Too Late For Atonement – Chapter – 17

 The Pen Warriors

We are now on Round Two. Read all the previous chapters here and the Chapter 16 here.

Too Late For Atonement – Chapter 17

Jennifer left with her father’s personal staff in the car.

“Would you like to take rest at the Guest House Miss. Jennifer?” his secretary asked.

“No, I would like to be in Dad’s cabin for a while. Take me there.”

 She noticed that it was drizzling. In the dark of nights, as she looks through the window, she realizes that she was now all alone- with nobody to take care of her and nothing to look forward to. Tears well up in her eyes and she opens her backpack to take out the diary. She glances at the photograph and reads those words in the diary again….those words which turned her life upside down….

“She is beautiful, adorns the looks of her mother. But she has my black eyes that shone brightly when I took her in my hands. I still remember two years back when I met her mother for the first time. She looked same today. I had fallen for her the moment I had seen her. I know I shouldn’t have but then her beauty was irresistible. And then the day she told me that she decided to have our baby, I almost drank myself to death. But today seeing the little one I lost my heart again. I can’t commit to her even now. I have a reputation here. I should break all the ties with her and leave no clue for anyone to discover. Yes, that’s the only solution to my mistake. For heart is a fool but mind isn’t.”

His black eyes? Took her in his hands? Irresistible? And Reputation? So, Mom and I were only his Reputation?

Her line of thoughts was interrupted when the secretary announced her of their arrival at office. She was escorted to her Dad’s cabin. She opened the door and a gush of cold air embraced her with fragrance of the room freshener. It almost smelled like her father. She dismissed that meager thought. I know what has to be done.

 She went to the table and put herself on the soft black leather chair. Her eyes were searching the room as if the answers and the hidden secrets were engraved in a pattern. A giant 54”LED was dominating at the center wall. The table was simple with his work pad in front and all the stationary laid out well in a pen-stand. There were still files in pending, waiting for action.

 The back wall was decorated with a number of mementos received by her dad over a period of time. His momentous journey could be easily understood by the bagful of awards he received in the corporate world. The visitor’s lounge had a center table with magazines well laid out and an ashtray. The coffee machine would have been his companion throughout the night keeping his head working. Next to her were two desktops and a closed MacBook.

 She glanced through the paper files, opened the table drawers searching for the wanted. She didn’t find anything that caught her eye, but the MacBook! Ever since she started knowing her father, she had never seen the MacBook and never seen him working in it. That was a surprise, but not as surprising as the diary. For a second, she was confused on what to do. But the desire to unleash the secrets helped her to push ahead leading the way to her search.

She powered on the stylish sleek white MacBook.

PASSWORD!!!

What can it be? Name of someone dear in his life or some legendary hero? All sort of possibilities flashed through her mind leading her to the likely password that could crack the Macbook. Dad never used to call Mom- Ann Mary, rather he used to call her Sherly…. First try.

Sherly..

Username/ Password incorrect

Not Mom? What else?Dad always had this habit of starting a new project by naming it close to the Lord. She began to type quickly….

New Beginning

Username/ Password incorrect

New Dawn

Username/ Password incorrect

What the…..!!!! She swore. It is tiring. But no, I still can’t lose hope. She walks to the coffee machine. Maybe, I should have a cup of coffee. She sat down at the visitor lounge trying to think hard all the while. What could the password be? And then it dawned on her. The photograph from the diary! Yes, this is it. Those three words on the back side of the photograph.

She ran to the table and typed frantically.

MeetHerOnce

Welcome Mr Joseph…..!!!

 Jennifer started realizing that she did not even know half of what her father was. As she sat flabbergasted staring at his laptop screen, she made up her mind to browse through his files. There were many protected files.

 She tried opening them with the password. No, Not Correct! I will have to get back to this later.

She could connect the Macbook to internet via WIFI and could extract the browsing histories. His keenness for certain posts on some Cyrus Daruwala’s blog raised her eyebrows.

 A Law student| Blogger| Reader| Loves to travel |Loves to explore secrets…

What is it that attracted Dad?? It kept bothering her mind. Her problems were on the rise. Jennifer could not overlook the possibility of many links being mere business associates in her father’s Macbook. She was not in a state of mind to sit and read a blog at this point. Out of sheer curiosity, she opened a random post that had received many comments and likes.

 The blog post talked about a gentleman named Aryan Ahuja. Cyrus had casually met him once but at that time he wasn’t aware that Aryan was a hacker. Cyrus had described how he was startled to discover Aryan was the same hacker who had provided the Mumbai Police tips about a major scam involving many influential and celebrated people in the business and political world.

 There was a scanned picture of a newspaper cutting pasted in the blog that talked about the same story. Aryan Ahuja had become an instant hero. The post didn’t interest Jennifer much but what she didn’t miss noticing was the highlighted name Aryan Ahuja in this bookmarked blogpost.

 Jennifer made a mental note to do more research on this at a later date and slammed the Macbook shut.

“Me and my team are participating in ‘Game Of Blogs’ at BlogAdda.com. #CelebrateBlogging with us.”

“ Read the next part of the story here – Chapter 18″