His to Hate.

Chapter - 1

"Beta, there comes a time when every person has to pay for their actions and when it does, there is no stopping it.

Delaying it, yes but stopping it? That is not possible.

And for us as a family, that day has come today, after thirty years.

" Mumma said while I was surveying the condition of our house.

Everything was destroyed, everything was broken.

Mumma and Papa were sitting on the couch and for the first time in my life, I had seen my papa defeated.

"What happened Bhaiya? Who did this to our house and how did you all let it happen!?" I asked my brother who was standing right next to his wife, Ruhani Bhabhi who had tears in her eyes.

Everyone of them, including Mumma stayed silent, did not even bother to meet my eyes.

Like they were guilty of something.

Like something really, really bad just happened and something worse was coming our way.

Papa slightly lifted his head to meet my eyes. They had tears.

I had never seen him cry, never seen him in tears before today and it was breaking my heart. He did not even look at me for more than a split second before he looked down at his entwined fingers again.

I rushed to him, kneeling down on the floor and took his hands in mine as I looked at him.

"What is wrong papa? What happened? Thieves? Dacoits? Who?" I asked him, wiping a lone tear on his cheek away.

He said nothing, did not even look at me again.

I remained seated on the floor but looked around to my family again.

No response.

"Okay, will someone please tell me what the hell is actually going on here?" I tried to ask again, raising my voice higher than my usual pitch this time.

Silence.

"They found us. They finally found us after twenty eight years." Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, mumma answered.

Those words came out as a whisper that echoed in the room because of the pin-drop silence and she sounded more heartbroken than scared.

"Who? Who found us and what twenty eight years?" I asked because I was twenty five years old so whatever this was about, pre-dates me.

"I don't know where and how to start beta." Papa said this time, another tear leaving his right eye.

"You don't have to start anywhere right now Papa. Mumma and you need to go up to your bedroom and rest. I am going to clean here with bhaiya and bhabhi, then I will order us some dinner. All I need to know at this moment is if I need to call the police." I looked at him, questioning.

He shook his head in a no.

"Okay then, go on." I said, standing up and made him stand on his feet too, gripping his shoulders and walked both of them to their room.

What could have happened so bad? What was mumma talking about, paying for actions?

I had about a ten thousand questions going on in my head but this was not the time to demand answers. Everyone here was pretty shaken up and I was not about to make them relive the trauma the second time in a day.

I will have to wait for my answers.

I made my way back to the living room where Ruhani bhabhi was picking up the remains of the showpieces we had and bhaiya was moving the couches. I joined Jai bhaiya and adjusted the TV cabinet back to its place but one of its legs was broken.

"Bhaiya." Was all I could say when the three of us stopped doing what we were and looked at each other.

"It is bad Parthvi. It is bad. There was a reason why we have been moving cities every two years all our lives. We can lose Papa." Bhaiya said before he looked at me in the eye.

"Lose Papa? What are you talking about Bhaiya? What is wrong!!?" I asked, taking two long strides towards him.

"These people are not normal people. This is about the royal family of Ratangarh. They own half of this State and for the past thirty years, they have been searching for us to punish us." He said, keeping one of his palm on my shoulder, pressing it a little.

"Punish us for what? Bhaiya what could we have done to possibly anger such people??" I could not help but ask him but I was not sure even he knows the whole story.

"That is what they are not telling us." He replied, referring to mumma and papa.

"Those men got here, so did the king, Rana Rudra Adhiraj Raisinghania and told papa that he owns him a life." Ruhani bhabhi replied this time and I looked at her.

"Papa owes them a life? What does that even mean?" I asked, more confused than ever.

"We asked both of them what it means, they haven't said a word. All I know is that Rudra Adhiraj Raisinghania was so angry that he let his men destroy every thing that we own here." She said again, looking around, crying.

"Whatever it is, I am sure we will get out of it." I said, more as a consolation to myself than to them but honestly, I could not see how we would get out of it because this cannot be something related to money.

Why will officially the second richest man in the country be after us for money? This was about something else for sure.

After this little attempt of trying to make sense of things, bhaiya and I went back to tidying up the house while bhabhi cooked us some dinner and served mom and dad in their room.

When she finally returned from their room, her eyes were swollen. Too swollen for someone who claimed to be fine.

