Chapter - 4
For a second, I couldn't hear anything except that one sentence running in my head on repeat.
He is Rudra Adhiraj Raisinghania.
My knees almost forgot how to stay straight and for one stupid moment, I thought I might just sink to the floor and sit in the middle of broken glass like last night on the road all over again.
"Pri!"
Bhaiya's hand caught my arm before my body could decide anything on its own. He stepped between me and the mess instantly.
"Careful." he muttered, voice low but tight. "Don't move."
I looked up at him slowly.
His face confirmed everything my brain had just pieced together.
Fear. Anger. Something close to guilt.
"You're bleeding." he added under his breath.
Only then did I feel it. A sharp sting along the side of my foot.
"Oh," I whispered, because my brain was a little delayed and that was all it could come up with.
Mumma appeared behind him next, one hand on the doorframe, the other pressed flat to her chest as if she was holding her heart in place.
"Parthvi..." Her voice cracked. "Are you okay? Did you get hurt?"
"I'm fine," I said, too quickly. "It just slipped."
My voice did not sound fine.
Her eyes flickered from my face to the broken glass to the small smear of red near my heel and she looked like she might start crying again.
"Stay there." Jai Bhaiya ordered softly. "Don't move your foot."
He bent down, carefully pushing the bigger shards aside with his shoe, making a small clear space near me.
"I said I'm fine." I repeated, but my fingers were still shaking and my throat felt dry again, as if the water I had just drunk had turned to dust inside me.
Mumma reached for my arm, but I pulled back. Not harshly but fast enough that she froze.
"I need... I just need a second." I whispered, and before anyone could stop me, I stepped forward.
A sting shot up through my foot, sharp enough to make me suck in a breath. I tried to ignore it and kept walking because standing there, being stared at, feeling all the panic and history and consequences closing in on me felt unbearable.
But when my heel hit the wet tile, my grip slipped and my body lurched forward.
For a half-second, the world tilted and I could already see the outcome. Me crashing to the floor, knees scraped, palms burning and looking exactly how I felt, Weak.
But somehow, my hand landed on the counter just in time, fingers gripping the edge so tightly my knuckles turned white. The bottle on the counter shook from the impact, water droplets sliding down its side like they were mocking me.
Behind me, I heard a chorus of voices my name in different tones, different levels of panic but I didn't turn around.
I forced my feet to move.
One step.
Another.
The pain flared again, warm and sharp, but numbness chased it quickly but something wet spread under my heel as I walked.
My Blood.
Tiny droplets at first, then smears where the pressure deepened.
No one tried stopping me this time.
Maybe they were shocked or they finally understood I needed space.
Maybe... even they were scared of what I had just realised.
My hand found the hallway wall as I walked, using it more for grounding than balance. The house felt too quiet, even though I could feel everyone breathing behind me.
My heart raced from the truth replaying in my skull.
He knew.
Last night, he knew exactly who I was. He played with me, pretending that I was just a stranger, a silly person who accidentally came in front of his car.
He watched me fall apart, watched me struggle to breathe, watched me ramble like an idiot and he said nothing.
Not a word.
My throat tightened so fast it almost hurt.
By the time I reached my bedroom door, my fingers were trembling again.
"Where are you going Parthvi? Are you going to hide in your room like a little girl or are you going to go out there and stand by your family while that man rips them apart?" I asked to myself, stopping my steps in the middle of my room.
That tiny voice in my head told me to crawl under the bed and disappear.
Hide.
Pretend none of this was real. Pretend that Rudra Adhiraj Raisinghania was not standing in my living room. Pretend that he wasn't here for of me. Pretend that last night wasn't him testing me, measuring me, observing me like I was some unprepared contestant in a game I never chose to play.
But the other voice in my head, the one that sounded like every moral, every lesson, every ounce of spine my parents ever raised me with kept repeating the same thing,
If not now, then when?
If not you, then who?
I sat down slowly on the edge of my bed and lifted my injured foot. A thin line of crimson trailed along the cut. It hurt, actually almost everything hurt.
I tore a tissue from my study desk and pressed it against the cut to stop the blood.
A shaky exhale left me.
"I can't do this." I whispered.
Silence answered.
Then,
No. That's a lie.
I could do this.
I just really, really didn't want to.
After a full minute of staring at nothing, I pushed myself off the bed. My legs felt stiff, but they held.
I walked to the mirror and my reflection looked like someone who had aged ten years in a single night.
Eyes swollen. Mouth tight. Shoulders tense like I was bracing for impact.
But beneath all of that, there was something else too.
A spark.
Something stubborn. Something furious.
Something that refused to be dragged into fear like a puppet.
I tucked my hair behind my ear and muttered, "Fine. If he wants to stand there like the king of the world, then I'm not walking in looking like I survived a war with myself."
