CHAPTER 12 The Sins of the Father
Now that Aryan was eight, the old timeline had become impossible to ignore for anyone who knew where to look.
The digital fortress surrounding the Rathore-Chauhan empire was as carefully guarded as the physical one.
Rudransh had spent billions building firewalls, encrypted servers, and elite cybersecurity teams to protect not only his corporate assets but also the personal privacy of his family.
Every medical record, adoption paper, and school schedule pertaining to Mihika and Aryan was locked behind digital vaults.
So, when an external entity attempted to pry those vaults open, the alarms did not blare loudly. They triggered a silent, lethal tripwire that went directly to the Deputy Chief of Security, Girish Rao.
It was a Tuesday afternoon. The Mumbai skyline was shrouded in a thick, unseasonal gray mist that pressed heavily against the floor-to-ceiling windows of Rudra’s eighty-second-floor corporate office.
Girish stood at attention before the massive obsidian desk, a secure tablet in his hands.
“The initial ping originated from a private investigation firm operating out of South Mumbai, sir,” Girish reported, his voice a low, steady rumble in the quiet office.
“They attempted to access the sealed hospital records from nearly nine years ago, specifically looking for birth certificates linked to your late sister, Revaa. When our firewalls blocked them, they attempted to cross-reference school enrollment data at St. Jude International Academy.”
Rudra paused. The Montblanc pen in his hand went still. Slowly, he looked up, his dark eyes narrowing into dangerous, pitch-black slits.
“Someone is investigating my son?” Rudra’s voice was barely a whisper, yet it carried the atmospheric pressure of a gathering hurricane.
“Yes, sir,” Girish confirmed, his posture rigid. “The security team immediately stonewalled their access. They hit a dead end on all fronts. We initiated a trace program to back-channel their servers and identify their client.”
Rudra set the pen down. The sharp click echoed off the glass walls. “And?”
“The client who commissioned the investigation is Mrs. Kalyani Desai,” Girish stated, swiping the tablet and placing it on the desk so Rudra could see the profile. “The elderly woman who approached Aryan at the park last weekend.”
Rudra stared at the digital photograph of the wealthy, silver-haired widow.
His brilliant, strategic mind began to turn with lethal speed.
Why would a complete stranger deploy private investigators to dig into the tragic, heavily guarded birth of his son?
She had looked at Aryan as if she had seen a ghost.
“I want her entire life dismantled,” Rudra commanded, leaning forward, the muscles in his broad shoulders coiling tight beneath his bespoke suit.
“I want to know her family tree, her associates, her banking records, and her history. Deploy the entire intelligence division. Find out exactly why this woman is looking at my child. By tonight, Girish.”
“It is already underway, sir.”
***
The rain began to fall shortly after sunset, lashing violently against the glass of the penthouse study. The dark, turbulent ocean below mirrored the catastrophic storm that had just erupted inside Rudransh’s mind.
It was 9:00 PM. The encrypted file from Girish had arrived ten minutes earlier.
Rudra sat in his leather executive chair, staring at the glowing monitor, his face drained of color. The silence in the room was complete, broken only by the sound of the rain and the ragged, shallow intake of his own breath.
The investigation had not taken long, because the connection was glaringly, sickeningly obvious once they knew where to look.
Kalyani Desai had a son. His name was Dev Desai, who was the golden heir to the Desai shipping fortune. He was handsome, heavily privileged, and reckless.
He had died in a violent, high-speed car crash nearly nine years ago.
But the tragedy of his death was not what made Rudra’s blood run cold. It was the timeline. It was the location data.
Girish’s team had pulled old police reports, university disciplinary files, and mobile tower records through quiet legal channels and private intelligence contacts.
Dev Desai had been a senior at the same university Revaa had attended.
More importantly, the digital footprint placed him at the very same off-campus student residence, on the very night of the party, where twenty-year-old Revaa Rathore-Chauhan had been drugged and assaulted.
Rudra’s hands began to shake. The tremor was born of a rage so uncontainable that he felt as though his bones might splinter under the pressure of it.
He was one of them.
The faceless, nameless monster who had broken his little sister, who had implanted the trauma that ultimately drove her to throw herself off a hospital balcony, finally had a name. Dev Desai.
And now, Dev Desai’s mother had seen Aryan in a park. She had seen the undeniable genetic echo of her dead son in the face of Revaa’s child.
