The Way We Were

Chapter 30

(Faces in the dark)

Khushi Kumari Gupta knew that fighting was a lost cause. The moment she had realised she had been drugged, something had sent her brain into overdrive.

The security outside was not Malik, it was Oberoi. While the mistake was not hers, with her quickly fading mind, she knew Shivaay would be in major trouble.

When she came to, she thought she would see guards upon guards and construction buildings. She hoped she was taken to the same place her son once was. Looking outside the one lonesome window in the small dingy room, she knew she wasn't. There wasn't life around for miles.

"Khushi, you're awake."

The familiar voice made her turn, until goosebumps erupted all over her skin.

"I hope they didn't mistreat you."

Her heart started beating after a miss. Mistreatment? How could this man even start to be normal around her?

"You... You're like a father to me... Why would you..."

"And you're like a daughter to me." The man's voice was soft as silk. Who would say this man was a murderer? "In all our conversations about Arnav, why didn't you ever tell me that he is a Malik?"

Khushi tried to remember when had she ever told anyone that Arnav was born a Malik? It was a secret she had been ready to take to her grave.

"You killed Ratna Ma? And his... His father?"

"I only wanted them to not do what Subhadra Malik did."

"By killing them." She accused, taking a step back.

His face contorted. "My own cousin. My sister comes to me, says everything is hers anyway. She doesn't need a trust anymore, no. She will take everything back."

"Ratna Ma would never... She wasn't materialistic!" Khushi knew her late mother-in-law that much.

"For herself, of course not." Ratna's cousin was clearly her killer, he didn't even deny Khushi's accusations. "But for the man she married... Maliks were losing their touch. Their power. Their treasury. And Ratna wanted every single rupee that would bring her family back to their glory."

Khushi tried to understand why Ratna Malik would do this. If the Maliks failed, they failed.

"Ajay was no better, extorting from his own blood. The Maliks deserved everything that they got."

"One man doesn't define a family." Khushi defended. Ajay Malik was a part of her family, of her wedding procession, whether she liked it or not.

"Of course, like Shivaay defines me."

Khushi felt a fresh crawl in her skin. A man she had trusted with everything, herself, her son, her Arnav, was the blood of this man.

"My son is a man of his words. He had nothing to do with it. And he never has to worry about any of it, does he?"

Khushi wondered how Srikant Oberoi could even look her in the eye, essentially telling her she was bait for her son's future to be secured.

(All in)

Shivaay's head buzzed as he tried to process the information thrown at him. Staggering, he took a seat when the officer in front of him offered one.

Everything he knew had turned upside down with the utterance of two words by Zoya Farooqi. By NK. His name. Srikant Oberoi.

The man he worshipped and revered was behind countless hardships. Hiding behind his perfect life, perfect mask, perfect family.

With shivering hands, he dialled a number.