BB appraised the women. After all that had transpired, she couldn’t believe she had the ability to hope, but there it was, beating like a wing behind her chest. Let this work, she begged all available gods. Let us get out of this. The tic under BB’s eye throbbed as he weighed his anger and pride against his neck. “How do I know all four of you can get a story straight with the police?”
Farah said, “We’ve had plenty of practice.”
BB said, “If you halkat randis fuck this up and that Sinha bitch comes to my house, I will find you. And I’ll bring better goons than him.” He pointed to Ramesh.
Since she knew in her gut that there were likely no cops en route, Geeta’s calm was real when she said: “Then we’re very motivated to not fuck it up, aren’t we?”
Saloni lowered her eyes with calculated shyness, her voice very quiet as she said, “You have all the power here, Bada-Bhai. Just say the word and we’ll obey.”
BB did not look happy, but he gave a terse nod. “Help me find the damn bullet and we have a deal.”
Ramesh slapped the ground. He hissed like a spurned goose, “You can act all high and mighty with your bitch friends around, Geeta, but the minute they leave, I’ll make you pay for this.”
Geeta finally looked down at his pathetic form. “Does your thick head really not understand, Ramesh? I will never, ever live with you again. You will never, ever steal from me again. I’d say I’d kill myself before letting it happen, but that’d be a lie. I’ll see you dead first. Do you understand? If you stay in this village, I will make sure you die.”
Khushi nodded. “We all will.”
“We’re happy to be accessories. Like jewelry, but way more dangerous,” Saloni said, her lips peeling back in a feral grin. She grabbed Geeta’s broom.
“Is that supposed to scare me?” Ramesh was propped up in a corner, his leg extended. Sweat stippled his forehead as he gripped his knife tighter.
“Yes,” Farah said encouragingly, as though he were a student who’d finally recited the correct answer.
“BB, give me the gun,” he snarled. But BB was across the room near Geeta, bent at the waist as he searched.
“I should mention there’s more of us,” Saloni said casually, sweeping the floor for the bullet. “Preity and Priya will be happy to help.”
“The twins?”
“Who do you think wanted Darshan dead?”
“O Ram,” BB muttered as he looked. “No man is safe in this village.”
“You’re all insane.” Ramesh studied Geeta, hunting for a weakness to rip wider. She kept her face placid.
“Hardly,” Farah said, kneeling to check under Geeta’s cot. “We never killed anyone who didn’t deserve it.”
“Why did they deserve it?” Ramesh demanded, the jut of his chin belligerent. “Just because you thought so?”
“They were molesting children,” Khushi said. “They deserved far worse than death.”
Ramesh quieted. “Still?”
“You knew?” Geeta blinked, stunned. Her ears roared. “And you never said anything?”
Ramesh tried to shrug. “I mean, yeah, it’s kinda fucked up, they’re little girls—but what, I’m gonna tattle on my friends? No way. There’s a code to these things you’ll never understand. Besides, it’s not like I touch little girls.”
“So you’re not a pervert, just a coward?”
Ramesh’s face twitched in rage at the insult and he launched himself off the wall toward her, knife poised.
When Geeta pulled the gun from BB’s waistband and shot Ramesh in the face, she was not reacting impulsively. Later, when the women would tell the twins the story, they’d fill in what they assumed: Geeta’s instincts overcame her. She would not correct them, she would not try to explain how in that moment time was generously slow, allowing the far-reaching dendrites of her mind to leap several places as she first squeezed the trigger and then squeezed harder when she met resistance. She thought of the hanging tree on the village’s edge, those young girls strange fruit. She thought of Darshan’s hands on her, Ramesh’s hands on her. She thought of entitlement and vulnerability, shame and lechery, justice and inequity, and she thought of how only half of these were available to her gender. She thought of how much she hated male cowardice and the way they all protected each other and got away with it every time. So, no, then. Geeta did not react.
She decided.
Ramesh’s head jerked to the side as though he’d been slapped. The sound cracked through the room and ricocheted, vibrating off the walls and through their bodies. After a suspended moment, Ramesh slumped to the floor.
“Oh my God! Geeta!”
BB’s jaw hung loose. “What the fuck!”
Geeta offered his gun back. He warded her off.
“Oh no. I am done with this fuckery. I’m outta here.”
“I mean, you did shoot him first,” Farah pointed out.
“By accident. She did it on purpose! Bitch is already a churel!”
Ramesh lay supine, legs splayed out, head turned away from them. Blood spread around his head in a dark corona. It would be, Geeta knew, a bear to clean.
“Is he, like, dead?” Farah asked, looking to Khushi.
“We should check,” Khushi agreed, looking to Geeta.
Geeta looked to Saloni, who conceded with a growl. As she squatted near Ramesh, her fingers on his neck, she muttered, “I don’t like how this is just my job by default now. His pulse is slow but, yeah, he’s still alive.”
A mixture of relief and disappointment extinguished Geeta’s adrenaline. She felt exhausted as Saloni continued, “God, Geeta, you, like, blew his jaw off. Well, not off-off. It’s just…hanging there.”
“Mandibular fracture?” Farah asked with mild interest.
“Yeah,” Saloni said. “He won’t be talking anytime soon.”
“C.I.D.?” BB guessed and the women nodded. “I should really start watching that show.” He checked his watch. “Okay. Fuck the bullet, keep the gun. No way I’m getting caught in this mess.”
“Not so fast,” Geeta said, the revolver warm in her hand. She was willing to push her luck if it meant freedom from Ramesh. “The price for our silence just went up.”
He eyed her. “Are you seriously stupid enough to keep threatening me?”
“That’s blackmail actually,” Farah said.
“Extortion,” Saloni corrected. “I think.”
“You,” Geeta said carefully, “are a businessman. We are businesswomen. I think we can come to an arrangement that satisfies everyone.” She looked at Ramesh’s body. “And screws him.”
“Why should I bother?” He looked at the gun, however, and stayed.
“Because we can help you finally get that don reputation you want so much. We won’t tell the cops anything, but you can take full credit for shooting him. Twice. People won’t mess with Bada-Bhai then.”
BB rubbed his jaw. “That, I like. But I could just tell people that anyway. I’m a man, who’s gonna believe a loan group of women?”