Chapter 23
KABIR
The study in Il Cuore he was hiding out in was shadowed, pale yellow lamplight filtering in through the doorway to where he sat.
He leaned his head back on his chair, shutting his eyes, exhaustion flooding him.
Memories imprinted on the back of his eyelids, his aunt’s yellowed, victorious smile, his bandmates frustrated expressions when he left the studio today, his father’s disappointed face from earlier that evening, and overlaying all that, Jay’s kiss with Tani.
His blood simmered, an impotent rage flooding him as he ground his teeth and forced control.
In his head, he knew that Jay and Tani were intimate, they were getting married for God’s sake!
But when that asshole had laid his lips on hers, it had taken everything in Kabir not to walk over and rip his head off.
“Kabir?”
His eyes shot open at the sound of his mother’s voice. “Hey,” he said, his voice rusty from disuse. “Sorry.” He sat up and rubbed his eyes as Aayushi came into the room and took the chair opposite him. “I was just…”
“Trying to block out the world?” Aayushi asked, smiling, though her eyes were worried. “Or just the families?”
“A bit of both,” he admitted, smiling slightly, hating that he’d put worry in her eyes. “Ma-“
He stopped, not sure how to explain everything to her.
“Talk to me, Kabir.” Aayushi’s voice was soft. “What’s going on?”
The door to the study slammed open and Kabir sighed as his father’s furious figure filled the frame. Time to face the music, in more ways than one.
“What the hell, Ved?” Aayushi rose to her feet, startled.
“Exactly my question.” Ved stalked towards him, grimly. “What the fuck, Kabir?”
Aayushi raised a brow in surprise. “I believe the word I used was hell,” she said, mildly.
“Do you know our son has been keeping secrets from us, Aayu?”
She opened her mouth to reply, then closed it, shooting Kabir a ‘what the hell did you do’ look. Kabir sighed again. Shit. Where did he start?
“What were you thinking, Kabir?” Ved’s voice was so rich in disappointment that it felt like he’d been sucker punched.
“Dad, I-“ Words failed him as he met Ved’s angry yet immeasurably sad face.
“I’ve been so damn worried about you. I knew something was wrong. I knew you were spiralling. But I put it down to the fact that –“
“Ved!” Aayushi’s sharp reprimand had him stopping mid-sentence.
Kabir’s skin prickled as he met Ved’s gaze. “To the fact that?” Kabir asked softly, feeling himself teeter on the tip of an abyss.
Ved looked back at him steadily. “I put it down to the fact that the woman you love is marrying someone else.”
“Ved!” Aayushi hissed, smacking him on the back of his head.
And the bottom fell out of Kabir’s world. “You knew?” he managed to say.
“Of course I did, you idiot.” Ved’s anger deflated at the expression on Kabir’s face. “I’ve known forever. So has your mother. It’s written all over your face every time you look at her.”
Kabir’s temper surged, humiliation mixing with it to send him spiralling over the edge, his control in free fall. “Then why the hell did you insist I attend her wedding?” he yelled.
“So you could get your head out of your arse!” Ved yelled back. “Either get the girl or get your fucking closure!”
“Alright!” Aayushi said sharply. “That’s enough yelling.” She shot them a quelling look. “From both of you.”
They fell silent but continued glaring at each other.
“Sit,” she snapped.
Kabir and Ved sat.
“Now start from the beginning, please,” Aayushi said with forced calm. “What exactly is the big, scandalous secret Kabir has been keeping from us? Clearly, it’s not the fact that he is desperately in love with Tani.”
“There’s no need to keep repeating that out loud,” Kabir muttered, dropping his head into his hands.
“I will if I don’t find out what the fuck you are hiding,” Aayushi retorted.
“I thought we were using hell?” Ved asked, sardonically.
“I swear to God, Ved Kashyap,” she rounded on him, “if you get on my nerves right now, I’ll-“
“I’ve been paying my aunt to stay silent and to keep out of our lives.” The words were ripped from him before she could finish her threat. He kept his face buried in his palms as he said, “Please don’t fight because of me. Please?”
For the longest moment, one of the hardest of his life, there was silence, and then Aayushi said, “Since when?” Her voice was deathly, lethally quiet, the voice of the leading criminal defense attorney in the country.
