Chapter 112 - 111

Shreya was working long after Charan had actually finished drying her hair. Charan did not disturb her. Instead, he went and looked around her room. There was a tinch of childishness in this room that her room in her apartment lacked. She had a shelf full of some toys neatly arranged in one corner and some oddly shaped pebbles were piled up in a tub for some reason. Charan figured she probably collected them when she was very young.

And when he looked at the books… he could see a wide array of comics at first and then some crime fiction. But all that went away after two shelves… the rest was mostly business and management books. On the topmost shelf, there was an array of diaries and at a corner a big ass book. Charan got curious and pulled out the big book.

When he flipped it open, he saw that it was a scrapbook of photos. It had photos from when she was a child to her graduation. Charan sat on the chair and started looking at them carefully.

As you could expect, Shreya was adorable as a kid. There wasn't a single picture of her actually crying anywhere in the book. The only place where he saw tears was when she was getting her ears pierced. All the rest, she had a big bright smile showing all her teeth.

And just like Shryea said, she seemed to have had a very normal childhood in spite of who her parents were. There were pictures of them going to parks, picnic, and amus.e.m.e.nt parks. There were pictures of her dad teaching her to ride a bike and car and her mum helping her with her homework. But he could clearly see that she was a daddy's girl through and through. Adithya probably indulged her to no end. Because he couldn't see a single picture of them together without Shreya showing all of her teeth so very proudly.

Charan was suddenly very envious of Adithya… He could clearly see that Shreya adored Adithya beyond any reason or whim.

"Done," Shreya exclaimed and kept down her tablet and phone. Only then did she look back at Charan, "What are you doing??" She couldn't see what he was holding in his hands from her position. The desk disrupted her line of sight.

Charan just smiled at her and gestured her to come to him. "Come here.."

Shreya walked to him… then only she saw the album in her hands. Her face slightly paled. She hadn't touched them in a long long time now.

Charan sensed the change in her and closed them instantly and apologized, "Sorry, I should have asked…"

Shreya shook her head and came to sit on his laps. She then reached for the album herself with a slightly shaky hand. "I just… I haven't opened this in such a long time actually."

Charan stayed quiet and kept caressing her head soothingly as she flipped through the album… seeing one picture at a time very carefully. Her lips slightly twitched when she saw the pictures of her and her dad making all sorts of ugly faces. Slowly she started talking… she told the story behind the pictures as far as she could remember.

When she reached the last picture… she went very quiet. She stopped talking. She just closed the album and curled up into a ball against him. But Charan could clearly guess without her having to tell him anything.

It was probably one of the last pictures she ever took with her parents. It was a picture taken outside this very same manor. Shreya stood there in front of a bike with a backpack and both her arms were slung over the shoulders of her mum and dad standing on either side of her. It is most probably the picture she took just before leaving for her two-year-long trip.

"You were a daddy's girl, weren't you??" Charan asked in the softest of voice.

Shreya's lips twitched all over again remembering her dad.

"Yup… when we were together, we drove my mum crazy…"

"I can imagine," Charan said and smiled slightly. He could relate to her mum very clearly. When Shreya and Akira got together, they sure drove him crazy.

After that, a long stretch of silence prevailed. Shreya snuggled in and stayed there without moving while Charan kept running his hands over her head and any place he could reach very gently comforting her.

"I'm sorry about before…" Charan, at last, said breaking the silence.

"About what??" Shreya asked confused.

"It is not that I am trying to hide anything from you Shreya… I just… I don't know myself what is it. When I see this room and when I see this house… I clearly see how different we are… we are practically worlds apart… and that… that scares me to no end. I am struggling to deal with it… I keep thinking of all sorts of worst-case scenarios and how I have no means to protect myself or Akira… and frankly, I am clueless as to how to deal with it. I am way out of my element here and it's terrifying." Charan confessed in a serious tone and then waited for her to respond.

Shreya listened carefully took a minute to think about it first. She started talking only after thinking about it long and hard and she wanted it to be face to face. So she pulled away and sat on the desk facing Charan.

Charan's heart fell slightly when she pulled away. He thought he messed up somehow. But he still kept quiet and listened.

Shreya looked straight into his eyes as she spoke, "Charan, it is a fact that we are worlds apart. We are different people. And like you said, I AM filthy rich. I can't do anything to change that. And frankly, this room, this house or my cars or the apartment… they are not even 0.1% if what I have or what I can do. You can give me a photo of any random person within this country and I can track him down in a matter of an hour. One hour, I will be able to tell you where he is. That's the kinda power I have within this country. And it did not come by just like that. I worked long and hard for it. But more than that it is my father's legacy. I am not going to let it go to waste at any cost."