(Present Time – The Singhania Estate)
The laughter... ENDED.
Not slowly. Not awkwardly tapering off. It simply... STOPPED.
One moment, Ranchit bhaiya was passionately, loudly arguing that spinach-mango juice was a superior nutritional choice to chocolate cookies. Abhiraj bhaiya looked absolutely ready to start a civil war over the sheer disrespect to baked goods.
The next—
Click.
A measured, rhythmic footstep echoed somewhere beyond the grand hallway. The sharp tap of a walking stick against marble.
Silence settled over the massive living room instantly. Not heavy. Disciplined.
Lakshya didn't move. He remained exactly where he was, sitting relaxed beside me, one massive arm resting comfortably along the back of the velvet sofa. Only his dark eyes lifted toward the open doorway. Calm. Unreadable. Ready.
Maan noticed it too. He barely glanced toward the corridor before quietly, smoothly setting his crystal glass onto the table, adjusting his posture just a fraction. No tension. No panic. Just respectful acknowledgment.
"...Uncle's back." His voice remained as steady and deadpan as ever. That was all.
Meanwhile... Across the room—
Abhiraj bhaiya f-r-o-z-e. Absolutely, comically froze. The giant chocolate cookie halfway to his mouth remained suspended in midair, his jaw slightly slack.
His eyes s-l-o-w-l-y drifted toward the hallway. "...No."
Ranchit bhaiya followed his horrified gaze. "...NO."
Both highly-trained, lethal brothers looked at each other. Then down at the coffee table. Then back at each other.
Pure, unadulterated horror.
"The cookies." Abhiraj whispered it like he'd just discovered a catastrophic national disaster.
Ranchit looked down. The silver trays. The suspicious green juice. The half-eaten pastries. The scattered, sugary crumbs dusting the pristine glass table.
His face completely drained of color. "...We're dead."
Maan didn't even look at them, casually brushing an invisible speck of lint from his suit. "No."
"They're snacks, Maan!" Ranchit hissed in a panic.
"You don't understand." Abhiraj shook his head, his eyes wide.
"I do."
"No, bhaiya." Ranchit shook his head DRAMATICALLY, stepping backward. "You've forgotten the trauma." "The last time Uncle saw Abhi eating imported cookies thirty minutes before dinner..."
Abhiraj covered his face with his free hand, shivering. "...He gave us a forty-minute lecture on discipline and digestion."
"Forty-six," Maan corrected automatically, not missing a beat.
Abhiraj looked deeply offended, lowering his hand. "You timed it?"
"I time everything."
Lakshya let out the faintest, barely audible breath through his nose. Not quite a laugh. Close. Very, very close.
Ranchit pointed DRAMATICALLY at the coffee table like it was an active bomb. "Hide everything."
Maan looked at him through his silver frames. "...Why?"
"So Uncle doesn't start another lecture!"
"He isn't going to execute you over cookies, Ranchit."
"He might."
"He won't."
"He absolutely might!"
Abhiraj aggressively grabbed the silver tray, balancing it on one arm. "I am not taking that risk. I am too young and handsome to die."
Without another word— He bolted. Literally sprinted toward the side exit of the living room.
"ABHI." Ranchit immediately chased after him, his suit jacket flying. "Take the juice too!"
I sat frozen on the sofa, watching both of them disappear through the doorway like two terrified criminals fleeing a crime scene.
I blinked. Once. Twice. Then looked up at Lakshya, completely baffled. "...Are they always like this?"
Lakshya's expression remained perfectly composed, but the corners of his eyes crinkled with quiet amusement. "They've always had a talent..." A tiny pause. "...for creating problems that absolutely do not exist."
Beside him— Even Maan sighed, rubbing his temples. "They're exhausting."
Outside in the hallway... The footsteps continued. Slow. Measured. Unhurried.
Uncle Anant had arrived.
The footsteps finally stopped.
SILENCE settled over the room. Not an awkward silence. A familiar one. The kind of heavy, respectful silence that arrived the second someone truly important walked into a room.
