CHAPTER 1
RAGHAV
Nine Months Later
RK Estate, Shivtara Valley, Himachal Pradesh
The air is thick with cigarette smoke, choking the room with its bitter stench. I know this place. Too well.
It’s dark and eerily quiet, except for the creak of my shoes sticking to the blood pooling on the floor. With every step I take inside, the walls seem to close in, each one marked with the Bat emblem. The symbol that once defined me, bound me, damned me.
I’ve lived in this stench since birth. I’ve killed in it. But tonight, the smell feels worse than I remember. Blood. Alcohol. Smoke. All tangled together until my stomach twists, and makes me nauseous.
And then I hear it.
A scream.
High-pitched, raw, filled with terror I’ve never heard in this place before.
It’s not a man. It’s a woman.
What the hell is a woman doing here? In this cage, where my father and I turned enemies into corpses? Where mercy never crossed the threshold!
Her cries grow sharper the closer I get. I’ve seen men beg in here. Watched them crumble. Watched blood spill until the floors drowned in it. But none of it touched me like this. None of it felt like… this.
My feet move faster, the rage building before I even know why. Whoever’s torturing her is already dead. I’ll kill him with my bare hands if I have to. Because there’s one thing I’ve never done, one line I’ve never crossed. I do not hurt women. Never have. Never will.
My pace quickens until I finally see her. She’s tied to a chair, her body limp, her face twisted in agony. Her voice trembles as she pleads for mercy. Then she slowly turns towards me, and I freeze.
It’s her.
My mother, with her face partially burnt.
Red-hot rage burns through me as her face lifts towards mine. Her eyes are not filled with tears but with blood. Seeing her broken like this feels like a nightmare carved straight out of hell. My mother shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t look like this.
And then I see the man responsible for her misery.
From the shadows behind her, my father steps forward.
Tej Khurana. The man who carved this empire out of blood and fear.
His gaze is cold and merciless, as always.
The Bat emblem branded on the back of his palm glows faintly as his hand slowly rises.
He aims a gun directly at my mother’s head.
“No.”
The word tears from my throat like a roar as I grip the gun already in my hand. The moment his finger twitches on the trigger, mine pulls first. The shot echoes through the room like thunder, splattering blood across the walls and across my face.
His blood. My father’s.
His lifeless body collapses to the floor with a dull thud.
He’s dead. I ended his life and saved my mother from misery.
I look back at the chair to tell my mother that she is safe, but it is empty.
There’s no one there. She is gone. Her tortured form dissolves into the smoke as if she had never been there at all.
As if it were all an illusion. A ghost of my guilt.
And now, only one truth remains.
My father. The fallen king.
And me… his heir. The Dark Prince.
Standing in his blood, seething with rage.
I jolt awake from the nightmare, my chest rising and falling as if I’ve run for miles, my skin slick with sweat, my heart pounding so hard it roars in my ears.
The room is still dark, but it is not the cabin I saw in the nightmare. This is my bedroom in my villa at the RK Estate. The silence here should calm me. But it never does. Not when the ghosts of my past keep coming back like this in the form of nightmares.
It has been almost two and a half years since I pulled that trigger in Mumbai. Two and a half years since I killed my father, though not exactly in the way I see it in my dreams. I buried the Bat mafia syndicate with him. Left it all behind that night. But the nightmares… they never left.
Rehab, counselling, medication, every distraction one could think of… I’ve tried it all. Yet none of them worked. Maybe because I never truly wanted it to. Maybe this torment is what I deserve. A reminder, every night, of who I once was and the man I can never fully outrun.
I grab the glass on the nightstand and down the cold water in one gulp, trying to wash away the taste of smoke and blood still clinging to my skin.
Then immediately my hand finds the phone, and with a flick of my thumb, soft music begins to play.
It’s the same track, the same rhythm, the same notes that have followed me for almost two decades.
Or maybe even longer. As the melody drifts through the room, I close my eyes and take a deep breath, hold it, and then slowly release it.
Again. And again. The ritual never changes.
This music has been my weapon as much as my refuge.
