, one date, and a few hours in her bed, she was a believer.

Ajay clasped her hand in his as they walked toward the shelter. The feeling was new, but not wholly unexpected. Ajay liked holding her and touching her in public despite their promise to remain discrete.

She was coming to enjoy the feeling.

“Were you ever allowed to have a dog growing up?” Raj asked.

“Nope,” Ajay replied. “My parents were very old school. They believed that dogs belong outside. They shouldn’t be trapped. Even though, I bet if they had a dog now, it would be treated like royalty.”

“We had dogs on the farm, but they were never allowed inside,” she said as she led Ajay to the front of the Midtown dog shelter. “If it wasn’t for Robert’s grandmother, I wouldn’t have known how great dogs are as companions instead of just farm animals.”

“Are you excited?” he asked, a tinge of amusement in his voice.

She couldn’t help but grin up at him. “More than ever.”

Raj pulled open the double doors of reinforced steel and checked in at the front desk before entering the adoption room where dog pens lined the walls. The puppy room was to the left and the cats were on the other side of the floor. The familiar smells of animals and cleaning agents filled her nostrils.

The bigger dogs began barking from their pens. Some of them circled in front of the doors, and others stood on their hind legs to get her attention.

“We’re supposed to wait here for Jill,” she said.

“That’s the woman who runs the shelter?”

“That she is.” Raj pulled away from Ajay’s side and rushed toward the larger dogs, her heart hurting as it did every time she saw them. “I know, babies. I wish I could take you all but you’re way too big for me.”

“You would adopt them if you could, wouldn’t you?” Ajay asked.

Raj glanced at him over her shoulder as she crouched down in front of a senior poodle mix. “Of course.”

She went down the row and petted each dog, aware that Ajay followed close behind, standing next to her sometimes as if he was ready to step between her and the pen. She knew very well that he wanted to make sure she didn’t get bitten but was trying to hide his intentions by pretending to be supportive instead. Men were so easy to read sometimes.

“Gen One is your next move,” he said, breaking their silence. “But what about opening up your own foundation?”

Raj let Ajay help her get to her feet. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, Gen One has a very narrow focus. With your own foundation, you could do things like this.” He motioned to the rows of shelter animals waiting for new homes. “Soni, you love being here,” he said in Punjabi. “Your face is glowing. Wouldn’t you want to help out just as much with the animal shelters you’re involved in?”

“Sure, but I can still do that and also work for Gen One.”

“But not with as much attention and focus as you’d be able to on your own, right?”

“That’s true.” She circled until they stood in front of the door they’d entered from. “What brought this on?”

Ajay tucked his hands into his jeans pockets. “I see you like this, and then I think about how you were at the Gen One gala. I can’t help but think this is where you belong, not at a conservative organization.”

She felt her heart clutch. He saw so much. Or maybe she let him see a part of her that she should be more careful with. It was too fast, too soon for her to be feeling so attached to Ajay Singh. She turned her back on him and approached one of the shepherds on the far wall who was dancing on her hind legs, begging for attention.

“Gen One is my gateway into the work that I like to do.”

“It’s a worthy cause, no argument. But are you sure it’s a gateway or a step farther from your goal? Even if you work for another company, heading up a large private foundation, you could do this kind of work. Bharat, for example, has a foundation that my mother directs. She recommends causes and we just supply the money.”

Raj gave him a rueful smile. “Well, I’m not going to do any philanthropic work if I can’t sell my company. You still haven’t given me a decision.”

“Fine,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender. “I know avoidance when I hear it. I’ll let it go.”

“Thank you.”

“As for buying you out, I still haven’t connected with my brothers and father. It’ll be a few more days before I can get you an answer.”

“Good. My employees are on edge because the office gossip mill is buzzing with the rumor that I’m selling. Then there is Kia, who isn’t helping. She’s already acting like the outgoing CEO of the foundation.”

Before Ajay could respond, a woman wearing a lanyard and a utility belt, and holding dog leashes, stepped out of the puppy room. Her eyes lit up when she saw Raj.

“Why, hello there, stranger!” she said with her arms stretched wide.