The double doors opened fully.
A tall man stepped inside. Silver streaked elegantly through his neatly combed dark hair. A crisp, immaculate white kurta. A tailored charcoal Nehru jacket. One hand resting lightly, regally on a silver-tipped walking stick.
He didn't look intimidating because he tried to. He simply was. Power radiated from him in quiet, undeniable waves.
His sharp eyes swept across the massive room. Once. Nothing escaped them.
Not the abandoned, glowing green juice glass. Not the suspicious cookie crumbs Ranchit had failed to wipe from beneath the coffee table. Not Abhiraj, who had somehow silently re-entered the room and was now standing far, far too innocently by the bookshelf for anyone to believe him.
His gaze lingered on the two younger brothers.
"...Finished?"
Abhiraj smiled. A very bright, very fake, entirely panicked smile. "The weather is lovely today, Uncle."
Ranchit s-l-o-w-l-y turned toward him, his expression flat. "...Really?"
"What?" Abhiraj whispered through his teeth.
"That's your master plan? The weather?"
"I panicked."
"...Clearly."
Uncle Anant said absolutely nothing. He simply looked at Abhiraj. Then at the suspiciously empty space on the table surrounded by crumbs. Then back at Abhiraj.
"...How many?"
Abhiraj blinked, feigning utter ignorance. "...How many what?"
"Cookies."
"..." Abhiraj swallowed hard. "...Three."
Ranchit coughed loudly into his fist. "Liar."
Abhiraj glared at him with the intensity of a thousand suns. "Traitor."
"Five," Ranchit corrected smoothly, looking at Uncle Anant. "There were five."
"There were six!" Maan said flatly from his armchair.
Both younger brothers snapped their heads toward him, betrayed. "You counted?"
"I always count."
Uncle Anant sighed. A slow... Patient... Incredibly long-suffering sigh of a man dealing with toddlers trapped in the bodies of lethal men.
"I leave for three days..." His stern gaze moved from Abhiraj... To Ranchit... Then briefly to Maan. "...and somehow, adulthood completely leaves with me."
Ranchit rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. "In our defense..."
"You don't have one."
"...Fair."
For the first time since he walked in... The corner of Uncle Anant's mouth twitched. Barely.
Then... His dark eyes moved past the three of them. And landed... Toward me.
Everything changed. Instantly.
The sharp, terrifying authority disappeared. The stern, unbreakable expression softened. Not completely. Just enough. Enough that the deep lines around his eyes suddenly seemed older. Kinder. Immensely, deeply sad.
I didn't know him. I instinctively shrank backward, pressing closer to Lakshya's side.
Without even looking at me... Lakshya noticed. He always noticed.
His large, warm hand slipped off the back of the sofa and rested gently against my small shoulder. Warm. Steady. Grounding.
"It's alright, baccha." His voice was a low, protective rumble in his chest. Quiet. "This is Uncle Anant."
...
Uncle.
The word echoed loudly inside my head.
Uncle.
Something inside my chest... STOPPED.
The bright golden lights of the mansion violently blurred. The rich smell of polished wood... Fresh flowers... And sweet chocolate... S-l-o-w-l-y disappeared from my senses.
Replaced by peeling, damp walls. Cold, biting rain. The smell of rusted iron. A freezing wind howling through broken glass.
My tiny fingers curled tightly, desperately into the expensive fabric of Lakshya's sleeve.
Five years ago... Before he became the cold, untouchable man everyone feared... Before the massive empire. Before the tailored suits. Before the blood on his hands.
There had been a boy. A fifteen-year-old boy... Crying alone in the dark, freezing rain.
(Five Years Ago – The Orphanage)
The orphanage was asleep. Or at least... It pretended to be.
Rain hammered relentlessly against the rusted, decaying tin roof, sounding like a thousand angry drums. The entire old building groaned and shuddered with every violent gust of wind. Dirty water slipped constantly through deep cracks in the ceiling... Dripping into dented, hollow steel buckets placed haphazardly across the hallway.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Five-year-old Riya lay curled into a tight, miserable little ball beneath her thin, scratchy blanket.
