"The paradox of vengefulness is that it makes men dependent upon those who have harmed them, believing that their release from pain will come only when they make their tormentors suffer. In seeking the Bird's death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird."

― Laura Hillenbrand, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption

* * * *

"Sir, we have reached," Madhav informed unnecessarily.

Mr Malhotra couldn't help but sigh. As if the car coming to a stop wasn't an indication, must his secretary announce it? It didn't matter how efficient and remarkably competent Madhav was, he still sometimes fumbled like the new intern he had been when he had walked into his office. Back then, being the sole heir of the empire his father wanted to build, Mr Malhotra had recognized Madhav Mathur for what he was: the most important gift from his father - a loyal and efficient pet, ready to please him and stain his hand with dirty work.

"Something is going on with Shah, I didn't like his tone," Mr Malhotra said, knowing that was enough to get Madhav to work.

"He can't cause any trouble," the affirmation that came his way made him smirk. And that's why even after decades, no one could ever replace Madhav. The man left no traces behind.

"I will trust you on this then," Mr Malhotra said when the driver opened the car's door for him.

Smirking at Madhav's parting bow, deeply pleased and confident in his stance, Mr Malhotra walked into Dr Shah's office. The visit was truly unnecessary according to him. But he knew as a father, he still was obligated to show up when called in for an urgent matter regarding his son's health.

"Dr Shah, the demand to meet me was unexpected," Mr Malhotra said tightly, not liking the haste the doctor put him into even though it took him a month to comply with what had been asked of him.

"Mr Malhotra, I am sure you will understand the urgency of the matter when I reveal to you the cause of my worry," Dr Shah said, pushing back his glasses in an attempt to stop himself from lashing out at the man.

"And what that would be?" Mr Malhotra asked, sitting on the chair in front of the elder man's desk.

"The pills I prescribed to Manik seem to have side effects. I fear his condition is going to get worse if we continue with the treatment," Dr Shah continued with the already decided script.

"And what are these side effects? He hasn't complained to me about anything," Mr Malhotra said with narrowed eyes.

"Hallucinations and migraines. He isn't able to distinguish reality from what he sees under the effect of the pills," Dr Shah said, trying to assess if the knowledge would change the man's attitude.

"That's concerning. But why is he even having side effects, I thought you said medicine would help him," Mr Malhotra said with a frown.

"Every medicine has side effects, most of the time, it's one person out of hundreds affected negatively this severely. Or in case someone is taking pills they don't need to and they are misdiagnosed," Dr Shah put the bait, hoping the other man would catch.

"Misdiagnosed? What do you mean by that?" Mr Malhotra asked, waryly.

"Yes. It's been four years, and I don't see any improvement in Manik, he still insists that Nandini is real. Mr Malhotra, are you really sure there was no girl around him with the same name?" Dr Shah asked, hoping the man would give them something they could use.

"Sometimes I do wish there was a Nandini, just so I could bring her here so Manik can finally move on and heal," Mr Malhotra muttered with a deep sigh, trying to appear a heartbroken father.

"So you confirm that there is no Nandini?" Dr Shah asked to get another clear confirmation.

"Unfortunately, no, there isn't," Mr Malhotra firmly stated even though the part of him that was suspicious of the other man's sudden inquiries was on high alert. And his instincts that sensed danger were proven right when someone else made their presence known from the other side of the office.

"Are you sure about your claim?" A voice asked as before emerging from behind the bookshelf.

"Manik?" Mr Malhotra muttered, confused at the sight.

"What are you doing here? What's happening here?" He asked with a glare.

"Nothing, Father, it's just that one of the side effects of the unnecessary medicine I was forced to take is that I have gained the power to give others hallucinations too," Manik said with a cheerful smile, feeling like he was in his element after so long. He had been conflicted on how to approach the matter, but as soon as he had seen Mr Malhotra walk into Dr Shah's office, all of his chaotic and loud repeated thoughts had quietened down. From then on, he had been waiting to intertwine in the conversation from behind the bookshelves in Dr Shah's office, hidden away from his father's sight yet able to hear what was being said.

"You want to see my superpower?" He asked, widening his eyes in excitement, tucking away his smirk when he saw Mr Malhotra looking concerned. Surely thinking his only son was losing his sanity.

"Let me show you," he said, clapping his hand and redirecting the attention towards the side of the office he was previously hiding. "Keep looking there and in a few seconds, you will see Nandini walking in from there."

Hearing that, Mr Malhotra suddenly caught up with what was happening and gasped when a girl suddenly appeared from behind the shelf. And there she was, Nandini Murthy, the bane of his existence even if according to him the girl wasn't worthy of being called even that. She looked different and so did the aura around her. Gone was the pale girl shaking like an autumn leaf, standing there was a woman who was glaring at him as if she wanted to kill him.

