Page 113 of Born in Sin

Sharan pushed the door open and led Virat inside the darkened room. A solitary table lamp burned, illuminating the large space. At the far end, a king size bed was pushed up against the wall. In the center of the bed, he could make out his father’s frame. He was propped up against the headboard, his shriveled, emaciated body covered with a sheet. He had an oxygen mask on his face, the tank by the bed and nothing else.

A nurse hovered by the bedside and scurried out at Sharan’s gesture to do so. Virat heard the door close behind him and knew Sharan Chacha had left, giving them the illusion of privacy.

“Virat,” he said, his voice surprisingly strong for someone who looked so unwell. “Why are you here?”

Virat stepped closer to the bed, stopping at the foot of it, and meeting his father’s red, watery eyes. “I’m here to meet you, Andanatha,” he said formally.

A mean, spiteful yet gleeful smile lit up his father’s face. “How did you find out?”

Revulsion swept through Virat at his father’s smug face. “Why?” he asked, his voice not betraying his thoughts. “Why start something like the Sons of Andhaka?”

His father sneered at his idiocy. “Why not?” he asked, raising his frail arms in the air. “Business,” he mused. “Big business doesn’t happen in the boardrooms. Legacies are built off the backs of relationships, friendships. But do you know what cements it?” Again, that ugly smirk. “Blackmail.”

Virat listened silently, letting his father ramble on.

“Once you enter the Sons of Andhaka, you never get out. As long as you stay, your business will grow and prosper, because the Sons only bolster and trade with each other’s firms. If you try to leave,” the evil smile on his face grew, “We have enough on you to ensure you can’t. You stay, you fall in line and reap the rewards of our combined success. A fist is always stronger than an individual finger.”

“And the women?”

For the first time since Virat had walked into the room, his father looked confused. “What about them?”

“Why ruin their lives like that?”

The old man waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Pah. Like it matters. They were just the entertainment of the evening. And helpful in blackmailing the members to stay in line. Some of the men loved it, the women’s submission, their domination, the rape fantasies they played out. The men who didn’t…they played along so they didn’t look like pussies.”

“You destroyed those women.” Rage burned through Virat, a searing fire that sought to purge his very DNA, the genetics this monster had passed on to him, from his veins.

“Why are you going on about those women?” His father looked like a confused old man as he blinked blearily at Virat. “What do they matter? Who cares? This is about business, contacts and networking, the old-fashioned way. Men being men. This is about legacies and the generations of wealth we are the gatekeepers to.”

“It ends now,” Virat said, his voice cold as the icy fire spreading through every inch of him. “The Sons of Andhaka are going down as we speak, every last one of them being rounded up and arrested.”

For a moment, his father just blinked at him. “Why?” he asked, genuinely bewildered. “Who is going to say we did anything wrong? We were just doing business, our way.”

Virat shook his head. This was pointless.

“The police will be here soon,” he said quietly. “I advise you to cooperate with them.”

“The police can’t do anything to me.”

Virat rolled his eyes. “I guess we’ll see,” he said, turning away from the man who’d sired him and heading for the door.

“The doctors say I won’t make it past the next day. The police will have to lock up my ashes.”

Virat glanced over his shoulder at him.

Raghuvansh Jha smiled. “I guess I win, after all.”

Virat pivoted on his heel and faced him. “No, you don’t. I will bury your legacy with those ashes. We may not be able to lock you up, but I will burn the empire you built on the backs of the pain and terror of those women down and dance in the ashes. Everything you did, everything you gained, I’m going to flush it all down the toilet and let the rats in the sewage do the rest. Go ahead and die, old man. I promise you the afterlife waiting for you is going to be everything you deserve.”

He walked out to his father’s sputtering curses, and he didn’t look back. Not once.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

CARA

“All of you, who’ve come here today, know me as Cara Ferns. But before I was Cara, I was someone else. I was Celina Fernandez, the daughter of a schoolteacher and an accountant, a middle-class girl who stumbled into the world of the rich and paid a very heavy price for it.”

Propped up in her bed, her back supported by two pillows, Cara could feel the exhaustion of her still weak body dragging her down. She struggled to focus, her gaze on Virat who leaned on the far wall, his hands in his pockets, his eyes focused on her, only on her. The love and support in his eyes bolstered her flagging confidence.

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