Her tiny body was somewhat warm. Her feet... Weren't.
The biting cold always found its malicious way through the holes in the rotting mattress. She pulled the rough blanket a little higher, tucking it under her chin. Closed her big, sleepy eyes. Tried very hard to sleep.
Then— She heard it.
A sound. Soft. Broken.
Someone... Was crying.
Not loudly. Not the dramatic way the other children cried after falling down in the mud or getting scolded.
This was entirely different. It sounded like someone was trying very, very hard... Not to cry. As if every single sob had been violently swallowed back down before it could escape. As if crying itself was a forbidden act.
Riya s-l-o-w-l-y opened her eyes in the dark. She listened, holding her breath.
There it was again. A shaky, shattered breath. A muffled, agonizing sob.
Then... SILENCE.
Her little eyebrows pulled together into a deep frown. Someone was hurting. Really hurting.
Without making a single sound, she slipped off the high bed. Her bare toes touched the freezing, unforgiving stone floor. She flinched. "...Cold."
She rubbed one tiny foot against the other before quietly, bravely walking toward the dormitory door.
The hallway was pitch dark. Only the pale, ghostly moonlight spilling through broken windows painted silver, watery patches across the floorboards. Everyone else was fast asleep. Tiny, rhythmic snores echoed from different rooms. The old, rusted ceiling fan creaked l-a-z-i-l-y overhead, completely useless.
Riya wrapped her small, frail arms around herself, shivering.
The crying came again. Fainter this time. Coming from... The balcony. At the very, very end of the long, terrifying corridor.
She looked toward it, her heart thumping against her ribs. The large, heavy iron doors had been left half open. The wind pushed them back and forth violently.
Creeeak... Creeeak...
Freezing rain drifted inside with every gust, turning the floor slippery and wet.
Her tiny heart beat a little faster. The dark hallway looked incredibly scary. Very, very scary. Shadows danced like monsters on the peeling walls. She didn't like the dark. Not one bit.
But... Someone out there sounded even more scared than she was.
She swallowed a thick lump in her throat. "...Maybe they're lonely too."
That thought alone... Made her freezing feet move.
One tiny, brave step. Then another. And another.
The cold floor completely numbed her toes. The rain grew louder, angrier. The wind cut through her thin nightgown like ice.
Finally... She reached the balcony doors.
A massive flash of lightning suddenly lit up the black sky.
For one brief, blinding second... She saw him.
A boy. Sitting entirely alone in the far, darkest corner.
His broad back was pressed tightly, desperately against the damp brick wall. His long legs were pulled sharply against his chest. His face was completely buried in his folded arms.
His shoulders... Were shaking. Not slightly. VIOLENTLY.
Like he was trying with every ounce of his strength to hold himself together... And completely, utterly failing.
The heavy rain had already soaked entirely through his thin, worn shirt, sticking to his skin. Dark, ugly purple bruises covered his arms. Fresh, bleeding cuts marked his bruised knuckles. Dried blood crusted near his split lip.
He looked... BROKEN. Completely, irreparably broken.
Riya recognized him immediately.
The new boy. The scary one. The one every child in the orphanage whispered about in terrified tones. The one who never, ever smiled. The one who fought anyone—adult or child—who dared to come near his three younger brothers. The one everyone actively avoided.
Five-year-old Riya simply stared at him from the doorway.
Her little chest tightened painfully. He looked so big. So strong and angry all the time. Yet somehow... Right now, hiding in the storm, he also looked like the loneliest person she'd ever seen in her entire short life.
She tilted her head, her messy braids falling over her shoulder. A small, heartbreakingly innocent thought crossed her mind. "Maybe... someone left him behind too."
S-l-o-w-l-y... Carefully... She stepped out onto the rain-soaked, freezing balcony.
One tiny, splashing footstep at a time.
He didn't hear her. His quiet, muffled sobs were completely drowned out beneath the roar of the storm.
