The Last Key

By Sowmya Ramkumar

It’s the week before New Year’s Eve and Shanaya’s boyfriend is away for an official conference. She doesn’t want to waste a chance to have a harmless fling while he is away. While looking for a date for her New Year’s party, she meets a mystery man on Tinder – a young, charming and dapper gentleman who has no hidden agendas. He just wants to show Shanaya a good time at the party... and in the bed.
Will Shanaya let her guard down and explore the heights of pleasure with this stranger? No strings attached! Or will loyalty to her boyfriend change the game of seduction upside down?
Find out what happens when a young woman decides to take control and be on top – of her life and her man – in Finding Lust On Tinder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Srishti Publishers
• Release date: Jun 8, 2017

Book preview

THE LAST KEY

SOWMYA RAMKUMAR

Srishti Publishers

& Distributors

Srishti Publishers & Distributors

Registered Office: N-16, C.R. Park New Delhi – 110 019

Corporate Office: 212A, Peacock Lane Shahpur Jat, New Delhi – 110 049 [e-mail]

First published digitally by

Srishti Publishers & Distributors in 2017

Copyright © Sowmya Ramkumar, 2017

Cover Design: Gunja Bhatt

This is a work of fiction. The characters, places, organisations and events described in this book are either a work of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to people, living or dead, places, events, communities or organisations is purely coincidental.

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the Publishers.

Dedicated to Ram and Madhu,

For all the love you guys have brought into my life.

Acknowledgements

My words would surely be an incomplete summation of my gratitude, but let this be a humble effort.

Ram and Madhu, your support means the world to me. Appa and Amma, your blessing work wonders. A huge thanks to Stuti and Arup from team Srishti Publishers for making this whole journey immensely enjoyable and fruitful.

A special thanks to Ram for this lovely title.

Prologue

Kali

There have been innumerous debates and experiments on the simple concept of who we are.

Are we just humanoids created by an alien race that were abandoned after completion of work to self-evolve and if possible survive? Or the study subjects – and looking at the womenfolk, the tastefully crafted subjects – of an ongoing experiment? Can I take the liberty to quote a very simple yet deep concept displayed by innumerable scriptures across the globe: that we are a piece of the creator, sent to evolve, enlighten and cross the endless ocean of Karma… Metaphysics? Psychology? Mind-bending? Or just dreams?

Podhighai Mountains (Extreme South of India) – 376 BC

Somewhere in the Podhigai Mountains in the Western Ghats lay Injukuzhi village, a small yet beautiful tenement of about two thousand odd people, untouched by King Pandya’s city atmosphere. Men and women possessing the strength of an elephant but the heart of gold lived in complete harmony. Their wants being just food and love; former to feed the body and latter to fill the soul.

The village was rife with the news of Bommi, a mute and deaf girl, being able to speak after getting lost while playing in the caves down the north cliff. Her parents were more than happy with the mere fact that their child was freed from her sufferings. Bommi was blabbering in joy of being able to speak or so the others thought upon hearing her account of what had happened.

The village council was set to venture into the cave that evening to find out the truth.

The glowing orange ball of fire slowly bid farewell in the west when the brave men entered the cave, aided by fire torches and weapons for safety from the unknown friend or foe.

The cave had a wide mouth which soon started to narrow down like a serpent’s body winding into narrow strips. After about ten minutes of climbing down the seemingly never-ending hallow, they reached the plains. A few could hear the ripple of water flowing. Then, there was a soft vibration, like the mumblings of an old man. But this was a place even the young men did not dare to venture. A few steps more in the direction of the sound and it transformed into a clear AUM. A few more feet and a heavenly illumination blinded their sight. Their senses started to deceive them. They saw someone looking as old as two hundred years, a pile of bones in skin that was close to the texture of an old cloth.

The old man was posed in padmasana, the sacred posture for meditation and a bright white light enveloped him in a cavern where even sunlight could not cast its arm in a thousand years. The source of the light came from the ground behind him. The men were blinded for a minute before their eyes adjusted to the other-worldly sight. This was followed by the exotic aroma of wild flowers and then the hallucinations started. They could not hear each other speak even at an arm’s length. Then came the feeling of flying on the clouds, then a bright explosion and then just damn nothing. Without any media to glorify this by means of all day flash news, the incident evaporated, but for a few folk songs to be sung for generations!

Could this be their moment of jaagruthi?

JAAGRUTHI

Which is better – a thousand years of hard work or an ounce of smart work? Leela would have sworn by the latter.

Such a traditional name for a professional assassin! She chooses a new name for every new assignment she undertakes. That is a liberty the King had given her. This time Leela, the next time Erica, and later Kiara maybe. Every name had a complete history, oh sorry her-story, backed by records from birth till date, officially verifiable and deeply placed so as to ward off any instinct driven suspicions.

She has lost count of the number of deceptions and passports she holds. But real life assassins do not wear branded clothes and shiny tops, that too with oodles of make-up. They like to be unnoticed in a noticeable way.

If you are a travel buff, during one of your much-researched sojourns, you might have wondered who inhabits these remote castles / chateau-like structures, perched atop non-reachable hillocks and may be one step further pondered on the source of income to run such megalithic structures.

She lived in one such gothic castle atop those sleepy hills in that lazy village. She was raised as a motherless daughter of the millionaire rumored to be a dethroned prince in the post-Independence India.She was home-schooled. The teachers did not teach social science and mathematics for sure. She was raised in a princely fashion and was schooled in archery, psychology and more offbeat yet precise subjects. If rumors were to be believed, even in magic. At the right age, she was inducted into the dark pages of their history. If continuous propaganda can depict a dictator as a demigod, then it could bring ultimate conviction in the girl about her fabricated life goals.She has never resented her destructive act. After finishing that, in fact, she was just thrilled by the control she had on life. That’s when her senses awakened to her passion that later became her profession. There are many secondary lanes in this society that are ever thriving and still unnoticed; she was treading in them happily.

Presently, she was admiring her naked warm self, voluptuous in the right places. A tasteful display of flesh was to lure the prey – her theory; it worked in more cases than one could think of. The seduction play was her routine work that led to control and then surfaced the best part – playing the ultimate master of the game.

The present assignment sounded crazy, but so was her life. She did hang on a