Chapter 8
Abhay immediately moved closer to his wife. ‘Siya, what’s wrong?’
Dhruv had already caught on. ‘What did Dad do now?’
Siya slammed the thick stack of pages onto the coffee table. ‘Every time I think he can’t get any worse, he proves me wrong in the most disgusting way possible.’
Abhay reached for her arm and gently turned her to face him. ‘What did he do?’
‘It’s clear now that he planned all of this years ago and made sure we’d never see it coming.’
Kashvi hesitated before picking up the crumpled pages. A sick feeling spread through her gut as she reached the section detailing the financial provisions for future heirs.
She read the first line carefully.
This deed identifies itself as a private family trust established by Dayanand Kashyap in 1975 for the benefit of his future descendants.
To be an eligible beneficiary of the family trust fund, the lawful heir of the Kashyap family shall be entitled to receive a sum of one hundred crores from the trust corpus upon attaining the age of twenty-five years, subject to the following conditions:
·The Beneficiary must remain a legal resident of India
·The Beneficiary must not be disowned by the Kashyap family
·The Beneficiary must not transfer shares outside the family
·The Beneficiary must not have any criminal convictions or pending charges under Indian law
·The Beneficiary must be legally married at the time of claiming the inheritance.
If the above conditions are not met, the entitled amount shall revert to the said beneficiary’s parents or legal guardians, as defined under the trust structure.
Her mind resisted the conclusion as Kashvi read the list again and again, hoping the repetition might somehow change what she was seeing.
‘I need to be married to claim my inheritance,’ Kashvi said, testing the words aloud, and the realisation hit her with devastating clarity.
They had rejected her claim because she wasn’t married.
She was truly fucked.
Siya spoke bitterly. ‘There is no limit to how far he’d go to control our lives.’
‘What do you mean, Di?’
‘I was so stupid. I should’ve seen it when he was so desperate for us to—’ Siya cut off, nervously glancing at Abhay.
‘Desperate for you to?’ Kashvi urged.
At his nod, Siya turned back to her. ‘He told me that if I didn’t marry Abhay and merge our family businesses the way he wanted, he’d marry you off to Ravindra Bhatt.’
‘What the fuck?’ Swayam’s voice dropped into a near growl.
‘Bhatt uncle? He could pass for my grandfather!’ Kashvi shot back, furious.
Just how heartless could Dad be?
The question came from the part of her heart that still wanted him to be a father, even though she knew better.
Siya’s expression softened. ‘That’s exactly what I had told him.’
‘But he couldn’t have been serious,’ Swayam said, trying to piece it together. ‘If he had actually married her off, Kashvi would’ve become eligible for the inheritance.’
Siya threw her hands up in the air. ‘Exactly! That’s why I’m pissed. He manipulated me.’
Dhruv added quietly, ‘I think Dad was probably going to hide the criteria until after Kashvi’s birthday. Then her share would go to him too.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me Dad was using me to force you into marriage?’ Kashvi demanded, her agitation spilling over.
‘I didn’t think you needed to know,’ Siya said cautiously.
‘That’s a ridiculous excuse, and you know it. What if it hadn’t been Abhay Jiju? What if he’d tried to marry you off to someone like Bhatt uncle?’
‘I’d never have let that happen,’ Abhay said with a cocky smile. ‘She’s my jaan, after all.’
Swayam inhaled sharply beside her, dragging a hand through his hair. ‘I don’t get it. I remember Mihu and I teased Siya about her inheritance when she turned twenty-five.’ He turned to Siya and asked, ‘How did you receive the money back then, but now there’s suddenly a clause?’
Siya sat onto the edge of the sofa. ‘I never got my inheritance.’
Kashvi remembered that time vaguely. The week before Siya’s twenty-fifth birthday, she had seemed distant. When she had asked about it, Siya had assured her she would handle it.
But she had never explained how.
‘What do you mean you never got anything? What did you do?’ Kashvi asked.
