Brute

1. Kalki

"Kalki! Let it go! Don't do this!" A woman with dark hair tried to calm her daughter down.

But it was too late, the little girl had already made her way to the kart behind her in the run off area of the track. She grabbed hold of the latter behind her and pulled him out by the collar.

"You did this on purpose." The girl glared at the other karter, the fury in her eyes was unmistakable.

"I didn't! I lost control!" The boy said.

"Wrong answer." She grit her teeth, letting go off his collar.

The boy faltered in his steps and fell back, the girl didn't hesitate. In one clean move she punched his cheek and moved away. She didn't even turn back to see if he was alright, the lady yelling from the sidelines came to help him up.

"I'm so sorry Max, this wasn't okay at all. I'm going to make her apologise!" She said examining the bruise on his face, "are you alright dear? Do you want me to get you some ice?" She helped him stand up.

"No I'm fine, please tell her I didn't do it on purpose." He looked at the lady.

Her daughter was a spitting image of her he thought, but they were nothing alike. Both of them had tan skin, dark eyes and hair but such different personalities. She walked him back to his garage and apologised to his parents too, he got to work on his kart with his dad but could still see Kalki's mother talking to his in the corner of his eyes.

"You're lucky there isn't much damage to the kart, what were you thinking!?" His dad thundered.

He lowered his gaze as if to say sorry to his dad, he didn't have the courage to speak a word when his father was this angry. He believed he was saved from things getting worse because other people were around.

Not too far down the pit lane, Kalki sat in a chair being lectured by her father. She had a frown on her face and was in no mood to listen what he had to say, because according to her twelve year old brain she had handled the situation very rationally.

"What you did today was not okay Kalki. You're going to walk to Max's garage and say sorry to him right now."

"I won't." She pouted. "He did that just to ruin my race, he calls me Sulky Kalki at school and everywhere I don't like him."

"That doesn't mean you can hit him bachcha." He tried to soothe her temper, "beat him fair and square on track, don't resort to doing bad things like this."

"Okay Ivaan." She gave him a quick peck on the cheek, getting out of her chair ready to run to Max's garage.

"What have I told you?" He rolled his eyes.

"Okay 'Papa' I'll go say sorry." She smiled playfully.

Kalki skipped her way to Max's garage, she glared down at some of the boys who looked funny at her. Her eyes met with her mother's for a second before she walked to where Max was.

"Max, Kalki has something to say to you." She placed her hand on Kalki's shoulder.

Max turned away from his kart to look at her, it was so strange. When she wasn't frowning, she had the sweetest face he had ever seen in his ten years of existence. He couldn't believe how many times this girl with doe eyes had managed to make him cry.

"I'm sorry." She mumbled playing with the sleeve of her overalls.

"What?" Max squinted as if to hear carefully.

"I said I'm sorry!" She stomped her foot.

"It's okay, see you tomorrow at school sulky-" he decided not to finish the sentence because the look on her face clearly said that she would smack him again with no remorse.

"See! Was that so hard?" Kalki's mother looked at her. Kalki simply shook her head, it was really hard for her.

Competitions went on like this for years, she pushed Max to his limit and he fought back just as hard. The otherwise quiet town of Hasselt would wake up once in a while to come see two kids battle it out ruthlessly.

Things got even more unbearable for Kalki when she came home one evening and found her younger brother playing video games with Max.

"Neel! What is he doing here!?" She yelled.

"Shhh quiet please, don't be so loud!" Neel yelled back.

She glared at Max who was enjoying this scene sprawled on the couch, Kalki swore that his eyes got even more brilliant every time he annoyed her. It's almost as if his soul fed on mischief- oh wait, he is no soul she snickered.

"Where's Ma?"

"She went to meet our Monkey's teacher for permission."

Max looked at them in confusion, Neel explained he had a twin sister, she'd recently stopped gymnastics but her acrobatic abilities had earned her a great nickname.

"And where is our little monkey?" Kalki asked.

"Obviously with Ma, I still don't understand why someone would look at her and say she could be a model."

"Come on she looks better than all of us," Kalki laughed, "honestly makes me think what went wrong with you." She bolted to her room.

****

"Kalki, it's your decision to make. We only moved to Antwerp  so all of you would have better access to whatever you want to do." Ivaan explained to his daughter.

It had been a week since the family of five moved from Hasselt to Antwerp. Kalki was now 15 and it was getting incredibly difficult for her to juggle school as well as karting, yet she was reluctant to let go of any of the two.

"I've made my choice papa," she sighed, "I want to go to school, I want to learn more about management."

"You've already decided so much of it?" His eyebrows shot up.

"I mean, I've been looking after Anika's schedule I don't want to bother you and Ma who are already juggling commitments between work and raising us." She smiled, "It's fun! I enjoy telling her what to do and where to go. I'd love to tell a lot of people about what to do."

"So Kalki's got a knack for management!" He beamed giving her a hug.

"But you've got to make one promise to me." She looked up at him.

"What is it?"

"You'll never say no when I want to go to the track on weekends."

"Never a problem! I'll drive you there." He gave her hand a squeeze. "Alright boss, I'll let you to your studies."

And she did exactly that, she studied, she worked with her sister and together they had broken into the industry- an alluring model and her shrewd manager.

Anika believed in her sister's intelligence and was able to work on good projects thanks to her. Both of them had been recruited by the same agency, the difference now was that Anika Burman wasn't the only young talent Kalki Burman was aid to.

****

Welcome back to another story! Thank you so so so so much for giving so much love to my previous stories :)  I'm open to suggestions and ideas! I hope you like this story as much as I enjoy writing it 🤎