"Gentlemen, I present you my Nandini Murthy," Manik introduced as he walked towards her and held her hand, looking down at her as if she was the most precious thing in the world.

"Seems pretty real to me. What do you think, Dr Shah?" He asked the other men as he raised their hands in the air as if to prove his point.

"Hello, Mr Malhotra, finally we meet," Nandini said, eyes full of hatred fixed on him.

"You are Nandini Murthy?" Mr Malhotra asked to buy time to think about how to proceed. He had to give it to them, they caught him off guard. But there wasn't something he couldn't get out of. He was, after all, the owner of a multinational business empire. He could handle a puny girl, his son, and an old physiatrist in his sleep.

"The one and the only," Nandini muttered with a glare.

"Oh, I searched for you for years. Where were you hiding?" Mr Malhotra asked, feigning sadness.

"Come on, Father, let's cut to the chase. No one here believes you are that stupid," Manik said, rolling his eyes in exasperation.

"You are right, I am not," Mr Malhotra muttered with a sigh, already bored with whatever was happening.

"Why did you do that?" Dr Shah cried out, having enough of the dramatic reunion.

"Excuse me?" Mr Malhotra asked, daring the man to continue with his attitude.

"Mr Malhotra, do you understand what you have done? Your lies made me misdiagnose Manik and continue with the wrong treatment for years. How could you? He is your son, how could you do this to him? To me? My career of three decades and a half is at stake here, who gave you the right to jeopardize my reputation and years of hard work?" Dr Shah yelled with a glare.

"You were hired to make him believe that there was no Nandini, you failed at it," Mr Malhotra pointed out.

"No, Mr Malhotra, no. I was NOT. And I am going to sue you for this. I am going to take this matter to court," Dr Shah firmly declared.

"Do you think your Psychiatry company was hired to provide your service to my employees based on merits, Shah? Do you really think you can afford to go against me?" Mr Malhotra asked, tilting his head with a hint of a smirk on his lips.

"Sure, you can sue me, but can you afford to? As soon as you make this public, your reputation and the people connected to you will suffer. How many psychiatrists work under you, again? Fifteen or so? Including your daughters, and your son-in-law, right? Court cases go on for years if not decades," he said while leaning back on his chair with the arrogance of a man who knew no one could touch him.

"You..." Dr Shah growled but as he kept looking at the smirking man, he realized how brutally he had been played. When he had taken the case, he had thought it was just an ordinary case of a rich desperate father who wanted the best for his brat who woke up from a coma with memory loss. Only now he was realizing how he had been trapped in a web of lies. Hiring his firm wasn't a bribe, it was a trap. The businessman had brought his lifetime silence as soon as he had approached him. Now the same man was threatening him not subtly.

There was nothing he could do, Dr Shah concluded, nothing except accept his defeat.

"I am sorry, Manik, I just can't..." he muttered, apologetic as if that changed anything.

"I knew that," Manik responded. He had expected that all along. After all these years of being their child, he knew how his parents functioned and how they couldn't be cornered, no matter how determined one is, it's them who had all the cards in their hands. So it came to him as no surprise that Dr Shah was pulling back from his claim to see through the mockery Mr Malhotra has made of his profession by lying about his patient's history.

"There is too much at stake. All my children, my daughter Naaz's husband, and I are in the same field. I am responsible for other psychiatrists and employees who work under me. Going to court for this case will give us a bad reputation and bring bad press to everyone involved for years until the truth comes out. I can't make them suffer for this," Dr Shah muttered in an attempt to reason with his patient.

"Dr Shah, can you give us some space?" Manik asked while pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Of course," the older man muttered before walking out of his own office.

"Why did you do it?" Manik asked without beating the bush.

"Whatever I did and whatever I do is for your good," Mr Malhotra responded without hesitation.

"Are you serious?" Manik snorted with a huff.

"I am tired of you obsessing over things and people who weren't worthy of your attention," the elder man said with a glare.

"Who are you to decide who is worthy and who isn't?" Manik questioned his father.

"Because you can't for the life of see that you keep repeating the same damn mistake," the elder man yelled out as he banged his hand on the desk.

"You are a Malhotra, for God's sake, you aren't supposed to be dependent on others, so weak and vulnerable. And absolutely not pin over a girl for years, refusing to move on," he continued with disgust. "You weren't supposed to live that way you did. Why do you think it is normal to invest all your attention and energies in someone until you end up forgetting your own self? That's wrong, Manik, to make someone your universe and make your life revolve around them."

"You keep getting obsessed with people and keep getting hurt. Can't you see the pattern? Haven't you learned from your mistakes? Your band of brothers and then Fab 5, after being wronged by all the people you have sacrificed yourself for, haven't you learned? You kept going on, this girl here and then Devansh, you keep getting involved with unworthy people."