Siya went still. ‘When I was notified about the inheritance, I was told to submit the same paperwork. But before I could, Dad called me into his cabin. He told me the business was failing, and that I had to give him all the money or Kashyap Luxe would go bankrupt.’
Kashvi felt her stomach twist.
Siya continued, her gaze dropping to the floor. ‘He made it sound like everything we had built would collapse, and I would be the reason why. So I gave it to him.’
‘He was playing you! Didn’t you see that?’ Kashvi protested.
‘I realise that now, when it’s too late. But I wasn’t careless about it. I made him promise he would never touch your share of the money. Not for any reason.’
Kashvi’s voice came out harsher than she intended. ‘But you sacrificed your share!’
Siya fidgeted with the ring on her finger. ‘I did what I had to do. He said he was looking at other ways to survive, including your trust fund. I wasn’t going to let him take everything from you too.’
Kashvi could only stare at her, unable to escape the simple, unbearable truth that Siya had given up everything for her. It pressed against her throat until it became difficult to breathe.
‘That’s exactly the problem, Di. You keep acting like it’s your responsibility to fix everything for me.’
Siya let out a strained breath. ‘I was only making sure you wouldn’t have to deal with something like this too.’
‘That’s the same thing. You decide what I can handle, what I can’t, what I should be protected from, and you never stop to ask if I even want that.’
‘I don’t care if you think I’m overbearing or emotional. When it comes to protecting you, there is no wrong choice for me.’
‘You don’t understand!’ Kashvi said, her voice turning frantic. ‘I don’t want you to keep losing things because of me.’
Confusion flickered across Siya’s face. ‘You make it sound like I’ve lost a lot because of you.’
You have.
Abhay stepped closer, coming to stand just behind Siya. His hand rested lightly against her back. ‘Kashu, Siya did that because she cares about you more than anything.’
Kashvi turned to him, frustrated. ‘That doesn’t make it the right choice. And it’s still not working, is it?’
Dhruv, who had been quiet until then, pushed himself away from the wall. ‘It was never supposed to. Since Siya rejected her share, she never learned about the marriage criteria. Now he gets your share too.’
‘Wait,’ Kashvi cut in, her eyes widening. ‘If he gets my share… does that mean he gets to keep my chairmanship too?’
‘I don’t know,’ Siya admitted after a moment. ‘Piyush didn’t say anything about that.’
That couldn’t happen.
‘Don’t you still have one more envelope to open?’ Luv said, pointing towards the thin brown envelope beneath the stack of strewn papers.
Dhruv, standing closest, hesitated before picking it up. He tore the envelope open and unfolded the pages, scanning through them.
He exhaled slowly, dragging a hand over his face before looking up at them. ‘This is… his proposal to dissolve the foundation, tear it down, and sell the land to a residential development group.’
Siya swore under her breath and snatched the stack from him, flipping through page after page. ‘He’s outlined the liquidation of assets and plans to send the children and elders in our care to different institutions.’
Kashvi dug her nails into her palm. ‘He can’t just…’ she muttered under her breath.
Something inside her recoiled at the thought of how easily her father could shatter the fragile stability those people had built.
‘It’s already been approved. The dissolution date is set for the day after your birthday,’ Dhruv said as gently as he could.
The ground seemed to shift beneath her feet.
It was happening. Her worst fears were coming true.
Abhay placed a steady hand on her shoulder. ‘Kashu, there are ways to stop this. There have to be legal protections.’
‘Yes,’ Siya said immediately, clasping her hands tightly together. ‘We’ll stall it, block the sale, and challenge him in court. I don’t care how long it takes. We’re not letting him take this too. I promise.’
‘You know, all of you are missing a very simple solution,’ Luv said, his gaze flickering briefly towards Swayam.
‘And what’s that?’ Siya asked impatiently.
Luv glanced at Swayam again, who gave the slightest nod. Then he looked back at them and smiled. ‘Kashu could get married.’
‘What?’ Kashvi shouted, her brows knitting together, hoping she’d misheard him.
‘No. Absolutely not. That’s not even an option,’ Siya said.
