Page 64 of Okay Boss
The words were not dramatic. They were flat. Certain.
Harshit leaned forward. “There is only one thing that will end this immediately. A real marriage. Legal. Registered. Publicly acknowledged.”
The word landed heavy.
Asha’s hand flew to her mouth. Suresh stared as if he had misheard.
“Marriage?”
“Yes. Not for publicity. For Divya’s protection.” Harshit’s voice was steady, measured. “We will recover from this. In a month or two, the headlines will find a new target. But we are here because we realize what this has cost your daughter. If they marry, the narrative changes overnight. The story ends because it becomes a romance, not a scandal. Your daughter becomes a Khanna. That name becomes her shield.”
Suresh’s breathing grew uneven. “And after? After the cameras move on? My daughter cannot be a temporary fix for this scandal, only to be discarded when the air clears.”
“She will not be discarded,” Harshit said firmly. “If this happens, it happens with my family’s name standing beside hers. Legally. Securely.”
“You speak of security,” Suresh’s voice rose, sharp and pained. “But you’ve spent three days telling the world she is just an assistant. That the photo was a rehearsal. If she marries him now, won’t they just call her a gold-digger who won? How does that protect her name?”
The room went deathly still.
It was the logical wall they had all been hitting.
Harshit leaned in, his gaze hardening. “Because a denial is a plea for mercy. And the world has none.”
His voice dropped to a gravelly register.
“For three days, we’ve played by their rules, and they’ve used your daughter for sport. If we keep denying, she remains a ‘situation’ to be debated. But a Khanna wife? That is a status they cannot touch.”
He paused, letting the words settle.
“We don’t tell them we lied about the rehearsal. We tell them we were protecting a private truth. We turn the scandal into a secret romance. A gold-digger ‘wins’ a prize. A wife inherits a fortress.”
Harshit’s tone sharpened with absolute certainty. “I will put the entire weight of my legal empire behind her. By tomorrow, the first person to use that word will be looking at a defamation suit that will ruin them. We aren’t just changing the story, we are ending the conversation. They don’t attack what they fear. And right now, they don’t fear an intern. They will fear a Khanna.”
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Suresh looked at Divya, but she remained frozen, eyes fixed on the floor. She didn’t offer a nod or a tear. She was simply gone, retreated somewhere unreachable.
Vikram watched her, his chest tightening. The longer they debated her fate as if she weren’t in the room, the further away she drifted.
“I’d like to talk to her,” Vikram said, cutting through the heavy air. He didn’t look at Harshit or Suresh. He looked only at Divya. “Alone.”
Suresh hesitated, protective instincts warring with exhaustion. He looked at Vikram, really looked at him, searching for the predator and finding only a man who looked ready to burn the world down to fix his own mistake.
He stood slowly, movements heavy. “The bedroom,” he muttered, gesturing. “Privacy. Talk to her there.”
???
Divya’s steps were mechanical, spine rigid. Vikram followed her into her parent's bedroom. Heavy wooden almirah, double bed with faded floral bedspread, faint scent of incense and mothballs.
The door clicked shut.
The silence was absolute.
“You can say no,” Vikram said immediately. He stood by the small dressing table, giving her the width of the room. “I’m not here to trap you. If you tell me to leave, I walk out that door right now.”
Divya finally turned, glasses catching the harsh overhead light. “It’s not practical. For either of us. You’re a star. Your career is built on being the most wanted man in the country. Marrying your assistant? It’s professional suicide.”
“Let them,” Vikram snapped, voice low and dangerous.
