“You should sleep, my love,” she said.
Bharat didn’t move. “The air still feels heavy,” he murmured. There was a slight tremble in his small shoulders.
She sat beside him, making sure she kept a slight distance.
Slowly, his shoulders relaxed. “Mouj…do you think I’m mad?” he asked softly.
Suchitra’s chest tightened.
“I hear people whispering about me,” he continued. “They sayMoulwas mad, and so I must be too.”
Her heart ached for her son. His eyes were clear, sharp, intelligent beyond his years.
“You are not mad,” she said, placing her hand next to his to reassure him without touching. “You just see the world differently. That’s not wrong.”
He was quiet for a long moment.
“Will they let me stay as the Jogra maharaja when I grow up?”
He asked it quietly, like a child asking permission to remain where he belonged.
“Yes,” she said firmly without hesitation. “You will be the best maharaja.”
He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then slowly nodded as though determined to make his mother’s words true.
Suchitra waited while he got up from the window seat and calmly walked towards his neatly made bed. When he lay down and then drifted to sleep, she slowly stood up.
She watched over her sons, her heart feeling full.
She had been married four times, but she had fallen in love just once. The world remembered her powerful marriages, but she remembered the men.
She knew people often gossiped about her, some calling her lucky and some calling her cursed. But she never regretted her choices.
Four marriages gave her four children. All of them maharajas who would take over their legacies.
But she didn’t want them to grow up believing that kings were made in palaces. She wanted them to know that kings were forged in storms.
And even the boy who now feared thunder would grow up to conquer storms.
CHAPTER 1
Twenty-four years later…
Jogra Steel Plant
The crowd outside the gates of Jogra Steel Industries roared loud enough to rattle the car windows.
Bharat watched the sea of signs and furious faces through the tinted glass. Protesters packed the entrance—environmental groups, journalists, and a few opportunists hungry for spectacle. A security cordon stood firm. His men formed an unbroken wall between the crowd and the gates.
He didn’t flinch.
Noise rarely bothered him. Chaos did. It was unpredictable, messy, and illogical.
“Shut down Jogra Steel plants!”
“Billionaire polluter!”
“No more blood metal!”