I took a deep breath and splashed water on my face. The cold stung but it grounded me and my heartbeat steadied enough to function.
I grabbed a band-aid from my drawer, cleaned the cut quickly and wrapped it. It stung again, but I didn't flinch.
Then, without letting myself think again because thinking was dangerous right now, I walked to the door and placed my hand on the doorknob.
Another breath.
One more.
My fingers tightened around the metal.
"Okay," I whispered to no one, "let's do this."
I opened the door and made my way out to the living room.
"Ranaji, please. I beg you. Please take my life and get done with your revenge but please let my little girl out of this. She was not even born when it happened. She had nothing to do with it." I heard Papa.
Papa was on his knees, actually on his knees. His back bent, shoulders curved, head low in defense. Like if he lowered himself enough, maybe he could shield me from the storm standing three feet in front of him.
My breath faltered.
Mumma was crying silently, so silently that the tears weren't even rolling fast. They were just stuck under her lashes like they didn't know how to fall anymore. Jai bhaiya stood tense, fists clenched at his sides, jaw locked so tight I could almost hear the pressure in his teeth.
Papa finally forced his head up, voice trembling but still trying to assemble dignity from the ashes. "She had nothing to do with it. Whatever you want from me, whatever hatred you carry let it stay between us. Please don't bring her into this."
Rudra tilted his head slightly, almost thoughtfully, before he finally spoke and the room felt smaller.
"Your life," he said slowly, like each word was chosen and carved, "is worth less than the breath it took to beg."
He took one step forward to make space shrink between himself and my father.
"You think death is punishment?" he asked, and his question didn't sound like curiosity, it sounded like mockery. "Death ends suffering. It silences consequences. It frees people like you. Death is mercy."
Papa swallowed, but his voice was gone.
"I do not deal in mercy." His gaze hardened and it looked cruelty. "But unlike you, I am not a murderer."
His words hurt me like a tight slap because they were not accusation. They were the truth.
Mumma flinched, a small broken sound catching in her throat. Jai's jaw clenched even harder, if that was even possible. Papa's shoulders dropped a fraction, like the last bit of air inside him had finally given up.
He didn't stop.
He wasn't done.
"You did not pull a trigger in rage." he continued, his voice so calm it made everything worse. "You were not drunk. You were not provoked in the heat of the moment. You were hired. You planned. You aimed. You chose. You chose to kill my mother. You planned on killing my father."
Each word felt like it was being hammered into Papa's chest and echoing out into all of us but didn't blink.
"You knew exactly who you were shooting at." he went on. "You knew his name. Adhiraj Raisinghania. You knew he had a wife. You knew they had children."
Papa's fingers dug into his own knees.
"You knew he always walked ahead," Rudra said, like he was remembering every detail one by one, "and that she always walked half a step behind, holding the baby.
You knew the route. You knew the timing.
You knew the distance from your scope to the hotel entrance.
You knew where to stand so no one would see you. "
My stomach twisted.
I didn't want these images in my head but he was putting them there anyway.
"It was clean work." Rudra said, and the praise inside that sentence made bile rise up my throat. "Neat. Professional. One bullet aimed at my father. Just one."
He paused, his jaw tightening for the first time.
"But you miscalculated," he said quietly. "You shifted half a degree to the left. Or maybe the wind did. Who knows."
A muscle ticked near his eye.
"You did not kill him." he continued. "Not completely. You shattered his spine. You turned a proud man who never asked anyone for anything into someone who cannot stand, cannot walk, cannot even move his own fingers without help."
Mumma covered her mouth fully now, shoulders shaking.
"He did not die." Rudra said. "He just stopped living."
The room felt too small, the walls too close.
"And then," he added, the slight tilt of his head returning, "you fired the second shot, because that's what you were paid for, isn't it? Two bullets. One for him. One for her."
Papa's eyes were wet now, but no tears fell. They just stayed there, heavy, stuck, like they were afraid of touching his skin.
"She was holding my brother." Rudra said, and his voice didn't crack, but something inside it changed. "One year old. One. Barely learning to walk, to talk, to call her Maa and my father Baba.
I felt my fingers curl into my palm so tightly my nails pressed crescents into the skin.
"You shot her through the chest." he stated, like a report. "She fell. He fell and my brother came down with her."
My lungs forgot their actual job.
"The world calls it tragedy." he said quietly. "News channels say unfortunate accident, brutal attack. People shake their heads and say how sad and move on to the next channel. But you know what it was, Mr. Sharma?"
He leaned forward, just slightly.
"It was work to you." he answered for him. "A job. A transaction. A way to feed your family."
Papa shut his eyes, tears finally spilling over, sliding down his cheeks and dropping straight to the floor.
