CHAPTER 47
Wadhwa Mansion
Over the next week, Karan Wadhwa was anything but calm.
From the outside, it looked like he was just resting, taking medication and working on his recovery.
But Mishti had seen him buried in work, being busy with calls, files, and conversations that always stopped the moment she entered the room.
He never lied to her. He simply chose to hide his actions.
Because this was not something he would ever burden her with.
The first call he made was to his legal team, not with questions or help in finding solutions, but with direct instructions.
He wanted to know every financial trail connected to Dilip Goel.
If, despite being in prison, he was still having connections to work on his orders, he needed to know how he was paying them.
No one would do such tasks for free, and how could a man like Dilip Goel manage that kind of sum from inside the prison?
If money had moved, Karan wanted to know where, when, and through whom.
By the end of the second day, a forensic audit by his legal team had already been initiated.
The second call went to someone far more powerful in the judiciary system…
a man who did not need introductions, only context.
Karan gave him that, stripped of emotion.
He presented all the proofs on the shootout that happened - the confession of the undertrial shooter, details of Dilip Goel, a life-term convict operating through outside channels and how a civilian family like ‘Wadhwas’ was put at risk.
That was all it took.
By the evening of the third day, Dilip Goel’s prison privileges were under review. His visitor list flagged. His calls were marked for monitoring. A recommendation for stricter isolation moved up the chain, carrying enough weight because of who had requested it and why.
Karan then worked on Dilip Goel’s outside network dismantling.
The shooter was not the problem. The problem was the middleman who had connected him to Dilip Goel.
That thread, once pulled, unravelled faster than expected.
An old contact of Dilip surfaced, who was a big name, an ex-politician, but still loyal to Dilip only because he had some secret information about him, which he used to get his outside jobs, like threatening the Wadhwa family, done.
This middleman had no other way but to abide by it, only to hide his past crimes.
Once those secrets of that ex-politician, which Dilip was hiding, were traced, Karan let the law do what it did best.
Arrests followed. Interrogations began. One by one, the doors Dilip had once opened so easily began to shut, this time permanently.
Inside the prison, Dilip Goel was already understanding what was happening. Not because Karan sent a message. But because no message would ever reach him anymore. As Karan had cut off all his outside sources, now who would dare to even meet Dilip, forget obeying his nasty orders?
By the end of the week, the final step was set in motion… a silent legal escalation. Additional charges of conspiracy and attempted murder were filed against Dilip legally. Files moved faster when Karan’s name appeared on them, because his case left no room for delay.
Everything was lawful and irreversible. And through all of it, Mishti remained unaware. Karan never once mentioned the names, the calls, the steps he had taken. Because in his mind, this was simple. She had already carried enough.
What Dilip Goel did next would no longer touch her life. That was Karan’s promise to himself.
***************
One Week Later
Karan was still in the living room, lowering his phone after ending a call, when he noticed Mishti walk down the stairs, fully dressed and clearly about to step out.
What made him pause was not where she was going, but how she looked.
Her face was pale, and she had a tired tightness around her eyes that instantly worried him.
He crossed the room in long strides and stopped her gently.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
Mishti hesitated at first. She did not meet his eyes right away, and that brief pause told him she was hiding something. Or at least, not telling him everything.
“I’m going to meet Avni,” she said finally. “I need to give her and VK some updates about the Sahara Foundation. There are things I need to explain properly. It can’t be done over the phone.”
Karan listened, keeping his gaze fixed on her face, reading between the lines.
“I’ll come with you,” he said immediately, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Mishti shook her head at once.
“No. You need rest,” she said firmly. “You stay at home.”
“I’ve had enough rest,” Karan argued. “I’m fine now. I can come with you.”
She denied him again, more insistently this time.
“It’s not necessary, Karan. I won’t take long. Two hours, maximum. I’ll be back before you even realise it. And I’m taking the guards with me, so stop worrying.”
He was still not convinced. The frown on his forehead refused to ease. But before he could argue further, Mishti stepped closer. She rose on her toes, pressed a soft kiss to his cheek, and then looked straight into his eyes.
“Don’t worry.” She smiled. “This time, I’m not going away from you. It’s just a matter of two hours.”
Karan let out a slow sigh, the tension easing just enough for him to breathe properly. He was still not happy about her going alone, not really, but he nodded.
“Fine,” he said. “Come back soon.”
Yet even as he agreed, his mind was already moving ahead. He walked her down to the car himself. Before she could step in, he turned to the guards.
“Do not leave her unwatched for even a second,” he instructed. “I don’t care where she goes or who she meets. Your eyes stay on her at all times. And once she’s done, you bring her straight home.”
“Yes, sir,” both the guards replied immediately.
The driver nodded as well.
Mishti got into the car. Karan stood there until the door closed, until the engine started, until the car finally pulled away from the driveway. Only then did he turn back toward the house, already aware that while he had let her go, he would not simply sit and wait. Not this time.
****************
Mishti’s plan was not to meet Avni or the Mathurs. It was to meet the man she had last seen when she was nine years old. Her father… Dilip Goel. In the prison.
She had grown up believing that her father, the man she had cried for, mourned for, was dead in a tragic accident because that was the story her mother had given her.
A lie spoken out of fear. Fear of what the truth would do to her as a child.
Fear of letting her grow up knowing that her father was alive, breathing, and serving a life sentence for crimes that stained not just his own hands, but everyone else connected to him.
But today she had finally decided to confront him face to face.
When she had first asked Rajat for help to set up her meeting with him in prison, Rajat had refused to do so.
He had told her plainly that he could not do this behind Karan’s back.
That Karan would never forgive him. That this was not something Mishti needed to shoulder alone.
But she still insisted on him because some battles had to be fought face to face.
Some ghosts that demanded to be looked in the eye before they loosened their grip on your soul.
She had told Rajat that if she did not do this now, she would spend the rest of her life feeling guilty of never confronting that man.
Rajat had resisted for a long time. And then, reluctantly, he had agreed. Today was the result of that agreement. As the excuse given to Karan, she had driven to Mathur's home first and from there, she and Rajat took a quiet detour to the prison.
By the time she stepped out of the car, her palms were damp, her heartbeat loud enough that she wondered if Rajat could hear it standing beside her. She kept her spine straight, her chin lifted, refusing to let fear dictate her today.
The prison guards led them down a corridor that felt too long. Although she was prepared to meet him, her mind betrayed her then, slipping into memories she had not wanted to revisit.
Her father lifting her onto his shoulders playfully.
The smell of his aftershave when he hugged her.
His loud laughter filling the room when he played with her.
She then recalled her mother’s advice, telling her that marriages survived only when women learned to accept both the good and the bad of their husbands. That endurance was strength. That silence was sometimes necessary.
Standing here now, Mishti knew her mother was wrong to believe that or even to teach her that.
The moment her mother had realised what kind of man her husband truly was, what crimes he had committed, what lives he had ruined, she should have broken every tie with him.
She should have walked away without looking back, without explaining herself, without justifying her decision to anyone.
Instead, she had stayed connected to him in the only way she thought she could, by using his blood money to raise his children, by convincing herself that survival justified compromise.
Living off wealth built on someone else’s suffering was not endurance.
It was the acceptance of a wrong that should never have been normalised.
And standing here now, about to face the man responsible for it all, Mishti realised that even her mother became an unwilling participant, allowing the damage done by her father to grow unchecked.