Raj wrapped her arms around Jill for a fierce hug. Jill was one of the few women she really enjoying being around. She had dedicated her life to working in animal shelters across New York and was a genuinely warm and caring human. In Raj’s eyes, that classified Jill as a modern-day saint.

“I got your message about coming after the fifteenth,” Raj said. “I’m here and I brought my... friend. This is Ajay Singh.”

Ajay held out a hand for Jill to shake. His gaze turned razor sharp. “It’s boyfriend, but the word is still hard for Raj to say since she’s in the process of finalizing her divorce. She’s getting used to it.”

“What happened to discrete?” Raj said in Punjabi.

Ajay shrugged, doing a poor job at hiding his smile.

“Oh god, Raj,” Jill said, her hand covering her mouth. “I figured when your assistant called me and said that you were seriously interested in coming in to see the dog I thought was for you, it was because your husband was going to take allergy shots or something, not because you’re getting a divorce.”

“It’s fine,” Raj replied. She shot Ajay a dirty look. “It was time. And I’m glad, honestly, that it worked out the way it did, because you seemed pretty confident this puppy was for me.”

Jill nodded, and motioned for them to come with her. “I know that we’ve always been on the lookout, uh, former husband’s allergies aside, but nothing really fit in terms of what you were looking for despite the thousands of dogs that have come through since you started working with us. I can see now that it wasn’t meant to be. The timing wasn’t right. The stars may have aligned finally.”

“What makes you think so?” Raj said. Her heart began pounding. She’d wanted this for so long that she’d hate it if Jill was wrong about this dog.

“I’ve been doing this for a while,” Jill said. “I have instincts.”

“Then I trust them completely.”

Ajay chuckled behind her.

“What?” she asked before entering the puppy room. “What’s so funny?”

He grinned at her, his broad shoulders shrugging. “I just wonder what your employees and colleagues would say if they saw you like this.”

“They’d think I’m about to get a puppy,” she responded.

“No, they’d think you’re soft. And sweet.”

Raj glared at him in response before she followed Jill through a door that had a stop sign and the words Close doors behind you at all times printed on it. They entered the narrow room with a row of small pens lining each wall. Blankets covered the tops of the pens, and the sounds of mewing and high-pitched barks echoed around them.

“We got a few transfers from a kill shelter down south,” Jill said softly. “I saw Khunda’s picture and didn’t even wait to call you.”

“Khunda?” Raj said, stunned. “How do you spell it?”

Jill showed Raj the card with the spelling.

Raj looked up at Ajay. “This is a Punjabi word, except it wouldn’t be pronounced khun-dah, but khund. It means sugar. Who named her? Usually the names are something ridiculous like Sunny or Tuxedo.”

“No idea, but I think if her name is a word in your language, a sweet one at that, it’s another sign.” Jill opened the last pen on the bottom right. She reached inside and pulled out the tiniest Short-hair Chihuahua that Raj had ever seen. The puppy had a long snout, unlike the tiny pointed nose she’d seen on most Chihuahuas. Her coat was pure white except for the large tan ears that were almost the size of her head. Her entire body fit on the palms of Jill’s hands.

“Khunda, meet Raj,” Jill said. “Raj, meet Khunda. She’s about thirteen weeks.”

The puppy was shaking hard in fear. Her tail was tucked tightly between her legs, even though Jill was cradling her as gently as she could. “She’s very submissive and needs a lot of love and affection. You can give that to her.”

Raj put out a hand for Khunda to smell, and when a tiny pink tongue peeked out to lick at her finger, she gently took the puppy in her hands. The puppy barely weighed three pounds, Raj thought, as she tucked the quivering bundle into the cradle of her arms.

Khunda’s shaking slowed, and she buried her little tiny head into the crook of Raj’s elbow. She felt the tiny body expand with each breath, and then gently relax with release.

In that one instant, she knew that this puppy was hers. Raj could feel the tears well in her eyes. “I finally found you,” she whispered. “You need me, and I need you.”

“Oh, baby,” Ajay said softly behind her. “She’s perfect.”

He looked at Raj with such intensity that she had to turn away. She didn’t know what he saw in her at that moment, but she didn’t really care, either. She was holding her new family member. Khunda was for her.

