Sorry for the late update.

I totally forgot my cousin's birthday was on Sunday and I didn't get the time to update.

But here it is now.

Enjoy

The next morning light filtered gently through the blinds of the VIP hospital room, softening the sterile white walls. The faint beeping of monitors provided a quiet rhythm, almost like a heartbeat anchoring the room in stillness. Then, a faint stir, Arvind’s eyelids fluttered, and slowly, he opened his eyes.

The first thing he saw was Shanti, sitting faithfully by his side. Her eyes welled up as relief washed over her face, and she leaned in, placing a tender kiss on his forehead.

“You’re back,” she whispered, voice trembling with both love and gratitude.

Arvind smiled faintly, drinking in the sight of her, but when he shifted his gaze to the other side, he froze.

His little Golu, his chubby-cheeked son who once ran through the mansion hallways with his mouth always full was standing before him, now a full-grown man, towering at six feet, shoulders broad, eyes glistening with restrained tears. Beside him stood a young woman whose delicate hands were intertwined with his Golu’s own.

Arvind squinted, his vision adjusting. Something about her face tugged at an old memory. Her smile, her grace and suddenly, he saw it ,her angelic features mirrored a face he used to know well, the woman who had always covered for him and Shanti when they sneaked out as reckless young lovers.

“Neetu?” Arvind whispered, a hopeful smile breaking across his face.

Khushi shook her head gently which caused Arvind’s smile to falter.

Confusion set in until Shanti chuckled softly, resting her hand on his arm.

“No, Arvind........ This is Khushi,” she explained warmly. “ She is Neetu’s daughter and Arnav’s wife.”

For a moment, Arvind just stared, stunned into silence. Then, realization dawned on him, followed by an overwhelming warmth.

His eyes shone with tears as he knew any child of Neetu and Shivaay was raised right and loved well. He gestured for Khushi to come closer. She obeyed, her steps tentative, before bending down. Arvind wrapped her in a fatherly hug, his frail arms holding her with surprising strength.

“You look just like your mother,” Arvind said with wonder, his voice thick with emotion. “But you’ve got Shivaay’s kind eyes.”

Khushi’s lips trembled into a smile.

“I’m just happy you’re alive, Papa,” she said softly, and Arvind’s heart swelled hearing her call him Papa.

His eyes then shifted to his son, his Golu. He extended a hand toward Arnav, who immediately rushed forward. Father and son embraced properly for the first time in over a decade, both shaking with sobs that neither tried to hide.

“I missed you so much Papa,” Arnav’s voice cracked, breaking years of hardened silence.

“Don’t cry, Golu,” Arvind whispered, brushing at his son’s tears with trembling fingers. “The past is gone........ Let’s leave it where it belongs........... Now, we move forward.........That’s all I want...... Can you do that for me? ”

Arnav pulled back, meeting his father’s eyes with a small, determined nod.

“We will,” he promised.

At the corner of the room, Dadi stood watching, her hands trembling against her sari. For the first time in years, she saw the kindness and longing in Arvind’s eyes directed at her. It broke something inside her. Her smile, hesitant at first, faltered completely, and shame clouded her features.

Arvind lifted his hand again, this time beckoning her closer. Slowly, almost as if dragged by her own guilt, Dadi shuffled forward. The moment she reached his bedside, she broke down, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“I’m so sorry,” she sobbed, her voice wracked with regret. “For trying to separate you from Shanti for betraying you, for everything.”

Arvind smiled faintly, shaking his head.

“No more apologies,Maa.” he said softly. “I don’t want to live in yesterday...... Am tired of it............Let’s leave it all behind and move forward, together.”

Dadi nodded, still crying.

“I will try,” she whispered brokenly.

A hush fell over the room, heavy with healing and reconciliation. But then Arvind’s gaze flickered toward Khushi again, mischief glinting in his tired eyes.

“And you, Khushi ” he said with a crooked grin. “Tell me, what exactly did you see in this grumpy man of mine to fall in love with him?......... He looks so stiff and ugly.”

Everyone blinked at the suddenness of the question. Arnav’s eyes widened in utter shock.

“What the—?!” he exclaimed, completely scandalized.