She stopped only a single step away from him. Close enough to see the hot tears mixing with the freezing rain on his bruised cheeks. Close enough to hear him whisper something broken into his arms that she couldn't understand.
She looked at him for a long, quiet moment. Thinking.
Then... Very s-l-o-w-l-y... Her tiny, warm hand began to rise toward his bowed head.
The little hand... Came to rest lightly on his wet hair. Softly. Carefully. Almost as if she was afraid she'd hurt him if she pressed too hard.
Her tiny fingers disappeared into his rain-soaked, messy hair. She gave it one gentle... Awkward, comforting little pat.
"...There."
Lakshya reacted INSTANTLY.
His entire body jerked. VIOLENTLY.
His head snapped up with terrifying speed. His bruised, bloody fists clenched on pure instinct. Every single muscle in his body coiled tightly like a viper.
Ready to fight. Ready to fiercely protect. Ready to kill if he had to.
For five agonizing days... Every single touch had meant danger. Every adult's voice had meant another problem. Another crushing responsibility. Another person trying to separate them, trying to take something away from his brothers.
His body moved defensively before his exhausted mind even could.
Then... He saw her.
A tiny, fragile little girl. Standing barefoot in puddles of freezing water right in front of him. Her hair sticking to her chubby cheeks from the rain. An oversized, faded nightgown nearly swallowing her whole.
Big, soft brown eyes looking down at him... Without a single ounce of fear.
Lakshya froze. Completely. His breathing simply stopped in his chest.
His swollen, bloodshot eyes searched her tiny face wildly. Confusion. Disbelief. Suffocating exhaustion. They all crashed together in his brain.
...What?
His thoughts refused to work properly.
Why...? Why is she here? Why isn't she scared of me?
Everyone else stayed far away from him. Children whispered and ran when he walked past the courtyard. Older boys crossed to the other side of the corridor. Even the adult wardens looked at him cautiously, afraid of the violence in his eyes.
He had made sure of that. He wanted them to be afraid. Because fear was a shield. Fear kept his younger brothers safe from this hellhole.
Then... This tiny, insignificant child walked straight through every single iron wall he'd built. And touched him.
As if he wasn't dangerous. As if he wasn't broken beyond repair. As if he were... Just another boy in the rain.
His throat tightened so painfully he couldn't swallow.
He hadn't spoken properly to anyone in days. He hadn't slept for more than an hour. Hadn't eaten enough, giving his portions to Ranchit and Abhiraj. Hadn't stopped thinking. Planning. Surviving. Not even once.
His entire world had violently burned to the ground. His parents... Gone. His beautiful home... Gone. His childhood... Gone. Stolen in a single night.
Only three little boys remained. Three terrified little boys who looked at him for food. For safety. For answers he didn't have.
He was fifteen. Fifteen. He wasn't supposed to know how to keep anyone alive yet. He wasn't supposed to become a father overnight.
But he had absolutely no choice. Because if he broke... They would shatter too.
So he swallowed every tear. Every scream of grief. Every ounce of suffocating fear. He shoved it all down until he was hollow.
Until tonight.
Tonight... His battered, exhausted body had simply... Given up.
He looked at the little girl again through the heavy rain. Still standing there. Still gently, awkwardly patting his wet hair with her tiny hand. As though comforting crying, dangerous boys in the middle of a thunderstorm... Was the most normal thing in the world.
Her tiny face scrunched with pure, unadulterated concern.
"...Why are you crying?"
Her voice was so small... It almost disappeared entirely beneath the sound of the rain.
Lakshya opened his mouth. Nothing came out. He tried again, forcing the words up. His voice scraped painfully, roughly against his raw throat.
"...Nothing."
It sounded terrible. Broken. Empty.
"Go back to sleep..." He swallowed hard, looking away from her innocent eyes. "...Kid."
She didn't move. Not even a little. She didn't move an inch.
Five-year-old Riya frowned. A proper, deep little frown. The kind of stubborn look only children could make when they knew adults were lying.