"You have forgotten to add your name to that list," Manik reminded.

"What?" The elder man asked, confused.

"You, Mr. Malhotra, was the first person who has wronged me," he muttered and huffed out a laugh when the man remained silent.

"If it was Nyonika that was standing in front of me, I would have never let her know what I am about to tell you. If it was her, revenge would have been easier," he said with a sigh.

"Revenge?" The elder man asked as if he couldn't fathom the idea of such a thing.

"Yes, revenge. You see, Mr. Malhotra, I was raised a certain way. Give and take. Despite what you may think, I never let anyone hurt me, but if they somehow succeed, I make them pay. And you have succeeded in hurting me in ways my other enemies could only dream of," Manik said with an unamused laugh.

"I am not your enemy," the elder man denied.

"You became one the day you decided to deprive me of the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me. Nyonika threatened and tried, but you, Mr. Malhotra, almost succeeded in ruining my life," Manik said.

"So as the first part of my revenge, I shall tell you the truth. You asked how come I never noticed the pattern. Oh, but I did. What you got wrong is that it was you who started the cycle," he muttered with a half-smile.

"What are you talking about?" Mr Malhotra asked, confused.

"Even though you are who you are, you should have been able to understand what I am talking about," Manik said before continuing with a shallow laugh. "Very early in my life I learned to not take things for granted, you and Nyonika taught me that. Her cold and manipulative behavior towards me stopped me from approaching her but you, you always kept me in the illusion that I mattered to you. Till you walked away and abandoned me."

"So, Mr Malhotra, you were the first to disappoint me. You aren't any better, you stand first in line along with others. Being your son, and being around you, has always come with a price. I had to suffer, in whichever way seemed possible for a bit of your attention. You and Nyonika, both crave material things, you aren't capable of loving. So, you see me as one, a material, an abject to use in whichever way is convenient for you, right? You both have always done that, I always have been a weapon to use, to hurt the other, to show your power, to gain something or other."

"You can't equate my love and care for you with the one of your mother's," Mr Malhotra objected.

"Love and care? The past four years sure showed how much you care for me," Manik asked with a snort.

"What was wrong in trying to protect you? What have I done wrong?" Mr Malhotra yelled.

"You forced me to live here, away from everything I knew. You isolated me deliberately so only you could make decisions for me. You told lies about Nandini, my past, about my friends, about everything. I have been forced to take medication that I didn't need. Four years, I have suffered for four years, and for what? Nothing but your petty ego and obsession with messing up my life. Do you realize how twisted you are to call what you have done love and care? You hit me where it hurt the most and attacked me when I was my most vulnerable," Manik yelled back.

"That's because you refused to forget about this girl. Everything would have been easier if you just would have let it go," Mr Malhotra growled.

"Let it go? Let her go? Do you even realize who Nandini is to me? You and Nyonika made me feel like I was an object, a weapon, a monster. I had walls around me and I made myself unapproachable because I didn't want to hurt anymore. I thought I was unworthy of love and care and never let anyone come close to the real me. No one even attempted. Everyone has been selfish, and happy till they gained from me what they wanted. No one even saw those walls till she came."

"So why? Why do you think I won't crave her, Mr. Malhotra? She gave me the stability, security, and protection I have always sought. Things that you could never give me," he muttered with a glare.

"She wasn't just a girlfriend to me. She was my home. You should have known that when I begged you and told you I would do whatever you wanted if you brought Nandini to me. YET you lied. You lied to me and betrayed me when I was willing to do anything for you. As my father, you should have at least shown some mercy when I almost died. Did you even for once think about what I have been feeling? What I have been going through when everyone around me told me what and whom I wanted and needed was just an imagination. Do you know how stuck I have felt between my mind, my heart, and reality? You denied me my only safe place. And even after all these years of seeing me unable to move on, and suffering day after day, you kept on with your lies and you would have continued if you weren't caught."

"Oh, quit being dramatic. You never tried to move on," Mr Malhotra objected with exasperation. "You kept moaning about it being true love when all it was just a freaking college crush. Nothing else. Live in the real world, not fairy tales, Manik. You don't get to claim that was true love when you are destined to do bigger things. You are a Malhotra. Do even realize what that means?"

"Maybe it wasn't love. Maybe it was just a teenage crush, maybe someday we would have broken up, but did we get to do it? Any of it? No, because you took that choice away from us, Mr Malhotra. We didn't get the chance to do anything other than live life that was shaped based on the lie you told me, the lie you made Nandini live with," Manik said with a glare.

"And what do you want to do now? Be with this girl?" Mr Malhotra snarled as he looked at the said girl in distaste.

"Don't you dare," Manik muttered with a barely controlled growl.

"What would you do? Take revenge?" Mr Malhotra asked with a mirthful laugh. "Accept it, Manik Malhotra, there is nothing you can do. Revenge? Whatever you think I may have done, there is nothing that you can do to punish me."

