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"What did you say? Say that again...! He loves you?!"
Siddharth spoke up, looking into Oru's eyes... There was something in his gaze that sent a shiver down Oru's spine. Looking at Siddharth, Oru felt that this was precisely the calm before a storm!
"He loves me very much, big brother! Look, maybe Satwik isn't as established as Dad or you at this moment, but he will definitely make a place for himself in time! Please accept us...!"
"How much does he love you?!" Siddharth asked in a cold voice, blood rushing to his head. Every time he heard the name Satwik from Oru's mouth, it felt as though someone was pouring molten lead into his ears...!
"A lot!" Hearing Siddharth's question, Oru was taken aback. How could anyone measure love? And that too in front of someone who loved her boundlessly—how could another person's love be evaluated in comparison to his, especially when she had known that other person for only a few days? For a moment, it felt to Oru as if it wasn't Siddharth asking the question, but her own conscience! How much does Satwik love me?! Orna's eyes darted back and forth as she scrambled for an answer. Nothing came to mind, but she had to give her brother an answer! A stubborn streak had taken root in her teenage mind; she had to win this!
"He loves me a lot!"
"Is that so... Do you agree on one thing, Oru?!" Siddharth walked toward the door, turned around, and asked...
"What?!"
"That I, Mom, and Dad love you?!"
"I agree, I believe it... Even leaving Mom and Dad aside, I know very well how much you love me too!"
Siddharth felt as if his breath caught in his throat! He quickly left the room. If Siddharth stayed near Oru for even another moment, he might do something reckless!
The moment Siddharth left, tears spilled from Orna's eyes. She couldn't comprehend this dilemma; everything seemed to have changed in an instant for Oru. Her brother was becoming more and more like a stranger to her day by day!
Two days later, in the afternoon at Raju's flat...
Both of them were hunched over on the bed in Raju's room, staring intently at a laptop screen! Using Satwik's phone number retrieved from Oru's phone, Raju had uncovered quite a bit of information. Siddharth had assigned him this task! However, one thing had troubled him—even though Oru had deleted all the chat conversations with Satwik, Siddharth and Raju had managed to recover all the lost data by hiring an expert using a special AI technology. The credit for this went entirely to Raju, owing to his professional expertise!
Although Siddharth was furious in the beginning while reading those old chats, as he scrolled further back to earlier events, lines of concern deepened on his face... Most of the information Satwik had given Oru about himself through messages was fake! A spy working for Raju had been given Satwik's photo, name, and number, and was asked to fetch his details. Within a few hours, the spy had pulled up all information associated with his name. Remarkably, a few moments later, they found that the number under the name Satwik no longer existed! But what needed to be accomplished had already been done.
Satwik had a maternal cousin who studied at Oru's school—just a familiar face with whom she exchanged casual pleasantries, nothing more. This girl was also on Oru's Facebook friend list. Now, among her friend circle, this cousin's account was linked to Satwik's. When Oru's account popped up as a suggestion on Satwik's phone, the real game began. The boy sent Oru a request first; Oru ignored it for a few days. Then Satwik messaged Orna on Messenger. Obliged to respond, Oru engaged in light conversation and learned that Satwik was Arushi's middle aunt's son. To confirm, she even asked Arushi about Satwik, and Arushi said yes.
The main issue was that Oru had simply shown Satwik's picture to Arushi and considered it settled. Had she gathered more information through Arushi, she would have uncovered much more! After that, Oru started talking to him without hesitation, and then that incident happened—(meeting on Kali Puja, Satwik proposing to Oru, and everything that followed!) After that, Satwik even gave Oru a description of a house via video call from the outside and inside!
Seeing all this, Raju and Siddharth were utterly stunned. Oru was in love with this guy—who was actually a complete fraud!
"Brother, luckily we found out about them! If we were even a few days late, Oru would have been in major trouble!"
"That's what I'm seeing! Actually, it's not her fault. Tell me, how would she know that the guy is a fraud? A girl who has never gone anywhere alone except to school and tuitions—how could she be so desperate, yet sharp enough to catch a fraud's trap? Anyway, now we have to make Oru understand who she was actually dating!"
"From the details Tanishk (the spy) gave us, we already know about 80% of that guy's background! The guy's real name is Sujan Naskar, and he hails from the Sundarbans. At home, he only has his mother, a fifteen-year-old sister, and a 20-year-old brother. Both his mother and brother earn a living by catching fish in the river. That's where their ancestral home is—earlier it was a mud house, but now it's a two-room tin shelter with a porch and mud floor, keeping five or six chickens and four goats! His sister goes to school and does household chores.
Sujan is 25 years old. When he was fifteen, his father drowned in the river while fishing during the month of Baisakh. A severe storm had hit that afternoon over the river; a heavy tree branch fell onto the diving gear, causing him to drown. Though Sujan's family wasn't middle-class, they were doing well enough to afford meals and clothing back then. He was studying at a local government school that went up to the 10th grade. Struggling through, he passed his 10th-grade board exams and went to catch fish with his mother for a year, while his brother and sister stayed home with their grandmother.
Six years later, Sujan's brother passed school and joined their mother at work, while Sujan moved to the city. Supposedly, a friend of his who went to the city was making good money—that friend's home was also in the coastal region where Sujan lived. Bringing money back from the city, that friend had opened a tourist restaurant there, which ran quite well with tourist traffic throughout the year. Driven by greed, Sujan asked his friend to take him to the city too. His friend brought him to the city and groomed Sujan so well that instead of looking like a poor fisherman from the Sundarbans, Sujan looked like the son of a rich city family. After that, Sujan's job was to entrap young girls on Facebook through romantic relationships, elope with them, bring them to Kolkata, and hand them over to his friend. The more girls he brought, the more money he made."

To be continued........