The First Trillionaire

Untitled Part 19

In 1990, his parents discovered his secret annual visits to India. Peter had told his parents that he was going overseas for about one week in October. On the fifth day itself, Sid and Olivia received the horrific news that their son Peter Singh Rathore was killed in a helicopter crash at Katra, Jammu India. They were shocked and could not understand when their playful and work-minded son had become so devout as to visit a shrine in India. Sid could not bear this second blow to his family. Already weakened by Magnolia's loss and after four months of treatment for depression, he died in May 1991.

Olivia was left alone in this world except for the business empire that stood proudly all over the world. She could not bring herself to sell everything and become a hermit for the rest of her life, so she worked like before or even harder. All that she had learnt and her interest in new areas of technology was the only thing that was able to revitalise her otherwise lonely life. She worked hard, earned more and donated more. In a few years, her name became synonymous with philanthropy in England and soon spread to other parts of the world. One thing that puzzled Olivia and which she could never understand was Peter's intention in his will. He had named Vanashree Jha as his sole heir and if she could not be traced in the next five years, then the wealth would be split between Olivia and Kran from USA, CEO of the Near Earth Miners Group in a fifty-fifty ratio.

Olivia could not remember any of her past associates in India with the name Vanashree. She was totally clueless about this person. She had even gone to meet Kran once in the USA, two months after Peter's death. The meeting was far from fruitful; Kran was more of a scientist than a businessman, which was not good news to Olivia. The balding Kran in his mid-thirties did not impress the businesswoman in Olivia in the least; he wanted to invest more in planetary research and rocket sciences while Olivia wanted him to invest his share in Peter's businesses. They met for only twenty minutes, and that time was not enough to bring their business interests or their plan to a feasible working solution. Neither Olivia nor Kran bothered about the other's interests or business fields. It was an impasse, and Olivia was a little saddened that she apparently knew so little of what had been going through Peter's mind all these years.

The mystery surrounding Vanashree cleared up when Sachidanand Singh came to meet Olivia six months after Peter's death. He was Peter's classmate at Nature's Heart School and he was the only one in contact with Peter after they had left India. He told Olivia that Peter was in love with Vanashree, and had been for a very long time. She was their classmate and the daughter of the English teacher in their school. But she had moved away and even Sachidanand was clueless about her whereabouts. Olivia could not understand whether she should try to find Vanashree but she put off the thought because she felt that maybe it was a childhood infatuation or crush that Peter had not grown out of, after all he had stayed at the school for some time only and Vanashree may be married happily with some other man by then. She did not want to spoil that girl's life or create trouble for her family, if she had one. In her deepest thoughts, she knew that she had no courage left to do anything with the past in India.