Seeing him smirk smugly, Manik felt like ripping that expression off his face, and that's what he proceeded to do.

"I am Manik Santok Malhotra, you are forgetting that I am not just your son, Mr Malhotra, I am Santok Malhotra's grandson, the only one at that. Thanks to him, I inherited the Malhotra trust funds at twenty-one. And I think you have forgotten about it, so let me remind you, I just turned twenty-three," he said, tilting his head to the side with a smirk.

"No," Mr Malhotra whispered in horror, already predicting where the conversation would go.

"Yes. I received my birthday gift from my grandfather two weeks ago," Manik nodded, letting out a gleeful chuckle.

Suppressing his panic by taking a deep breath, Mr Malhotra tried to keep calm. There was no way he would be trapped in the hole he wanted his son to fall into. With his age and energies declining, he had left that loophole open to force his son to come to claim his place beside him at the company he had inherited from his own father. He had never thought that the trust fund and the stupid contract of passing down shares that his father, Santok Malhotra, had made for his nonexistent grandchildren would one day threaten him in such a manner. Because back then, he had been sure there would be no heir other than him. After his father's death, he had worked so hard to make the Malhotra company reach its peak, making it a multinational empire. And when his heir had been born, he had thought he would anyway one day pass the empire down to Manik, his only successor. Therefore the trust fund and not fully inheriting Santok Malhotra's shares had never been an issue for him until now.

"And what are you going to do with your gift?" Mr Malhotra asked, clenching his jaw.

"Oh, I don't know...Sell it?" Manik said with a casual shrug, his eyes glinting with mirth.

"You wouldn't dare..." Mr Malhotra growled as rage suddenly overpowered any other emotion within him.

"Is that a challenge?" Manik asked with a smirk.

"You want to destroy my empire because of your petty feelings for a little girl?" Mr Malhotra snarled as he glared at the said girl.

"Not destroy, it's destroyed," Manik informed with a cold gaze, letting out a chuckle when Mr Malhotra's phone rang. "Madhav's timing sure is impeccable," he commented.

"WHAT?" Mr Malhotra responded to the call with a bark.

"Sir, we have a problem," the panic in Madhav's voice could be heard. "I don't know how it happened and how such a big thing went unnoticed."

"Quit making excuses, you imbecile, tell me what happened," Mr Malhotra ordered.

"Sir, I was just informed that an emergency board meeting would be held in half an hour," the secretary reported hesitantly.

"For what? FOR WHAT?" Mr Malhotra yelled when the response wasn't immediate.

"To dismiss you, Sir" came a response that left him baffled, with an incredulous laugh, he tried to make sense of things.

"While seeing you process this news is entertaining, I am getting late. You see, I have an emergency board meeting to attend," Manik said with a cheeky smile. "See there then, Mr Malhotra..." he waved at him before holding the hand of the girl standing next to him and walking out without looking back.

As Mr Malhotra saw them walking away, waves of rage exploded within his chest and he let out a frustrated yell as he trashed the files and everything on the table in front of him to the ground.

"How dare he..." he yelled.

The gall of that little boy for coming after his empire...

With breathy huffs, he tried to regulate his breathing and reminded himself that he must not strain himself. It didn't matter what that insolent son of his thought he could do with the company shares that he now had in his hand, it was he, Mr Malhotra, who was the true and the only owner of the Malhotra empire. Manik may be his heir, but he would be the one to decide when to hand it over to him, not anyone else, not even Manik himself. The Malhotra empire belonged to him and no one else...

"I will show him..." he muttered to himself, trembling in rage as he stomped outside, determined to raise hell.

Manik had declared war by coming after what's his, now he shall crush the rebellion and everyone else who made it possible...

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A/N:- Is this considered a cliffhanger? If yes, apologies, but had to stop here as the chapter was getting too long. But I hope you liked the update even though as always I was late at posting it. And the reason for the delay is that... Business tactics. I did my research but I am confused between taking the dramatic approach or the realistic approach... So, by the next chapter, I shall figure that out... ;D

How was the chapter? Did you like it? Was it worth the wait? It was one of the most difficult chapters to write and I keep rewriting it, so I don't know...Please let me know your thoughts...

Anyone who predicted something? The info about Manik getting his inheritance and trust fund was given in chapter 20 during Manik and Nyonika's conversation when he went back to India with Devansh.

Ever since the story started, I have thought about what would be Manik's revenge/Mr Malhotra's Karma. With time I have changed, my writing and thought process have changed and so has this story, so maybe the next chapters would reflect that. I can only hope that the next chapters will be up to your expectations... :)

Thank you for waiting, for reading, and commenting, and for the love that you guys keep giving this story. I am so grateful and humbled by the kindness and support. *hugs*

Thank you! <3

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