Luv didn’t back down. ‘Why not? We’re talking about legal routes that could take months, more likely years. Will the organisations under you survive that long?’
Siya glared at him. ‘That doesn’t mean she should—’
Luv held his hands up. ‘I’m not saying it’s an ideal option. I’m pointing out our quickest solution.’
Kashvi only caught fragments of their argument. Her mind raced through every possible way she could save the foundation, but every thought kept hitting a dead end.
Her heart sank as she realised that, compared to everything that would be lost, everything that would fall apart if her father won, getting married no longer felt as impossible as it had just moments ago.
Would she be able to look at the empty ground where the foundation once stood, knowing she had refused to take the one chance to stop it from crumbling? Would she be able to carry on knowing she had chosen her own fears over everything that depended on her? Would she ever be able to live with that?
The answer made her chest tighten.
No, I wouldn’t.
‘It doesn’t have to be a real marriage. It can just be on paper, just enough to make sure he doesn’t get his hands on the foundation,’ Luv suggested.
Siya turned to him, her eyes blazing. ‘And what? Like that doesn’t count as being committed to someone? Don’t you think doing this means he still gets to dictate our lives?’
Luv shrugged. ‘I think it’s the only way to stop him. He can’t possibly know that Kashvi doesn’t want to get married. We just have to show everyone she fell crazily in love and got married. It’s only a coincidence it happened before her twenty-fifth birthday.’
But Dad knows.
The pit in her stomach deepened as Kashvi thought back to that one conversation with her father. The words still echoed in her memory. She had told him she would never get married, and men like him were exactly the reason why. He had only smiled.
‘Good. Don’t,’ he’d said.
At the time, she had thought she’d won the last word. Now Kashvi realised how foolish that had been. Now she felt, in full brutal force, what it meant to lose to her father.
He must have been counting on her to keep the vow she had made in front of him.
But he had underestimated just how good Kashvi was at disappointing him.
Siya had once stepped in to protect her without hesitation. This was her turn, no matter what it required of her.
Kashvi declared, ‘I’ll do it. I’ll get married.’
‘No, you’re not doing that,’ Siya snapped, her refusal immediate.
Kashvi replied firmly, ‘You don’t get to say that now when you did the exact same thing.’
Siya’s eyes flashed, the comparison hitting something raw. ‘That’s not the same. I did what I had to do to protect you.’
‘And how is this different?’ Kashvi asked. ‘The people at the foundation matter to me too, Di. They’re not just names on a list. They’re people I’ve known and grown up around. Do you really think I have other options?’
‘You do. We’ll figure something out. We’ll fight this the right way.’
Kashvi insisted, ‘But we don’t have that kind of time. Don’t you remember how Maa used to take me there? She always said the foundation was her legacy, and you’re asking me to stand back and let Dad ruin this too?’
Siya shot back, ‘I’m asking you not to destroy your life to stop him.’
‘I’ll do what it takes,’ Kashvi said, unwilling to back down.
‘You don’t even understand what you’re saying. Marriage isn’t some temporary solution you can just walk away from later,’ Siya retorted.
Kashvi knew she couldn’t argue with that. Instead, she said, ‘When you decided to get married out of nowhere, you asked me to trust you. I did, even when I didn’t understand it. I’m asking you to do the same for me now. Please just trust me.’
Siya didn’t respond, but Kashvi could see the urge to fight, to push back, to stop her.
Siya exhaled harshly, shaking her head. ‘Let’s say you do this. Have you even thought about who you’re going to marry? Your birthday is in two days.’
Kashvi’s mind went blank. The certainty she had clung to slipped as the gap in her plan became painfully obvious. She hadn’t thought that far ahead.
‘That’s what I thought,’ Siya said, firmly enough that it stung. ‘You’re telling me you’re going to find someone, convince him to be your husband, and get married before that?’
Her silence answered for her.
Then Swayam spoke from beside her. ‘You don’t have to look that far. I’m already convinced.’
Kashvi turned to him and found his eyes fixed on her.
‘You could marry me.’