"And while you were counting money," Rudra said, eyes still fixed on him, "I was counting breaths. My mother's last ones. My brother's scared ones. My father's broken ones."
Bhabhi's hand found my mumma's and squeezed and I realised my own throat hurt, like I had swallowed shards of that glass from the kitchen.
"I grew up," he went on, "watching my father stare at the ceiling because that was all he could move enough to see.
I watched my brother grow up holding a framed photograph instead of the woman who gave him life.
I watched every festival, every milestone, every birthday bleed around the edges because there was always one chair empty and one bed that never saw its owner walk away from it again. "
He finally straightened fully.
"And all that time," he said, "you lived."
His gaze swept over the house again to the photos on the wall, the furniture, the stupid curtains Mumma had argued about for weeks.
"You earned," he added. "You ate. You slept. You sent your kids to school and college. You called it family life."
He let out a humourless exhale that might have been a laugh in another universe.
"You did all of that," he finished, "on top of the bodies you left behind."
Papa's shoulders shook now and for the first time in my life, I watched my father look small.
Jai took a step forward again, voice strained. "He knows he was wrong. He has been paying for it his whole life, you don't...."
Rudra cut him a look so cold that even from across the room, I felt the temperature drop.
"Has he?" Rudra asked. "Has he really?"
His eyes slid back to Papa.
"Tell me," he said, voice softer now in a way that felt dangerous, "did you ever once go to the man whose life you ruined and apologise? To the boy who lost his mother because of your accuracy? To the child who has never known what it is like to be held by the woman who gave birth to him?"
Papa opened his mouth but nothing came out. His throat bobbed uselessly.
"No," Rudra answered, not waiting. "Of course you did not. You hid. You changed your life, your name, your cities. You let time do the cleaning for you."
His eyes burned into him.
"But time does not erase everything." he said. "Not for all of us."
Silence pressed against my ears so hard I could hear my own heartbeat.
"Ranaji..." Mumma whispered, finally finding her voice. "Please. We know... we know you have every right to hate us, but... please, don't take it out on our children. They didn't even know..."
"That is exactly why it works." he interrupted flatly.
Her lips parted in shock.
He didn't soften. Not for her. Not for anyone.
"I am not here to kill you." he said again to Papa, as if he wanted no confusion left. "Your death would take seconds. My men could handle it without me even stepping foot in this house. But that would be too easy."
He turned his head, his eyes finding mine and holding them still.
"I told you." he said, still speaking to Papa, but aimed at me. "Death is mercy and I am not interested in mercy."
My fingers tightened around the back of the chair so hard I could feel the wood bite into my palm.
"I have enough power," he continued calmly, "to take your son's company from him and leave him bankrupt.
Enough influence to make sure any hospital your wife walks into will suddenly lose her reports.
Enough reach to ensure your daughter-in-law's family name is dragged through rumours they never recover from. "
Mumma staggered a step back, like the floor had moved.
"And I have enough cruelty," he said, the word not sounding like an insult when he applied it to himself, "to bring each of you to the edge of a life you no longer want to live."
His stare sharpened on me.
"But why waste all that," he asked, head tilting again, "when there is a simpler way to balance the equation?"
My heart lodged itself somewhere in my throat.
I knew.
I knew he was about to say something that would rearrange everything I thought I understood about my future.
"You took my family's happiness and built yours on top of it," he said to Papa. "So now I will take yours and rebuild mine on top of that."
My voice finally stumbled out of me, hoarse and small. "What... what does that even mean?"
He didn't look surprised that I spoke.
If anything, his eyes almost seemed like they'd been waiting.
"It means," he said slowly, like he was explaining something simple to a very slow student, "that your life, from this moment on, belongs to me."
Mumma choked on a sob. Bhaiya moved, but one of the men behind Rudra shifted and he froze mid-step like an invisible wall had dropped in front of him.
He didn't blink.
"You will breathe because I allow it," he continued, and every syllable landed heavy in the pit of my stomach.
"You will stay where I decide, study if I decide, speak to who I permit.
You will get up when I say and sit when I say and your father.
.." he flicked a glance down at Papa, "will like with this truth. "
I stared at him, the room blurring at the edges.
"You can't do that," I heard myself say, even though my voice didn't sound like it belonged to me. "You can't just... take someone's life and decide what they do with it."
His answer was immediate.
"I already did," he replied, and I hated how steady his voice was. "Once. When I was a child and a man I had never met blew my world apart for money."
His gaze sharpened, pinning me in place.
"This time," he said, "I am simply returning the favour with precision."
He finally said my name then, for the first time, like a verdict.
"Welcome to your debt, Parthvi Sharma." he murmured. "You are going to spend the rest of your life paying it."