Rudra stood up so violently that his heavy leather chair crashed backward into the mahogany bookshelf. He paced across the room, his hands tearing through his dark hair, a guttural, feral sound of pure agony and fury escaping his throat.
The mother of the monster who had destroyed his sister wanted a piece of his son. She dared to deploy investigators. She dared to look at Aryan with the hope of reclaiming her legacy.
“I will kill her,” Rudra breathed, his vision swimming with a red, blinding haze. “I will burn her entire bloodline to ash.”
The study door opened with a soft click.
Mihika stepped into the room, wearing a soft silk robe over her nightgown. She paused, her dark eyes instantly locking onto the overturned chair and the violent tension radiating from her husband’s massive frame.
“Rudra?” she asked, her voice laced with immediate concern. She hurried across the room, reaching out to grasp his forearms. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Rudra looked down at the woman who had held his family together with everything she had. The woman who had loved Revaa like a sister, and who had raised Revaa’s son as her own.
He pulled Mihika into his chest, wrapping his arms around her so tightly she gasped. He buried his face in her fragrant dark hair, seeking the only anchor he had in a suddenly chaotic, horrifying universe.
“I know who he is,” Rudra whispered brokenly against her skin. “I know who hurt her, Mihika.”
***
They sat together on the leather sofa, the glowing monitor casting a pale blue light over their faces.
Rudra explained everything. He laid out the timeline, the investigation, the truth about Dev Desai, and Kalyani’s desperate, intrusive search for her supposed grandson.
Mihika sat perfectly still. The color completely washed out of her beautiful face, leaving her as pale as porcelain.
A single, silent tear spilled over her lower lashes, tracking slowly down her cheek as the memory of Revaa’s agonizing trauma resurfaced.
She remembered holding the terrified, broken girl.
She remembered the sheer, suffocating tragedy of Revaa’s final days.
But as the grief washed over her, it was rapidly, violently overtaken by something else.
The soft, gentle, endlessly graceful Mihika vanished. In her place sat a mother. A fierce, unyielding, deeply territorial lioness who would tear the throat out of anyone who threatened her cub.
“She has no right,” Mihika said. Her voice was not loud, but it possessed cold steel that made Rudra’s breath catch. She looked at the photograph of Kalyani Desai on the screen, her dark eyes burning with pure, protective wrath.
“She will never touch him, Mihika,” Rudra swore, taking her small hands in his massive ones, kissing her knuckles with fervent desperation. “I promise you, I will deploy the entire security fleet. I will ruin her family financially. She will not take him from us.”
Mihika turned to Rudra, her expression fiercely composed. “Take him? Rudra, Aryan, is our son. He is Revaa’s child. He is the only piece of your sister we have left, and that is everything. That monster gave him nothing but DNA. We gave him his soul. We gave him his laughter. We are his parents.”
Rudra felt a surge of love for her. “I know. I know.”
“She couldn’t even raise her own son properly,” Mihika continued, her voice trembling with a mixture of disgust and sorrow.
“She raised a monster who destroyed a twenty-year-old girl. And now, she thinks she can just swoop in and claim the beautiful, innocent boy that we healed? No. Absolutely not.”
“What do you want me to do?” Rudra asked, fully prepared to execute whatever vengeance she commanded. “I can have the Desai family exiled from the country.”
“No,” Mihika said, her jaw setting firmly. “We do not hide. If we hide, she will keep digging. She will keep sending investigators. We end this right now. We tell her the exact, horrifying truth about her golden heir, and we make sure she is too ashamed to ever look in Aryan’s direction again.”
***
Kalyani Desai sat in the private, soundproofed drawing-room of the exclusive Willingdon Sports Club, her heart fluttering with a mixture of desperate hope and agonizing anxiety.
She had received a summons. After her private investigators had hit a massive digital wall, she had received a direct, formal communication from the executive office of Rudransh Rathore-Chauhan, requesting a private meeting.
She clutched her pearl necklace, staring at the heavy oak doors. They know, she thought. They know he is Dev’s son. They want to talk about a reunion.
The doors swung open.
The room went still. Rudransh Rathore-Chauhan walked into the room, clad in a bespoke black suit, looking like a man carved out of fury and control. His dark eyes were devoid of any mercy or humanity.