"You cried."
Lakshya stayed rigidly silent, staring at the wet bricks.
"You have tears."
"...It's the rain." He lied through his teeth.
She looked up at the black sky. Then back down at him. Then up again, analyzing the situation with toddler logic.
"...Rain falls from the sky." A tiny, chubby finger pointed directly at his bruised face. "...Your tears came from here."
Lakshya closed his eyes. Just for a second, a humorless, breathless laugh almost catching in his chest. This child... Was IMPOSSIBLE.
"I said I'm fine." His voice came out rougher this time. Too rough. A warning. He wasn't angry at her. He simply... Didn't have the strength to sound gentle anymore. He was out of energy.
Riya kept looking at him. Studying him intently. The purple bruises blooming on his arms. The swollen, split lip. The bleeding, raw knuckles from hitting the wall. The violently trembling shoulders he couldn't control.
Children noticed so much more than adults believed.
"You miss someone."
Lakshya's heart completely stopped beating.
"...What?"
"You miss someone." She said it so simply. Like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"My mummy used to cry exactly like that when Papa went away for work." She tilted her head, the rain plastering her hair to her forehead.
"...Then one day..." A tiny, heartbreaking pause. "...they both stopped coming."
Lakshya looked at her. Really looked at her. For the very first time.
She wasn't just an annoying child interrupting his breakdown. She was... Alone too. A fellow ghost in this miserable place.
She smiled at him. A tiny, profoundly sad smile. One that absolutely did not belong on a five-year-old's face.
"It's okay." She whispered it softly, leaning closer like it was a secret between just the two of them. "I know."
Lakshya felt something thick and heavy inside his chest crack. Not loudly. Quietly. DANGEROUSLY.
He looked away sharply, turning his face to the storm. He couldn't look at her anymore. Because if he looked into those understanding brown eyes for one more second... He knew he would permanently lose the last little thread of control he had left.
He aggressively scrubbed the back of his bruised, bloody hand across his wet face. Hard. Trying to violently erase every trace of weakness. Trying to force himself to become the unfeeling shield his brothers desperately needed again.
"I'm okay." He repeated it, his voice shaking. More to convince himself... Than to convince her.
Riya didn't argue with him. She didn't tell him he was lying again.
She simply took one small, splashing step closer. Then another. Until she was standing directly in front of his pulled-up knees.
So close... That the top of her tiny head barely reached his broad shoulder while he was sitting down.
She looked at him for another long, silent moment. Thinking. Evaluating the situation very seriously.
Then... She s-l-o-w-l-y opened her tiny arms. As wide as they could possibly go.
They weren't very wide at all. She was only five, after all. But to her... They were big enough to hold absolutely anyone.
"Come." She said it so naturally, offering herself as a lifeline. "So you don't cry alone."
Lakshya stared at her. His mind... Went COMPLETELY BLANK.
Nobody had offered him a single ounce of comfort in five days. Nobody had asked if he was okay, if he was hungry, if he was terrified. Everyone just needed him to be strong. His brothers. The orphanage wardens. Himself.
But this little girl... Who owed him absolutely nothing... Who should have been terrified of the blood on his hands... Was offering him the only thing he hadn't realized his soul was starving for.
A hug.
And for the very first time since his parents died... The massive iron wall around his heart began to FALL.
He didn't move. He couldn't. His entire, exhausted body had completely forgotten how to accept kindness.
His dark, tear-filled eyes remained fixed on those tiny, outstretched arms. So incredibly small. So breakably fragile. Yet somehow... Right now, they felt infinitely stronger than everything he had been carrying on his back for the last five days.
His throat tightened. PAINFULLY. His vision violently blurred again with hot, fresh tears.
No. No. Not again.
He wasn't allowed to cry anymore. He was Lakshya. The man of the house now. The eldest. The one who had to stand between his little brothers and a cruel world.
The shield wasn't supposed to break. The shield wasn't supposed to need saving by a five-year-old.
His jaw clenched. Hard enough to hurt his teeth. He looked down at the puddle forming around his shoes.