Whenever the beast inside me threatens to break free, I play this same music.
It’s what has kept me human. Or at least something close to it.
But sometimes I wonder how long can I keep that darkness inside me from rising again?
There’s so much rage and guilt buried within me that it makes every step towards this life I’ve chosen feel harder than it should.
I know what I should do, the man I should become… but I don’t know how far I’ll have to go to redeem myself, or if I’ll even make it there.
The 6:30 a.m. alarm suddenly buzzes beside me.
It’s time to move. Time to push the ghosts back into their corner.
Swinging my legs off the bed, I peel off the sweat-soaked nightshirt clinging to my skin and step into the shower.
Cold water crashes over me, washing away the remnants of blood and ghosts for now.
But I know the truth. The old mafia heir, Raghav Khurana, still lives inside me. He always will. But for the world outside these walls, he has to stay buried in the shadows.
Because out here, I’m not the mafia heir. I’m Raghav Kundra, the man who owns and runs his mother’s ancestral legacy, the RK Estate.
This land has saved me in ways I cannot explain.
Two years ago, when Kailash Uncle entrusted me with the responsibility of the estate and vineyard, I was unsure if I could handle it.
My fraternal twin, Ayaan, was already buried in his duties at GLEN, and the estate needed someone to take charge.
Someone to steer it, to push it further, and to take it to the next level. So I tried and gave it my all.
In just two years, I transformed that modest vineyard into something more. A luxury resort where guests come for wine tastings, vineyard tours, and the serenity of these hills. A place where visitors escape the noise of their busy lives.
And somewhere along the way, while building this haven for strangers, I began building something within myself too.
It wasn’t easy. Earning the trust of the locals, the staff, and the villagers scattered across Shivtara Valley demanded more from me than any empire ever had.
For a man who once commanded men with fear, learning to win them with love…
that was the real challenge. Now, the locals don’t just see me as their own; they respect me…
have accepted me. And eventually, I began treating them as mine too.
I never asked for this transformation, but maybe it’s the only thing keeping me human.
****************
For a mafia prince, mornings used to start with guns laid out on the table, bullets being counted, and men whispering in hushed tones about who was cheating us, who was planning to betray us, and which family wanted us dead before the week was over.
That was my world. Blood on my shoes before breakfast, paranoia my daily companion, and the sharp scent of gunpowder clinging to my skin, stronger than any cologne.
Now, my mornings are starkly different. I wake up to silence instead of gunfire.
There are no strategy meetings about survival or enemies to anticipate.
At dawn, I mount on my jet-black stallion, Zephyr, and ride out into Shivtara Valley.
The morning air here is cold and clean, and it clears my head better than coffee ever could.
With every breath, it feels like I’m inhaling a new life I never thought I would have.
The valley is already alive at this hour, with mist settling low over the rows of grapevines spread across RK Estate.
Seventy percent of this land is vineyard, the very soul of my mother’s legacy.
Twenty-five percent is the luxury resort I built, a kingdom of its own, and within the last five percent, tucked at the farthest edge where the hills fold into themselves, is my villa.
From there, I overlook it all. I control it all.
As I ride Zephyr through the vineyard, the workers lift their hands in greeting as I pass, their smiles easy and familiar. I nod in response, occasionally stopping to check on the week’s yield and to ensure that the irrigation pumps are working properly.
Every answer, every detail, matters to me.
Not because I doubt my men, but out of a sense of responsibility.
This place deserves my full attention. It’s more than just a business.
It’s about survival. My redemption lies in this soil, in the sweat of these men and women who trust me with their livelihood. And I won’t fail them. Ever.
I dismount near the far end of the vineyard, roll up my sleeves, and step in to help the workers lift the heavy crates.
The Raghav Kundra they know doesn’t just stand back and watch; he works alongside them.
That’s how I earned their trust and proved I wasn’t just another rich heir barking orders from his ivory tower. I was one of them.
***************
By the time I ride Zephyr back towards the villa, the sun is high in the sky, burning away the last traces of the mist. It’s time to let my business persona replace the man in the fields.