“I know your children Daksh Goel and Mishti Goel,” Karan stated, “are here in Mumbai for the last one and a half years.”
Dilip’s breath hitched.
“The world may not remember whose children they are,” Karan went on. “But I do.”
Dilip stared at Karan now, as if seeing him for the first time, not as a boy who had lost everything, but as a man who had rebuilt himself with purpose.
Dilip’s face was slick with sweat now, his fingers curling against the edge of the table.
“You thought you had secured their future,” Karan continued, “You built their lives on blood money. My family’s blood. So now I will take it back. All of it. I won’t let you die with your victory intact.”
Dilip’s breathing turned uneven.
Karan leaned closer, close enough that Dilip could hear the controlled fury in every breath he took.
“Your son’s empire will crumble,” he continued. “Slowly. Piece by piece. And your daughter, your favourite of the two, the one you are so proud of, she will marry a man you would never approve of.” His lips curved slightly. “I will marry her and make sure she pays for every sleepless night you caused my family. You will watch their world collapse, and you will not be able to stop it.”
“You wouldn’t dare,” Dilip snapped, slamming a hand against Karan’s chest.
“Oh, I will,” Karan replied without hesitation, shrugging off Dilip’s hands. “I’ll bring your son on the roads to beg. And I will make your daughter’s life a living hell. They will feel thesame pain you gave my mother. Betrayal. Loss. Destruction.” His gaze hardened. “You wanted to protect them, Dilip, but the price of your sins will be paid in full. By them. That is a promise.”
Dilip surged forward, fury exploding out of him.
“You b*stard,” he shouted. “Leave them out of this.”
The guards now pulled Dilip behind, not letting him touch Karan.
“You didn’t leave us out of it, did you?” Karan said coldly. “You killed my mother in front of me. You destroyed everything I had. Now you will die watching me do the same to your bloodline.”
He turned toward the door, already done with the man behind him. Then he paused, his hand on the handle, and glanced back one final time.
“The next time we meet, your children will be broken. And you will finally know what it feels like to lose everything.”
“You will regret this, Karan,” Dilip shouted after him as Karan walked away. “I will kill you if you touch my children.”
Karan did not slow down. He did not turn back. He left the visiting room carrying his promise and having every intention to fulfil it.
CHAPTER 27
Present – Goel Mansion
As Karan finished laying bare the cruel, buried history that bound the Goels and the Wadhwas together, the room slipped into a suffocating silence.
Daksh sank back onto the couch as if his body had finally given up holding him upright. His wife, Divya, stood frozen beside him, one hand pressed to her mouth, unable to process what she had just heard. Daksh’s mind, however, was racing. He had always known his father was guilty of unforgivable things. He had grown up with that knowledge like a shadow. He had known the money came from places it should not have. He had known his father had killed someone, that he had been arrested for murder.
But he had never known this.
Never knew that the woman his father had murdered was Karan’s mother.
Every record he had ever accessed to know about this, in the initial years of his father’s arrest, had ended abruptly at the verdict.Life imprisonment. Abuse of authority. Criminal act during a private confrontation.The details beyond that were sealed tightly.
He believed it was done to protect the victim’s family. To shield their legacy from becoming a public spectacle. He assumed that the truth had been buried to spare a grievingfamily from being dragged through years of media trials and public sympathy.
If he had known the woman his father murdered was Karan’s mother, everything would have been different. He would have never brought his business back to Mumbai. He would have never expanded here, never planted roots in a city soaked in a woman’s blood because of his father. He would have stayed away. From this place. From this past. From Karan himself.
Mishti, who stood beside Karan, still couldn’t believe her father, the man whose name had been erased from her childhood, saying he was dead, was actually alive, and worse, he was a murderer. That he had murdered Karan’s mother. That he had ruined Karan’s family.
In that suffocating silence, it was only Karan’s ragged breathing that filled the room. Tears streamed freely down his face, now revisiting those memories. He did not wipe them away. He did not care who saw them.