Shanti burst into laughter, Khushi giggled behind her hand, and even Dadi chuckled through her tears. Arnav’s flustered expression only made it funnier, and the sound of laughter filled the sterile room, warm and alive.

For the first time in decades, Arvind allowed himself to feel the joy of his family surrounding him not fractured, not poisoned by lies, but whole again.

Meanwhile back at Shantivan, Shyam’s cheap shoes slapped against the flagstones as he hurried up the drive, a plastic bag of cheap baby stuffs he bought to look like dutiful husband clutched in one sweaty hand. He expected the same scuffed welcome he’d had for months.

Indifference from servants, the smugness of Mami’s smile, perhaps a few whispers of dramas. What he didn’t expect was HP and his two brothers standing like sentries at the main entrance, shoulders squared and faces hard.

“Stop right there,” HP said without ceremony. His voice was calm, but it carried the authority of a man who no longer trembled under orders. The brothers flanked him. “You are not allowed into the main house.”

Shyam’s mouth curled into a nasty grin.

“And who are you to give me orders?” He took a step forward, the old instincts surfacing. “Get the hell out of my way before I slap you”

HP did not move. He spoke as if speaking a law.

“You have been asked to leave the main house and take your things to the servant quarters............ We've already pack them to the quarters.”HP’s voice didn’t waver. “This is Arnavji’s instruction.”

Shyam’s smile snapped. He lurched forward, intent on grabbing HP’s collar, but a strong hand Akash’s caught him by the elbow and held him back before he could lunge.

“Be careful, Shyam,” Akash said, his voice low and dangerous in a way Shyam had never heard from him before. “If you get violent with the servants, know this: they are only doing as Arnav asked.......Your options are to go to the servant quarters quietly or to be escorted out of the mansion permanently.”

Shyam’s eyes flicked to Akash, incredulous.

“You, what did you say?.......You’re siding with them?” A pulse of betrayal shot through him.

Akash didn’t answer. He released Shyam and stepped back.

“Go,” he said, and turned away.

Slowly, stunned, Shyam looked at the three men grinning at him with that easy, implacable superior calm servants get when the house’s iron has shifted. He had no witnesses, no allies and the house had turned. He grabbed the bag he dropped down the marble steps and onto the narrower passage that led to where staff lived, he walked off.

The servant quarters were huge but smelled of cumin and damp linen. Their neatness only highlighted the difference between the main house and the place they were being sent to. Shyam’s bag made a pathetic thud as he dropped it against a cot. He pushed open the low door to the common room and froze.

Payal sat at a small table, dishing out portions of biryani into disposable plates with the air of someone conducting an assembly. Akash sat across from her, hunched over his plate, eating slowly. His expression was flat.

The shock and shame that had earlier animated him had settled into something bulbous and sour.

Mami’s footsteps sounded behind him and she moved toward the table, hand raised to pluck a piece of bread. Payal’s head snapped up and a furious hiss escaped her lips.

“Don’t touch that,” she barked. Her voice had the hard edge of someone who had been stepped on for months and had learned how to mark territory.

Mami started, wounded pride painting her face. She glared at Payal, as if this girl in rags dared to instruct her and then she turned toward Akash, hoping for rescue.

Akash, however, looked past his mother as if she was suddenly a stranger and went on dishing some sour cream onto his plate totally ignoring her. Mami’s mouth fell open in shock and for the first time she felt the sting of being dismissed by the very son she had tried to lift into prominence.

Nani hovered in the doorway, shaking a finger toward Payal.

“Payal beta,” she said in an attempt at the old moral high ground, “that is rude.”

Payal rolled her eyes.

“Dadiji, I’m done being the servant.........Sit if you want because no one’s stopping you but that thing is not reaping the benefit of my hard work in the kitchen...... Am only allowing you to join us because of your old age........ Don't push me.” Her voice carried no respect, only the bluntness of someone who had been taught subservience too long and learned defiance instead.

Shyam watched it all, slowly piecing together the earthquake that had shifted the Atlantis of their world.

He asked what was going on and Nani’s words about Manohar, who had been taken away by police, his assets seized and Arnabe being behind the arrest.

Shyam felt the room tilt hearing all this, he had been gone for less than two days and so much had happened. His plan to sell small jewelry pieces for cash fizzled because the house no longer had the easy pockets he had relied on. The servants, once pliant, now had a protector in Arnav, the jewels were gone and shared among the workers and HP, who had ensured loyalty by dividing the spoils.