"Go inside." His voice barely came out, trembling with the effort of holding back a sob. "It's cold."
Riya didn't move.
"You'll get sick."
Still... She didn't move an inch. Her arms remained wide open, waiting.
Another hot raindrop rolled down his bruised face. Then another.
Riya quietly, stubbornly shook her head. "No."
Lakshya frowned through his tears, confused by her persistence. "...No?"
"You first."
His eyebrows pulled together in utter bewilderment. "What?"
"You come." She wiggled her tiny, freezing fingers at him encouragingly. "Then we'll both go."
A broken, wet laugh almost escaped him. Almost. Instead... It came out as a painful, shuddering breath.
This stubborn, impossible little girl... She wasn't going anywhere. Not until he accepted her hug. She had decided he needed fixing, and that was that.
For a long, heavy moment... Neither of them spoke. Only the storm did.
It crashed violently against the rusted tin roof. Splashed aggressively across the cracked concrete balcony. Filled the vast, lonely silence between two broken, orphaned children.
Then... Very s-l-o-w-l-y... Lakshya moved.
He uncurled his stiff, aching legs. One shaky movement. Then another. He shifted onto his knees, ignoring the scrape of the rough concrete against his skin.
He knelt directly in front of her. He looked down. She looked up.
Those impossibly bright, innocent eyes held absolutely no fear of the monster he was becoming. No patronizing pity. Only pure, unfiltered concern.
As though comforting a crying, bleeding fifteen-year-old boy in the dead of night was just what you did when someone was sad.
His battered heart gave up. COMPLETELY.
His broad, towering frame slumped forward.
Riya smiled. A tiny... Sleepy... Absolutely heart-melting smile of victory.
"There." She whispered happily, stepping into his space. "Now I can reach."
Before Lakshya could say a single, protesting word... Her little, freezing arms wrapped tightly around his thick neck. Softly. Clumsily. As if she was hugging a giant, bruised teddy bear.
The sudden warmth of her tiny body... Was ALMOST UNBEARABLE.
Lakshya froze instantly. Every muscle in his back locked tight. He had genuinely forgotten... What kindness actually felt like.
Then... Something deep, deep inside his chest finally SHATTERED. Not the angry part. Not the violent, vengeful part. The lonely, terrified, fifteen-year-old boy part.
He let out one shaky, devastating breath. Then another. His heavy forehead s-l-o-w-l-y dropped, resting heavily onto her tiny, frail shoulder.
His bruised, bloodied hands began to tremble. For one long, agonizing second... He fought it. He fought the release with absolutely everything he had left in him.
He lost.
A loud, broken sob violently escaped him. Then another. And another. Ripping through his chest like glass.
His massive arms suddenly flew up and wrapped entirely around her tiny, fragile body. Not carefully. DESPERATELY. Like a drowning, dying boy clinging to the very last piece of solid land left in the entire world.
He buried his bruised face deep against her little shoulder, completely hiding from the storm.
His entire body shook uncontrollably. Years of suppressed fear. Five agonizing days of blinding grief. Every single sleepless, terrified night. Every crushing, suffocating responsibility he wasn't ready for. Every ounce of excruciating pain...
Came pouring out into the rain.
He cried. Not like the dangerous boy everyone feared. Not like the ruthless future Mafia King who would burn cities to the ground.
Just... Like a broken, fifteen-year-old son... Who desperately, desperately wanted his mother back.
And through it all... Through the violent shaking and the heartbreaking sobs... Riya never once let go.
Her tiny, freezing hand s-l-o-w-l-y patted his rain-soaked, messy hair. Again. And again. And again.
Just like a mother soothing a terrified child after a nightmare.
"It's okay..." She whispered into the dark, resting her cheek against his wet head. Her little voice almost entirely disappeared beneath the howling rain. "I'm here."
The rain continued to fall heavily around them.
But for the very first time since the cruel world had violently taken everything from him...
Lakshya no longer felt completely alone.
To be continued...
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