CHAPTER 8 The Echoes of Ruin #3
“How dare that little orphan cause this kind of mess?” Kanta sneered, the vulgarity spilling from her lips like acid.
“She played the long game; I’ll give her that.
Pretending to be a victim, pretending to care for that illegitimate child.
There is nothing special about Mihika. She has no education, no class, no breeding.
She must have used her body to trap Rudransh.
It’s the only language women of her sordid background understand. ”
The collective gasp from the surrounding tables was audible. Kanta had crossed a line that even the most vicious gossips rarely touched. She had openly, vulgarly attacked the character of a billionaire’s wife in a room full of people.
Within exactly two hours, the whispers had reached the ears of Rudransh’s executive assistant.
Within two hours and five minutes, the words were relayed to Rudransh Rathore-Chauhan.
***
The boardroom of Rathore-Chauhan Enterprises was completely empty, save for the furious, pacing billionaire at its helm.
When Rudra heard the vulgar, vile comments his aunt had made about Mihika, his vision had literally gone red. A murderous, volcanic rage erupted in his chest, so violent and consuming that he had snapped a platinum pen clean in half.
He immediately locked his phone and made sure his security team filtered the internet around their penthouse, ensuring that Mihika, who was happily working in the penthouse, never saw a single text or alert regarding the gossip.
He would shield her from this filth if he had to block out the sun to do it.
Then, he made the call.
He summoned them. All of them.
When Birendra, Kanta, Ishana, and Ahana were escorted into the massive boardroom by an intimidating flank of private security guards, the atmosphere was thick with the promise of execution.
Rudra stood at the head of the long glass table, backlit by the sprawling city skyline behind him. He did not ask them to sit. He did not offer greetings.
“I warned you,” Rudra’s voice was dangerously quiet, echoing off the glass walls. It wasn’t a yell; it was the chilling rumble of a fault line about to give way. “I gave you a mercy allowance. I let you keep your home. I warned you that your survival depended on my patience.”
Kanta stood tall, though her chin trembled slightly. “I only spoke the truth, Rudransh. The city is laughing at us. You have elevated a—”
“SILENCE!”
The roar was so sudden, so incredibly deafening, that Kanta physically stumbled backward, clutching Birendra’s arm. Ishana and Ahana whimpered, shrinking away from him.
Rudra slammed both of his hands onto the glass table, leaning forward, his eyes burning with a dark, demonic fury that stripped him of all his polished corporate veneer.
“You dare,” Rudra snarled, his voice shaking with the effort it took not to cross the room and physically throw her out the window.
“You dare speak her name with your filthy, venomous tongue. You dare to call my wife, the mother of my son, an opportunist. A woman who sacrificed her entire life for this family, while you sat in your palaces and plotted like a pathetic, fading parasite!”
Birendra tried to interject, “Rudra, please, she was upset—”
“I don’t care if she was bleeding to death!
” Rudra cut him off brutally. He pointed a long, accusing finger at Kanta.
“Listen to me very carefully, Kanta. Because I will only say this once. You are nothing. You are a ghost inhabiting a house I own. The only reason you are not living in the slums of Dharavi right now is because Mihika asked me not to be cruel.”
Kanta gasped, her eyes widening in shock. The realization that her very existence was preserved by the mercy of the woman she had just insulted hit her like a physical blow.
“Here is my ultimatum,” Rudra stated, his voice dropping back to a lethal, icy calm, straightening his posture.
He looked at Birendra, then at the daughters, and finally locked his merciless gaze onto Kanta.
“If I hear a single whisper... if one more vulgar comment, one more insult, one more rumor traces its way back to your mouth... I will not freeze your accounts. I will seize the Chauhan estate. I will sell the property to developers, and I will leave the four of you on the street with exactly the clothes on your backs. No allowance. No cars. Nothing. You will cease to exist.”
He walked to the boardroom door and yanked it open, gesturing to the security guards waiting outside.
“Get them out of my sight,” Rudra ordered. “And if they ever try to enter this building again, have them arrested for trespassing.”
***
The drive back to the Chauhan estate was conducted in a heavy, suffocating, funereal silence.
The moment the front doors of the sprawling mansion closed behind them, the fragile, aristocratic illusion completely collapsed. The family did not stand united. They splintered.
“Are you insane?” Birendra suddenly roared, his face purple with rage, turning on his wife. The stoic patriarch finally snapped under the weight of his wife’s unhinged vanity. “Are you actively trying to get us thrown onto the streets?!”
Kanta stood in the center of the foyer, looking at her husband in shock. “Birendra! I was defending our honor! He married a nobody!”
“He married the woman he loves, and he holds all the power!” Birendra yelled, throwing his hands in the air. “We are surviving on his scraps, Kanta! And you go to a tea party and insult her? He will take the house! He will take everything!”
“Father is right!” Ishana screamed, stepping forward, her face twisted with cold disgust as she looked at her mother.
“You arrogant, stupid woman! We went to beg him for our allowances back, and he wouldn’t even let us in the building!
And now you’ve sealed our fate completely!
You couldn’t just keep your mouth shut!”
“Don’t speak to me like that!” Kanta demanded, her voice shrill, grasping desperately for the authority she had wielded for forty years. “I am your mother! I am the matriarch of this family!”
“You are nothing!” Ahana shrieked, weeping openly, pointing a trembling finger at Kanta. “Rudra was right! You are a parasite! You ruined Revaa, you ruined Mihika, and now you have completely ruined us! We have no future because of your pride!”
Kanta looked from her furious husband to her screaming daughters. For the first time in her life, the razor-sharp blade of her authority completely failed to cut. She was utterly defenseless.
“Birendra,” Kanta pleaded, taking a step toward her husband, seeking the unwavering support he had always offered her cruelest whims.
Birendra looked at her with a coldness. He shook his head slowly, a gesture of final rejection. “You are on your own, Kanta. If Rudransh takes this house because of your tongue, I will leave you to sleep on the pavement.”
He turned his back on her and walked heavily up the grand staircase. Ishana and Ahana followed him, leaving Kanta standing completely alone in the massive, echoing foyer.
The queen had finally been deposed, left to rule over an empty, crumbling castle of her own making, forever haunted by the devastating triumph of the orphan she had tried to break.