He wandered to the corridor that led to Anjali’s room, peeking in. The door was half-closed and inside, Anjali lay with pale skin and drooping eyelids, breathing slow and flat. A nurse’s report echoed in his head. Drugs, prescribed to keep her calm and comfortable post C-section, kept her dozing for hours and Shyam watched her for a long moment, his face hardening into something like calculation.

All his neat, seedy plans had collapsed.

The jewelry was confiscated, Manohar ruined, Shyam’s leverage gone. A different kind of plan began to unfurl in his mind, one that required patience but promised gain. He needed money, and now the only target that might have anything left was Akash.

If he could convince, trick or coerce Akash into a transfer of properties  legally or through forged documents, he could vanish with a fortune before anyone realized.

He stood in the dim corridor, listening to the chatter from the kitchen where Payal and Akash ate in a new, improbable equality. Fear slipped into his chest, and with it a cold, determined clarity. He would not leave empty-handed. He would make the son of Manohar pay for the cost of his ruin or manipulate him until the papers were signed.

The servant quarters were huge, but the room gave Shyam the one thing he needed now: anonymity. He could move without being watched like before, whisper to the right people, set up a forgery, bribe someone at the right moment. The house might have been turned against him, but he still had cunning and a few friends in the underbelly of the neighborhood.

He sat down on the edge of a bunk, rubbing his temples. In Anjali’s stillness he saw his own future and it didn't look bright. He began to plan the next stage not the brazen thefts of before, but a careful, slow co-optation of Akash, who was now vulnerable and desperate. He would charm, he would threaten, he would trade his silence for deeds. He would get what he needed.

For now though, he kept his plan folded inside him like a blade in a sleeve, and in the dim servant quarters, with the sounds of the household muffled above, he tasted the cold iron of resolve.

A few hours later, Dil Rasoi Restaurant was bursting with life and laughter, clinking cutlery, the smell of butter and spices mingling with the sound soothing music in the background. The evening crowd had filled every table and so was the drive in section of the restaurant, and in the center of it all, Preeto moved with the lightness of a bird and an apron tied over her kurta, hair in a loose braid, face glowing with contentment as she served a young couple their steaming thalis.

From across the street, Garima Gupta sat in the passenger seat of a dark sedan, her eyes hidden behind oversized sunglasses despite the fading light. Her expression was unreadable, but her fingers clenched tightly around the edge of her sari.

Beside her, Shyam Manohar Jha leaned back lazily, a half-smirk tugging at his lips. He was clearly impatient.

“Why did you call me here, Garima?” he asked, a touch of irritation in his tone. “You said it was urgent but all I see is some restaurant and Preeto running around like a waitress.”

Garima didn’t answer right away. Her gaze remained fixed on Preeto, who was laughing with a group of children. That carefree laughter, it grated on her nerves. Every smile, every bit of adoration the girl received reminded her of her sister Shanti and her ability to command the room and receive love and adoration and all the resentment Garima had buried for years twisted anew in her chest.

She finally spoke, her voice low and tight.

“Tell me, Shyam, how much do you hate the Raizadas?”

Shyam blinked, caught off guard. But at the mention of that name, his smirk faltered and his jaw clenched. He remembered everything from being thrown out like a dog, losing access to their wealth, being mocked by even the servants.

“Hate?” he scoffed bitterly. “I want to burn that entire family down......... Especially that Arnav Singh Raizada and his self-righteous clan.”

Garima’s lips curved into a cold smile.

“Good,” she murmured, then nodded toward the restaurant window. “Then you’ll like what I’m about to tell you.........Look at her that girl serving food.”

Shyam followed her gesture.

“Her?.........That’s Preeto, isn’t it?........Khushi’s friend?...........The one Arnav suddenly calls his sister?” His tone dripped disbelief. “I never understood that connection........Thought it was just another of Khushi’s emotional dramas to get Arnav to do her bidding.”

Garima turned to him then, eyes gleaming with malice.

“Preeto,” she said slowly, “is the daughter of Shanti and Arvind Malik.”

Shyam’s eyes widened.

“What, what did you just say?”

Garima smirked, watching the realization dawn on him.