Raj stroked one tiny ear and cleared her throat. “Jill, what do I need to do to bring her home?”

Jill clasped her hands in front of her chest and bounced on her toes. “Well, we have to do a final checkup. Then there is an interview, application, and reference check. However, since you’re a long-time donor, we can fast-track that for you. You may be able to have her as early as next week.”

It seemed way too long to leave her dog at the shelter, but she knew that the process had to be followed. “I just want to cuddle a little longer,” she whispered. “And then we’ll get started.”

It took ten more minutes before she was able to give Khunda back to Jill. The puppy had fallen asleep in her arms, and Raj didn’t want to let her go. After one last, longing look at the puppy in her pen, she went into Jill’s office with Ajay and filled out the required paperwork. Another fifteen minutes later, they were standing outside on the sidewalk.

“Congratulations,” Ajay said, dropping a soft kiss on her upturned mouth. “You are going to be a dog mom. After seeing you in there, Raj... I know Khunda is right for you.”

“Thanks for coming with me,” Raj said. She couldn’t have been more surprised at how much it meant to her that Ajay was there to share her first moments with Khunda.

“I wouldn’t have had it any other way,” Ajay said, stroking a finger down her cheek. “It was... enlightening. Want to go to lunch to celebrate?”

Raj felt her phone buzz in her purse and pulled it from her crossbody.

The name Roshan flashed on the screen.

“I need to take this,” she said. “One second.” She moved farther down the sidewalk before she answered.

“Roshan.”

“Raj. It’s good to hear your voice.”

“You, too, traitor,” she said with humor. She looked up at Ajay who was busy checking his own phone a few feet away.

Would he know the name of Raj’s former employee that worked on his securities team? More importantly, did Ajay realize the magnitude of skill he now possessed. Roshan had been one of her top people. He’d also been the first to jump at the offer for more money. “Are you looking for another offer?”

Instead of taking the bait and teasing her back like the old friends they used to be, Roshan’s tone cut through her expectations of small talk.

“I found something at Bharat. I was going to call Sri first, but Raj, I don’t trust him.”

Alarm bells flashed in her mind. “Why is that?”

“He’s not very... transparent with the information he finds. I’ll have to tell him eventually, but I figured that you might have some insight.”

Raj stepped out of the way of moving pedestrians and leaned against the side of a building. “Tell me,” she said.

“Sahar Ali Khan wasn’t the mole.”

“Wait, what?”

Roshan let out a deep breath that rushed through the phone like a wind tunnel. “Bharat had us continue to look into Sahar, her whereabouts, any information that may have been leaked, even after she was terminated from the company.”

“She’s ghosted.”

“Completely,” Roshan confirmed. “She’s not working at WTA like we expected. Her condo went up for sale days after her termination and sold pretty fast. Real estate is hard to find in the Valley, so it makes sense. All of her things were put into a storage container, and her mail was forwarded to her mother’s house in Peoria, Illinois.”

“Roshan, that doesn’t mean she wasn’t responsible.”

“No, and Sri knows that, so we kept looking. This morning, something came up while I was putting in a few extra hours. Are you ready for it?”

Raj glanced over at Ajay. “Yes.”

“The so-called relative at WTA? He doesn’t exist. Let’s just say that if we didn’t have Bharat’s resources, I would’ve never found out that the employee ID for this relative is a fake. You, your team, everyone was duped.”

“Oh no,” Raj said, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“That’s not all. The relocation software that WTA wants is all housed in a depository. Only Sahar and one other person had access to all of the depository. We thought Sahar was downloading the source code for the software. I went back and checked the history, and her key was used to access the depository and download all the source code twenty-four hours after she was walked off the premises. Raj, she couldn’t have gotten back into the depository if she tried. It had to be someone else.”

“Shit.”

Roshan laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say ‘shit’ with so much class before.”

“It’s a gift. Roshan, someone else got into Bharat’s servers. I’m pissed that my consultants fell for WTA’s trap, but I’ll deal with that later. Right now, we have to tell the Singhs.”

“I’ll call Sri and ask for a meeting.”

“Let me talk to Ajay first,” Raj said. “I’m the one who fed them information through Mina, and I had you looking under my direction. I should be the one to come clean with the news first. I’m responsible.”

