CHAPTER 26 #2
He finally found them after they returned to Mumbai barely two years ago.
Dilip’s second wife, Mishti’s mother, had died two years after his imprisonment.
But his son, Daksh, now owned the DG Group.
He was respected, established and spoken of with admiration in business circles.
Dilip’s daughter, Mishti, had been completing her master’s degree and was enjoying the privilege and comfort of her family.
They lived openly. Nobody in the circle knew who they were. Nobody knew that their wealth was built on stolen money. That their lifestyle had been paid for with blood. That their dignity was borrowed from a crime buried beneath silence and time.
The Goels were now a wealthy family who moved through society as though they had been born into honour and class.
Karan watched them from a distance, living the life that should have died the day his mother did. He watched the world accept them, applaud them, shelter them. He watched as the past was forgotten by everyone except the one boy who had been forced to grow up in its aftermath.
What burned deeper was the truth he uncovered later.
Even behind bars, Dilip Goel had not stopped providing for his family.
Prison had taken his freedom, not his influence.
He still had men on the outside, loyal to him, indebted to him, men who knew how to move money quietly and plant foundations without raising alarms. Using the wealth he had siphoned from the Wadhwas over the years, Dilip had seeded a business for his son.
Trinity & Co.
Daksh’s ownership was deliberately kept in the shadows. Officially, names like ‘R Menon’ spearheaded the company. But the control, the profits, the real power flowed exactly where Dilip intended it to.
To his son.
Dilip had ensured that no one, especially anyone connected to the Wadhwas, would ever suspect who Trinity truly belonged to. It was a shield built of paperwork, a fortress designed to protect stolen wealth.
And Mishti? She had grown up inside that fortress. She laughed, learned, and dreamed, all while standing on the ruins of a family she never knew about.
Daksh had known it all, although he never supported Dilip’s crime and had cut off all direct ties with him. He never visited his father, never spoke his name openly, never defended what had been done. But he never walked away from the business his father had built for him that time.
How could he, after all? How could a young boy, barely sixteen that time, abandon everything that ensured his survival, his status, his future?
How could he choose poverty when comfort lay within reach?
He had told himself that he was not responsible for the crime, not pulled the trigger.
But just merely inherited circumstances.
The Goels never faced struggles. No sudden falls. No loss of comfort. The money kept flowing. Their lives remained intact. Even without ever contacting their father, directly or indirectly, they continued to live well, protected by the very wealth he had secured for them through theft and murder.
Karan watched it all. And now knowing that they had returned to the city, his waiting ended. The Goel siblings moved onto his radar completely. He studied every detail about them.
Their businesses. Their money. Their relationships.
Their vulnerabilities. Every weakness was noted.
He followed every thread patiently, without haste, because Karan never believed in loud destruction.
He believed in weakening foundations so thoroughly that collapse looked inevitable rather than forced.
The first name he placed under his quiet scrutiny was DG Group.
From the outside, it was a polished enterprise.
But Karan knew better. He had studied the numbers long enough and had seen that DG Group was not self-sustained.
It leaned heavily on invisible support, on capital that did not originate where it was claimed to.
And anything that survived on borrowed strength could be starved.
He began with DG Group’s clients. Not by snatching them overnight, but by worrying them.
A whisper here, a delayed payment there, a sudden offer that arrived just a little too perfectly timed.
He ensured that DG Group lost contracts.
Too many of them. Stability was the illusion Karan attacked first.
Then came the insiders.
There were always men inside companies like DG Group who were dissatisfied, underpaid, overlooked, or simply greedy.
Karan found them all. He did not threaten them, just paid them to work as an insider for him.
Slowly, information began to flow to him.
Financial forecasts, internal disputes, client insecurities, and pending negotiations. Every detail became a tool.
Losses followed. Not dramatic ones. Just enough to disturb shareholders. Just enough to keep Daksh Goel awake at night, studying balance sheets that refused to behave.
Six Months Ago
When Karan was finally convinced that DG Group was close to its breaking point, he stopped.
