CHAPTER 18
RAGHAV
Two days Later (RK Estate)
It has been two f*cking days since Siya left RK Estate with Parag Reddy, and already three men have nearly lost their lives under my hands.
The gun supplier who arranged the rifle for the shooter hired by the Singhals is currently lying in one of my holding rooms outside RK Estate with two broken ribs and a shattered kneecap.
He had hidden the weapon near the forest ridge bordering the estate, convinced no one would ever trace it back to him.
He thought wrong.
Another man, the informant assigned to track Parag Reddy’s movements along the Nepal border route, was supposed to alert Haider the second Parag moved towards Shivtara Valley.
Instead, he thought it harmless to switch off his burner phone for a few hours.
By the time he finally reported back, Parag had already entered RK Estate and taken Siya away.
I slammed him onto the glass table and broke his jaw for delaying to update us on Parag’s movements.
And then this morning, one of the brokers secretly feeding us information from inside the Vardhaan circle made the mistake of confidently telling me that Siya’s wedding preparations in Cape Town had already begun. I nearly crushed his throat for that.
This version of me is not new. It is the same version that once made the entire underworld fear the Dark Prince. The monster I’d buried has now unleashed. Only because something that belongs to me has been taken away from my reach.
Siya.
And I won’t sit quietly.
I haven’t slept since she left. For two straight nights, the memory of that f*cking kiss has haunted me like an addiction I cannot shake off, no matter how much violence I drown myself in.
I have f*cked plenty of women in my life, but I’ve never kissed any of them.
Because kisses felt too intimate, too personal.
A mouth remembers things that the body eventually forgets.
Men like me can’t afford to have memories like that.
For me, kissing someone meant giving that woman access to the parts of you that were supposed to remain dead. That’s why I never kissed anyone. Ever.
Until Siya… She was my first kiss.
I had to kiss her. I still don’t understand why. But seeing her standing there… looking at me with those furious, jealous eyes after placing that garland around my neck… something inside me snapped before my brain could even catch up.
I lost control and broke my own rule. For her. And I don’t regret a second of it. The memory is still carved into my head with terrifying clarity. I know if Siya was standing in front of me right now, I would kiss her again without thinking twice. Slower this time. Harder.
My fingers curl into a tight fist. Focus Raghav. I f*cking hate this feeling. This loss of control. This state where my mind refuses to obey me no matter how hard I try to force it .
Ever since Siya left RK Estate, I haven’t been able to think straight anymore. Work irritates me. Meetings feel pointless. Everything somehow circles back to her. And now she is getting married in less than a week.
Cape Town feels too f*cking far away right now.
But distance has never stopped me from getting what I want. The second Siya boarded that flight with Parag, I activated half my old network into motion again. I wanted updates every second once she landed.
Despite leaving the underworld years ago, I still have enough loyal men across countries to start a war if needed. Silent networks. Old loyalties. Favours owed.
Men who still answer my calls without question because, once upon a time, they belonged to the Dark Prince. Those connections are already moving within Cape Town now. Watching. Listening. Quietly infiltrating the Vardhaan Syndicate.
For her.
Money, threats, pressure, blackmail… I genuinely didn’t care what methods my men used to infiltrate the Vardhaan Syndicate.
If someone refused to cooperate, I allowed my men to dig into their hidden accounts, illegal side dealings, secret affairs, addictions, frauds…
anything that could break their loyalty and force them into obedience.
Because right now, the only thing that matters to me is getting information about Siya. Whether she is safe. Whether Parag is touching her. Whether she is breaking down somewhere inside that fortress, pretending to stay strong. I want every update related to her fed directly to me.
Because until I get Siya and her mother out of that hell myself, I need eyes on her every second. That was the whole reason she came to me in the first place. And I would give her that.
She wanted out. A clean life. Freedom from the mafia world. And now that I know what kind of cage she is trapped inside, there is no f*cking way I’m leaving her there.
I don’t even know what to call this feeling that I have for her. I was raised in the mafia. Men like me don’t fall gently. We obsess. We claim. We protect what becomes ours, even if it requires bloodshed.
