Love Happens With A Twist

6

Mumbai

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"You are the best, of the best, because only you could convince Dad to leave everything and come here tonight to meet him." Poonam gave Lakshmi a tight and affectionate hug while she giggled with joy to see her so excited.

"I had to. I can never let you down."

"Let's prepare. What will we serve him? Should we order from the best restaurant in town? Or should the chefs cook? I also have to get ready." She drew back and started to panic about the kind of dress she was going to wear. "Father is coming to this house after many years. He will probably stay for the night, so we have to"

"Calm down. His room will be cleaned. I've ordered the food already. Just worry about what you will wear, okay?"

"Of course. Also ensure the house blooms with fragrance that can be sensed from all over the neighbourhood. I will go and search for a dress."

"Surely."

She went back to her room and emptied her huge wardrobe on her bed. She was searching for an appropriate dress to wear for the night, but the problem was that she doesn't like traditional wear; so she doesn't own any sarees.

The man watching her from his TV pulled out his phone to send her a sweet message after their bittersweet encounter, because he thought what good it would be to let her night go smoothly like she desired when she messed it up a long time ago.

Her phone beeped with a message; however, she cared less about attending to it. It was on the dresser table, and all she cared about at the moment was what kind of dress she would wear that would make her look proper, as all her dresses were either short or slightly below her knees. She has no long dresses.

He gave her an interval of two minutes to check the important message he sent her, but looking at her and what she was busy with, it seemed she forgot her phone beeped a while ago. He dialled the number, and it started ringing. That got her attention, as she thought it could be her father or Rudra calling her. She stood up and walked slowly before the dresser table to pick it up. An unsaved number was calling her, and the first person that crossed her mind about who it may be was Shraddha because she also hadn't saved her number yet.

"Hello!" she spoke. When the call cut with no one uttering anything, she shrugged with a hiss and was about to put it down until her finger, by mistake, swiped the message on the screen that said,

"If you introduce that man to your father today, I will send the corps this video." Her eyes enlarged with horror at the unbelievable video of herself playing on her phone. Indeed, it was her, and it made her remember when she did it all, but she voiced her thought,

"This is artificial intelligence. There's no way anyone will believe this." She smiled, not bothered, because technology has advanced so much that people can't differentiate real from fake and fake from real. She scrolled down to the last message, which was a report of the video conducted by all AI detectors that affirmed the video was real and wasn't created by software; instead, all people were real.

"Mother!" she panicked and yelled her name. Lakshmi was supervising the workers that were getting the living room ready while she was eating some pear when she heard Poonam's roaring scream. She thought something bad might have happened in her room, and her heart skipped a beat throughtout the moment she got up and ran to the room.

"They will execute me in jail. It's over." She was crying when she entered while Lakshmi looked at her with a clueless face until she showed her the phone playing the video.

"Who is the blackmailer?" she yelled on the verge of losing her mind, and her phone again rang from the same unknown number. She screamed loudly to silence it.