Because DG Group was not the real target.
It was only the bait.
Only after laying every piece of that groundwork, Karan finally turned his attention to the man he had not faced in years.
Dilip Goel.
Karan had imagined this meeting countless times. In some versions, his hands were already around the man’s throat. In others, Dilip begged. In none of them did Karan lose control. That mattered to him more than anything. He would not give Dilip the satisfaction of seeing him broken.
Karan used his influence, a few calls, a few signatures, and a few favours to get this meeting arranged between him and Dilip Goel in a private room in the prison where Dilip served his sentence.
Before the meeting, Karan spent one long night alone.
He did not drink. He did not pace. He sat still, letting memories surface without fighting them.
His mother’s voice. The sound of her morning prayers in the house.
The gunshot that had ended everything. He let the rage come.
But he was not going to that prison to meet Dilip as a grieving son.
He was going as a man who had already won half the war.
The next day, the prison granted him access without resistance. The guards led him through a corridor that smelled of disinfectant and rust. Iron doors lined the passage, each one holding a life reduced to numbers and bars.
The guards finally stopped outside a reinforced glass cubicle where this meeting was arranged. Karan exhaled hard, controlling those countless emotions running through his head at the moment, as he stepped inside.
Dilip sat back in his chair, relaxed, almost comfortable. He looked older, thinner, his hair streaked with grey, but prison had not bent him the way it bent others. There was no guilt on his face. No remorse. Only the same arrogance Karan remembered from years ago.
When the door closed behind Karan, for a moment, neither of them spoke.
Karan had expected many things when he finally stood face to face with Dilip Goel again. He had expected hatred to surge. What he had not expected was how violently his body reacted to the sight of the man sitting so comfortably before him like he never did anything.
His hands curled into fists at his sides, nails biting into skin, not because he was losing control, but because he was forcing himself not to.
The man who had pulled the trigger, the man who had watched his mother bleed out on the floor without flinching, the man who had stolen years of love of his family and replaced them with nights soaked in fear and rage, was right before him, and he could do nothing.
Dilip looked at him and smiled.
“Karan Wadhwa,” he said, leaning back slightly. “I knew someday you would come. But you took a long time. What happened?” His lips curved. “Were you so scared to meet me?”
Karan’s breath slowed, but the fire in his chest burned brighter. He stepped closer, close enough that Dilip could no longer pretend this was just another visitor passing time.
“I was waiting for the right moment,” Karan replied with deadly calm. “Otherwise, if I had wanted to, it wouldn’t have taken me even a day to arrange your murder inside these four walls. A death that would look like suicide. Or a natural death blamed on old age.”
Dilip’s smile faltered, just slightly, but Karan did not stop.
“But that kind of death would have been too easy for you,” he continued. “You don’t deserve something so merciful.”
He leaned in further, his face hard, unforgiving.
“I want you to live and suffer,” Karan said slowly. “A life where every breath feels like a burden. Where each day you wake up wishing you had never been born. Where you remember every mistake you made, and there is no way left to undo any of it.”
For the first time since the meeting began, Dilip did not smile.
“Power,” Dilip said, tilting his head slightly. “Power suits you. I can tell you didn’t come here empty-handed. What did you come for, Karan? Closure?”
Karan leaned forward, placing his palms flat against the table separating them.
“I came to see if you still felt untouchable,” he said quietly. “Before I start taking everything you thought you protected.”
Dilip’s jaw clenched, but the reaction was fleeting. The moment passed, and arrogance slid back into place like armour he had worn all his life. Prison had taken years from his body, but it had not stripped him of his belief that he still stood above consequences.
“You talk like a man who thinks he’s already won,” Dilip mocked. “But you should know something, Karan. No matter how powerful you become out there, there’s nothing you can do anymore. You can’t touch me. I took everything from you. And I am still alive.”
The words landed exactly where Dilip intended them to. Tension coiled in Karan’s shoulders, his jaw locked so hard it ached.
Dilip watched him closely, enjoying the silence he had created.