Nobody was fine.

Not today.

We ate quietly and thenJai bhaiya went upstairs to check on Mumma and Papa again, leaving just me and Ruhani bhabhi sitting on the floor near the shattered coffee table.

She was folding the last set of cushions when she finally broke the silence.

"They were terrified, Parthvi. I've never seen them like that. Papa... he bowed his head in front of that man." She whispered, voice trembling.

I froze.

"Papa bowed?"

She nodded and a cold wave of shiver ran through my body.

Papa was stern, stubborn and proud. He never bowed in front of anyone, ever.

Never.

"What kind of man makes Papa bow?" I murmured.

"One who holds his life... and maybe his past." she said softly and very strange anger started bubbling inside me.

I stood up on my feet and stomped upstairs to my parents room where Jai bhaiya was already there.

"Come in Parthvi, Ruhani. Remaining silent is no longer an option." Papa said, sitting straight up and for the first time in this entire evening, he let his head stay up to look at all of us.

"I have not always been the man I have claimed to be." He started and mumma gave an assuring squeeze to his hand while he continued.

"Before I married your mother, I was a sniper. A national level shooting champion but my family was poor, very poor. I had to find out a way to feed them, to look after your dying grandmother." He stopped, taking a deep breath.

"I....I...." He started again but it seemed like the words were not coming out of his throat.

"Here papa, have a little water." I rushed to pour him a glass of water from the jar kept on the bedside and held the glass close to his lips.

That strange feeling returned to me, but this time, it was in the form of an ache instead of anger. I had never seen this man so defeated in his life, ever and I was trying so hand to not cry in front of him.

"I became a hitman. I became a criminal." The words finally left him.

"Hi....hitman? As.....as.....as in...." I stammered, feeling my heart beat so fast that I could hear it in my ears in the silence that followed him words in the room.

"Yes. I killed people for money." He spoke, throwing his head back as tears constantly made their way to his cheeks and for a moment, everything around me blurred. The bedside lamp, my mother's tears, the trembling hands of my father... all of it disappeared under his words.

"You... killed... people..." I whispered, not wanting to believe it even though he was sitting right in front of me saying it.

His chest rose and fell deeply before he continued.

"I was hired by the people who wanted power. Politics, money, land. Greed knows no limit, beta." His voice was hollow, aged by guilt instead of time. "At first I only took small jobs like gang leaders, businessmen, rivals. But then..."

He paused again.

Mumma closed her eyes as if she already knew what was coming.

"...I was hired for the highest profile job this country had ever planned in secrecy. The assassination of the King and Queen of Ratangarh."

My blood ran cold and I stumbled back a step and felt Jai Bhaiya's hand wrap around my arm as if he knew I would fall.

"I didn't know who the targets were initially. They never reveal identities until the final hour. I had already taken the advance. Enough to treat Maa and enough to pull our family out of starvation. And when I found out....."

"You could have backed out," I snapped, voice trembling with fury.

"Parthvi." Mumma whispered as if asking me not to break further.

But I wasn't breaking.

I was burning.

Papa shook his head slowly. "Backing out would have killed us. They would have slaughtered our entire family. So I went."

"It was supposed to be a clean kill. A single bullet each, from a thousand meters away. I had studied every detail. But..."

Papa's eyes grew distant like he was no longer sitting in this bedroom, but standing somewhere far away. Somewhere stained with blood and regret.

"But something went wrong," he whispered. "Something I never prepared for."

His fingers dug into the blanket as if trying to hold on to his sanity.

"The king and queen were not alone and they weren't just walking to the balcony like expected. They were together with their both sons."

My breath hitched.

Bhabhi's hands flew to her mouth.

"They weren't supposed to be there," Papa continued, voice hollow. "The Queen was holding her younger son... Yuvaan. He was only one. Her other hand was holding Rudra's. He was seven and old enough to know fear."

A tremor rippled through his body.

"I froze."

He said it so quietly we almost missed it.

"I had killed before. But never a mother holding her baby. Never a family."

He exhaled sharply.

"But someone else fired first. Another hired shooter. The bullet missed the King and shattered the pillar beside him. The guards panicked. Everything turned chaotic."

My pulse hammered painfully in my ears.

"The queen screamed. She grabbed both her sons and tried to shield them."