“Responsible for what?”

Ajay’s voice had Raj turning around to see him standing next to her. “Raj?”

“Hold on,” she responded. “Roshan? Stay available. I’m going to see if I can address this with all the Singhs today.”

“Roger that. Text me when it’s time to loop in Sri.”

“Will do. And thanks. For trusting me and calling first.”

“Hey, it’s the least I could do. You hired me when no one else would.”

She hung up and looked over at Ajay. If it had been any other man, she would’ve told him to mind his own business. But this was Ajay, and his company, his family, were everything to him. More importantly, she couldn’t hide the truth from him. She’d committed to honesty when they started... whatever it was that was growing between them.

“Ajay, that was Roshan Patel.”

The glint in his eyes sharpened. “New employee. Reports to Sri. Came from RKH Collective but now works for me. Why is he calling you?”

“A sense of loyalty. And he doesn’t trust Sri.”

“Dammit, Raj, you should’ve called me over before he even opened his mouth. It’s a violation of his privacy contract to share any information with you and grounds for termination.”

“Good,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest, facing his growing anger like an Olympian. “Fire him and I’ll take him back. Ajay, you need to realize that two people now are telling you that your head of security, Sri, is useless. One of those people is your girlfriend who owns a security company.”

Ajay’s lips thinned. “He’s my responsibility, not yours. You’ve made your feelings clear.”

Ajay had so much to learn, starting with when to let go of the deadweight. His father must’ve protected Sri or something for Ajay to act this way.

“Look, are you going to listen to what I’m about to tell you or not?”

He nodded, his body tense with anger.

“The information my company found for Bharat, Inc. was a set up. We were fed false information. Sahar Ali Khan isn’t your mole.”

Ajay hesitated. “Roshan said this?”

“Yes. He and the rest of Sri’s team know that Sahar hasn’t been found yet, nor has she been in contact with WTA.”

Ajay looked over his shoulder, and then back at Raj. “My cousin told me. Apparently, Sahar disappeared.”

“It gets worse. Roshan was reviewing Sahar’s access history, and he found that her key was used to download data twenty-four hours after she was fired.”

Ajay’s face turned thunderous. “Motherfucker.”

Raj nodded, almost expecting Ajay to throw a punch. She wanted to do some damage, herself.

“Roshan said that he found the information after doing a deep dive in data that we didn’t have access to as consultants. Even then, I’m sorry that I had any part in this.”

He paced, running his fingers through his hair and messing up his perfectly combed style. “My father and brothers have to know. We have to triage.”

“My advice is to keep it from Sri. I mean it, Ajay.”

He stared at her with that piercing intensity she first saw at the Gen One gala. “Fine,” he finally said. “Let’s go. We have about an hour’s drive.”

“Excuse me? Where are we going that’s an hour away?”

Ajay ushered her forward with a firm hand on her back as he led her in the direction of his car. “We have to get to the Bharat compound in New Jersey. This news is better in person.”

Raj dug in her heels until Ajay stopped and faced her. “I am not going to your family compound.” A flutter of nerves and panic swarmed her belly. His parents lived there. Specifically, his mother.

“Roshan called you. You’ve been involved from the beginning. Also, I could use your insight. Come on.”

“Ajay, wait,” she said before he could start walking. She motioned to her cropped jeans, her sandals, and her halter blouse. “It’s not Punjabi-parent appropriate.”

She could see the distraction in his eyes and that he didn’t even bother assessing her clothes. “What, do you think my parents care if you show up in jeans? They’re not going to expect you to wear a damn Patiala salwar with a bindi and paranda in your hair.”

She crossed her arms.

“Raj, tusi mainu marana ja rahe ho. Fine. We have to get going now, then. Your place is out of the way, and I have to let Hem and Zail know we’re having a family meeting.”

“I don’t have to be at a family meeting,” she said, the panic in her stomach growing stronger. “Just drop me off. Call me if you need me.”

Ajay pressed a hard, firm kiss against her mouth. “I think we both are going to come to the same conclusion sooner or later.”

“What conclusion?”

“I’m going to always need you. Now come on. We’ll talk on the way.”