She nodded her head and then walked towards the bed and he followed her to tuck her to sleep.

He spread the duvet on her and then kissed on her forehead and said,

"Sleep well" and then smiled looking into her eyes.

She pulled his hand and said,

"I am sorry. I just didn't know it was going to happen today".

"Jeez Akira, just shut up and go to sleep and don't worry about it. I will make it happen pretty soon and trust me I will make it special for you. We are made for each other and nothing can stop us from being united. Just wait till the GCG event is over and I guess by then you will be ok too".

He said and slightly touched the tip of her nose with his index finger and then left the room.

He went back to the study room and continued with his work until the wee hours of the morning. It was only around four in the morning that he decided to go back to bed to catch a few hours of sleep before getting ready for office.

He reached his bedroom and noticed her body sprawled across the bed diagonally, leaving no margin for him to sleep.

He laughed seeing her sleeping so peacefully with no care of the world. He moved close to her and gently caressed her cheeks with the back of his fingers and takes a good look of her pretty face before retiring back to the study room to sleep on the sofa.

---

The next morning a groggy Akira woke up with the sound of the doorbell and went down to open the doors.

David was outside the door with a very worried look on his face.

"Hey, David !!! All ok?"

David was a bit startled to see Akira opening the door but then he asked,

"Where is Raymond? Why he isn't picking up his phone?"

"Oh, I see. Come on in. Let me check", Akira said and quickly went to scout the study room.

Her heart pained to see him all curled up on the sofa. She moved ahead and checked his phone, but unfortunately, it had been put in silent mode and there were around seven missed calls from David.

She moved close to Raymond and gently touching his arms she tried to wake him up,

"Ray !!! Ray !!! Can you get up?"

"Umm...."

Raymond slowly opened his eyes and he found Akira leaning on him, with her hand tapping his arm and a bright smile spread on his face.

"Morning Sunshine !!!"

"Morning Ray !!!"

"David is here. I guess there is some urgent matter that he wanted to discuss with you. Your phone was on silent mode so he had to personally come over here".

"Oh, Ok. Then just tell him I will be down in a minute", Raymond said and rushed towards the bathroom.

"Ok", Akira said and went down to inform David.

A few minutes later after Raymond came down, he sat along with David and started discussing about the game launch while Akira went to the kitchen to prepare breakfast for all of them.

Exactly half an hour later, Akira had food served on the table and she then walked towards the hall to call them both for breakfast. But she halted her march when she heard Raymond say,

"At any cost, she shouldn't know. Her trust has been broken once and she cannot take it now".

"But we can use Akira as an advantage to get some information from him".

"No David, last time I kept her in the dark and it turned out really bad. This time I can not use her at any cost. If I have to deal with Vikram, I will deal with him face to face all by myself. Enough of this hide and seek game that he is playing".

"But what if he plays with Akira and extracts information from her about our new strategy?"

"I trust Akira and I think you should too. He might stoop low and use her, but I cannot do that. I cannot make her go against the only best friend that she has. If I do that then what would be the difference between him and me?"

"I understand and I respect your decision, but what do we do now?"

"I will think about it and I will handle it. But I am really thankful to you as you could pull out this massive information".

"Come let's go to the kitchen, my girl is working hard to cook something for us", Raymond said and got up from his seat.

Akira immediately ran back to the kitchen and pretended to be working on the scrambled eggs.

"Hey there !!! How is the cooking coming up?", Raymond asked looking at Akira.

"It's all done", saying that Akira switched off the stove and took the scrambled eggs from the pan and placed it on the dining table.

"Basic veg sandwich with some bacon and scrambled eggs and some cold pressed guava juice. Nothing fancy though", Akira said and smiled looking at both of them.

"Well, we just need food and this looks like quite a spread", said David and started gorging on the sandwiches made by her.

Akira smiled half-heartedly and served some more scrambled eggs on Raymon's plate.

"Are you ok? You look so pale !!!", Raymond said and placed the back of his palm on her temple to check her temperature.

"I am all fine Ray !!! It's all normal", Akira said and rolled her eyes.

"Ok, Ok my bad", Raymond said and resumed eating.

Once they were completely engrossed in eating the breakfast, she excused herself and went back to Raymond's bedroom.

Her hands were still shivering as she was trying to recuperate from what she had heard just now. She couldn't believe that Vikram was going to ditch her not once but twice this time.

All her faith, all her trust was broken.

Shattered into pieces.

She sat down leaning on the wall, not because she wanted to collect those pieces but because she wanted to throw them as far away from her life as possible now.