Tears slipped down Papa's temples.

"That was when the final order came through my earpiece."

He swallowed hard.

"One shot. No hesitation."

I felt bile rise in my throat.

"And I obeyed." His voice cracked.

A suffocating silence fell.

"I aimed for the heart. The queen fell instantly. She clutched Yuvaan so tightly that he disappeared beneath her as she collapsed."

My knees weakened.

Jai bhaiya tightened his hold on my arm.

"Then I boulted from there, slipping away in all the chaos. All the screams." He said.

"I ran," he whispered. "But the screams followed me for years. A seven-year-old boy screaming for his mother... screaming for someone to undo what I had done."

Mumma pressed her forehead against his shoulder, breaking beside him.

"For weeks after, every time I closed my eyes, I saw her body fall. I heard the King's cry as he tried to crawl to her and that seven year old boy, he tried to pull her up with his tiny hands. Covered in her blood." His voice fractured. "I still hear him."

No one spoke.

No one moved.

We were there, held hostage by the horror of his confession.

Silence.

A painful, suffocating silence.

"We changed identities. Moved cities. Lived in shadows because I knew that one day he would come."

"And now he has."

I swallowed hard. "How, Papa? How did he find us after all these years?"

Papa gave a humourless chuckle. "Money. Power. Time. You put all three together, beta, and you can eventually dig up any grave... even one as deep as the one I tried to bury our past in."

He wiped his face with the back of his hand, but the tears just kept coming.

"He came today with ten men. Walked into our house like he owned it. And in a way... he does. Because everything we have, every breath we take was bought with blood of his family."

Mumma flinched.

"I told you to stop saying that," she whispered. "We have already paid with our souls for thirty years."

Papa shook his head. "No, Archana. We paid with fear. That is not the same as paying with justice."

The word justice scraped against my ears.

"What what did he say?" I asked, my voice barely there. "When he was here."

Papa's gaze lifted and settled on mine.

"He did not shout, did not even raise his hand. Didn't look around at our house like it mattered. He just sat on that couch," he jerked his chin toward the living room, "and watched me bow."

The image punched the air out of my lungs.

"I tried to speak first," Papa continued. "Tried to say sorry. That I regretted it every day. That I would surrender. But he just laughed."

He swallowed hard.

"Then he said, 'You think your regret means anything to me? My mother is still dead. My father is still trapped in a bed. My brother woke up every night for years, crying in my arms. Your regret does not even scratch the surface.'"

Mumma's shoulders shook with silent sobs.

Papa looked down at his hands. "I told him he could do whatever he wanted to me. Kill me. Drag me to the police. To the media. I was ready." He laughed bitterly. "But that is not what he wanted."

Of course it wasn't. That would have been too easy.

"What does he want, Papa?" Jai asked, voice tight.

Papa's jaw clenched. "He said I don't deserve the mercy of a quick death. He said he wants me to live and watch everything I love crumble the way he watched his world shatter on that balcony."

My heart began pounding so loud I could barely hear.

"And then," Papa whispered, "he said he owns a life in this family. One life... in exchange for the one I took and the one I ruined."

The room spun a little.

"A life?" Ruhani breathed. "As in... one of us?"

"Or all of us," Jai muttered darkly.

"He gave me a choice," Papa said, his voice hollow. "Either I hand over that one life myself, willingly... or he will take all of them, slowly. Piece by piece.

"Who does he want?" I asked, wiping my tears away.

Papa didn't answer immediately.

He just looked at me and somehow, before the words even left his mouth, I already knew.

His silence said more than any sentence ever could as throat tightened and my palms went numb.

"Papa," I whispered, barely breathing, "who?"

He could not bring himself to say it.

"You," Mumma replied in his place. "He wants you, Parthvi."

The floor seemed to tilt beneath me, but I stayed standing because collapsing would make this too real and I wasn't ready for that.

Maybe this was just a long, vivid nightmare and I will wake up in a while to get ready for my final exams of my MBA but I still drew in a slow, trembling breath.

"Then he'll get me," I said quietly, my conscience stabbing daggers inside my heart.

"This family does owe him a life and it will only and only be mine." I declared, finally letting my eyes close.

There was a debt to be paid and I will pay it with my life than watch all my family get killed.