“Since my first album went platinum,” Kabir muttered, not raising his head to meet either of their eyes.
“So for fourteen years now,” Ved said.
Kabir nodded. “About that,” he admitted.
Aayushi stepped forward, her fingers grasping his chin and tilting his face up so he had no option but to meet her gaze. “How much?”
“You’re going to kill me,” he said, weakly.
“I’m going to do that anyway,” she replied calmly. “How much, Kabir?”
“Around three crores, give or take. It wasn’t much initially, and then it kept going up, and now it’s,” he swallowed, “a lot.”
Aayushi’s fingers tightened on his chin before she let go of him, her hand dropping away.
“And what does she want from you now?” Ved asked, his incisive gaze slicing through the heavy atmosphere to the brass tacks of the conversation.
“She wants back into my life,” Kabir said hoarsely.
Aayushi who had moved to stand by the window, staring out into the darkness enveloping the lawns, broken only by party lights and chatter from the last of the straggling guests.
“What does that mean?” Aayushi asked, not looking back, her voice icily cold.
“She’s dying.”
“Forgive me for not breaking down in tears,” Aayushi replied.
“Aayu-“ Ved said gently.
“No.” She turned from the window, her furious gaze skewering him.
“I don’t have your overblown moral compass, Ved.
So don’t expect me to have any compassion for that woman!
She tried to kill my son. Kill! She should have rotted in jail for what she did but we allowed her to get away with a minor sentence for his sake, because we didn’t want him to testify in court when he was already traumatized.
So, if she’s dying, I’m saying good fucking riddance to bad rubbish.
I’ll be damned if I’ll let that bitch take one more second of my child’s life. ”
“I agree,” Ved replied calmly, the calm to her storm. “Not one second more.” He met Kabir’s gaze and repeated, “Not one second or one rupee more. What is she holding over you?”
“Initially it was vague threats to go to the press about my background, where I came from, the…” He swallowed hard before continuing, “The stuff she made me do, the drugs I ran for her, the filth she made me-“ His voice failed him.
“And then she told me about my parents. That my mom was some kind of mafia don. The blood that runs through my veins is, apparently, laced with cocaine.”
“I’m going to bury that bitch,” Aayushi said calmly. “Before she dies.”
“So she held your life, the life she gave you, over your head?” Ved asked, shooting Aayushi a ‘shut up’ look.
“And you paid her like a brainless idiot?” Aayushi walked over and smacked him on the back of his head. His mother was clearly not interested in listening to the looks his father was giving her.
“She threatened to smear all of you too,” Kabir yelped, rubbing his head. His mother was bloody strong. “I couldn’t let that happen,” he said helplessly. “I couldn’t let the dirt of my existence bleed over into yours. Not when all you’ve ever done is be good and kind and…”
“And?” Ved asked, his tone flinty. “Please finish that.”
“I owe you everything,” Kabir said through a throat choked with emotion. “Both of you. And I couldn’t repay you with this.”
“What do you think Kimaya owes us?” Ved asked, his tone ripe with fury. “You seem pretty good with accounts for a guy who’s pissed away three crores.”
“Dad, it’s not the same.”
“I kind of understand now,” Ved snapped, “why she came after you with her knife. You’re very annoying.”
That startled a laugh out of Kabir which died a quick death when he recognised the anger in Ved’s eyes.
“You stupid fool,” Ved said, “you’ve been ours since the day we met you. Children aren’t only born from blood, Kabir. They’re also born from the heart. And you, have had our heart from the day you stomped into our lives on your grimy, stinky feet.”
A single tear escaped him, trailing down his cheek. Kabir swiped it away before any more escaped.
“I am grateful-“ he began.
“You are loved,” Aayushi corrected. “Loved so deeply, so ferociously, that there is no one, in this world or another, who can separate you from us.”
“Now,” she added, coming to sit next to Kabir and taking his icy hands in hers. “Tell me what this bitch wants.”
“She has a child, a ten year old who is away at a fancy boarding school in Ooty, funded apparently by me. She wants me to take her when she dies.” He met Ved’s stunned gaze. “I have another sister, Dad.”