Siya has been on my mind since our first meeting ten months ago. But ever since she put that garland around my neck in front of the entire valley and kissed me back like she belonged in my arms, something inside me has already accepted her as mine.
Whether she realises it yet or not, whether she wants to fight it or not, she is mine now. And I will bring her back. No matter what it costs me. No matter who stands in my way.
I drag a rough hand down my face and reach for my other phone to contact Trisha, the only GLEN agent I trust enough for this mission.
She is Krish’s wife and one of the very few people capable of infiltrating the Vardhaans without getting caught.
But before I can dial her number, my iPad screen lights up with an incoming video call.
Ayaan.
I stare at his name flashing across the screen, having no patience to deal with him right now.
For the past two days, he has been breathing down my neck over every move I make, ever since I withheld information about the weapons movement near the Nepal route until the final hours before the operation.
But this time, I don’t ignore his call. The moment the video call connects, Ayaan appears first on the screen.
Krish is seated beside him, while Trisha stands behind them with her arms folded.
I’m surprised to see them all together in one frame.
That alone tells me this is not going to be a conversation but a full-blown argument.
The moment Ayaan sees me, his expression turns murderous.
“You killed a contract killer inside RK Estate?” he barks. “Have you completely lost your mind, Raghav?”
My eyes narrow slightly. Another thing he managed to dig up. Which means someone from the RK Estate security detail is feeding him updates without my knowledge. Not that I can stop it. This estate belongs to him as much as it belongs to me. Everything here ultimately traces back to our mother.
I prop the iPad upright against the desk and lean both palms flat on the table.
“He was there to kill Siya,” I say coldly. “What exactly did you expect me to do?”
For a second, Ayaan actually looks taken aback by that revelation. Then he completely loses his temper all over again.
“So you took a bullet for her,” Ayaan fires back. “Saved her. Then killed the shooter afterwards just to send a message to whoever hired him?”
His voice rises further.
“Do you even hear yourself right now, Raghav? Do you even realise what the hell you’re turning back into?”
I hold his gaze while he keeps listing my mistakes one after another.
“A mafia princess walks straight into RK Estate, and you don’t think informing me is important?” he continues furiously. “Then, to protect her, you withhold information about the Reddys’ arms trafficking operation from me. From GLEN. The same organisation you promised your loyalty to.”
My jaw tightens.
“Don’t question my loyalty to you or GLEN,” I retort.
“You know damn well I would never let the underworld to harm any of us. The situation is already handled. The arms deal never went through. We dealt with it. The weapons are in GLEN custody, along with everyone involved. You have more than enough evidence now to bury the Reddys and everybody connected to them.” I lean closer to the screen and look straight at him. “So get over it, Ayaan.”
“Get over it?” he repeats, his voice turning dangerously low. “Do you even understand what your silence has cost us?” The room goes quiet as he continues. “Yes, the operation succeeded. The network was exposed. The ammunition was confiscated. But Parag Reddy escaped.”
My fingers slowly curl into fists over the table.
“Had you informed us earlier,” Ayaan continues, “GLEN could have dismantled that trafficking route long before the movement began. We could have tracked every link in that chain beforehand. We might have even arrested Parag before he ever got on that flight to Cape Town.”
His eyes lock onto mine.
“And that failure matters to me, Raghav. Especially when my own brother chose to hide things from me for a mafia princess.”
Again he called her a Mafia princess!
“Your first loyalty should have been towards me,” he goes on. “Towards GLEN. Towards taking down syndicates using the intel you promised you would always share. Not towards protecting a mafia princess from exposure.”
My fists tighten against the table. The sheer audacity of him to keep throwing that choice in my face again and again.
He still doesn’t understand that I never hid Siya because I was protecting the mafia. I hid her because I was protecting her from the consequences of that world. From GLEN questioning her. Tracking her. Dragging her deeper into investigations she never wanted any part of.
The second her identity came out, Siya would have stopped being a woman trying to escape the mafia. She would have become a target.
“I would f*cking do it again,” I snap so hard my jaw hurts.
Ayaan’s expression darkens further.
“I will protect her every single time if I had to,” I add.