With or Without You

"Some families raise you. Others bury you while you're still breathing."

Aditya Sardeshmukh was born into a legacy of power, but he grew up in the shadow of rejection. Disowned at thirteen. Forgotten by design. His name erased from family portraits. His story locked behind a door no one dared to open.
For fourteen years, he lived without them, constructing a life from scratch. Code became his language, while silence served as his defence. Yet amid the pain, the voice of one girl singing in Kensington Gardens sustained him. A girl he never encountered, a memory he could never shake off.
Now, out of nowhere, the past calls him home. A birthday dinner. A father's gesture. A seat at a table he was never meant to return to.
But nothing in the Sardeshmukh house is what it seems.
The mother who never wanted him still wears her mask.
The brothers smile like allies but count the knives behind their backs.
And somewhere beneath chandeliers and champagne,
A reckoning waits in silence.
Aditya doesn't know why they've summoned him.
He only knows this:
The house that broke him is opening its doors again.
And not everyone wants him to survive the welcome.