“Yes......... The same Arvind Malik who was Arnav’s father.......... That girl inside that restaurant is Arnav’s half-sister.........The love child of Arvind and my sister Shanti.”

For a moment, silence filled the car. Then Shyam gave a sharp, humorless laugh.

“He knows........So that’s why the great Arnav Singh Raizada suddenly became protective of a middle-class girl!..........Not charity but guilt and blood.” He laughed again, darker this time. “Poetic, isn’t it?......... Anjali look down on Preeto when she is the legal heiress of the Malik family.”

Garima didn’t join his laughter. Her tone grew hard.

“You see, Shyam, I know everything that happens in that mansion, every fight, every secret............Payal tells me more than she realizes............. And I’ve had enough of watching them walk around like gods while my own life is falling apart.”

Her gaze snapped toward Preeto again, filled with venom.

“That girl, she’s Shanti’s daughter and Shanti is the reason I lost everything.........I want her bloodline erased........The Maliks think they’ve found their only daughter to heal their broken family?” She leaned closer to Shyam, voice almost a hiss. “Then let her disappearance be the wound they never recover from.”

Shyam frowned, studying her.

“You want me to get rid of Preeto?”

Garima gave a small, cold smile.

“Exactly.......You want revenge........I want to hurt the ones who hurt me........ We both win and of you are smart, you will walk away rich.”

He tilted his head, suspicion flickering in his eyes.

“But tell me, Garima, if you hate the Raizadas and Maliks so much, why is your daughter married into that very family?”

For a second, Garima’s mask slipped,her lips pressed into a thin line, and her nostrils flared. She didn’t answer. Instead, she turned her gaze back to the restaurant, voice clipped.

“That’s not your concern....... The question is are you in or out?”

Shyam leaned back, pretending to think, his mind already racing. Preeto, the only legal Malik heiress and sister of billionaire ASR could indeed be his golden ticket. There was money, leverage and blackmail potential. He could twist this revelation in a thousand ways.

“I’ll think about it,” he finally said with a grin.

Garima’s eyes narrowed, but she nodded, pulling a sleek card from her purse.

“You have twenty-four hours.......Call this number when you’re ready.”

Then she gestured for the driver to stop.

“Now get out.”

Shyam obeyed, stepping out of the car with a mocking salute.

“Pleasure doing business, Garima.”

The sedan pulled away, leaving him standing on the sidewalk as the night air carried the smell of curry and roasted garlic from Dil Rasoi.

Across the street, Preeto was helping a little boy tie his shoelaces with her smile radiant.

Shyam’s eyes gleamed and he leaned against a lamppost, watching her.

“So you’re the great Arnav Singh Raizada’s second weakness, here I thought Khushi was his only weakness but you joined the list ” he muttered, smirking. “Let’s see how fast you and Khushi can get me to be rich.”

Inside the restaurant, Preeto suddenly froze mid-laugh. A strange chill ran down her spine, and she looked over her shoulder, scanning the street but there was no one.

She frowned, shook off the uneasy feeling, and went back to serving her customers.

From the shadows, Shyam’s smirk deepened.

He had found his way back into the game  and this time, he intended to win.

City Hospital.

In the quiet warmth of the hospital room, the air was filled with soft laughter. Shanti sat at the edge of Arvind’s bed, gently feeding him soup as he playfully refused each spoonful, his lips curving into the teasing smile she had fallen in love with decades ago.

“Arvind Malik, you haven’t changed one bit!” she scolded, her voice a mix of affection and mock annoyance.

Arvind chuckled, his voice still weak but laced with humor.

“And you still pout like you used to when I wouldn’t eat your cooking, Shanti.”

Dadi, seated nearby, giggled like a young girl, her eyes glistening.

“Ah, these two!........Always the same.”

Shanti pouted for real this time, turning away in mock anger, and Arvind’s laughter filled the room soft, but genuine, echoing with years of love lost and now found again.

By the doorway, Arnav stood with Khushi in his arms, his chin resting on her shoulder. They both watched the scene with quiet smiles.

Khushi whispered, her voice trembling with emotion.

“After we tell Preeto the truth, our family will be whole again.”

Arnav tightened his hold around her waist, his gaze still on his father and mother, and nodded softly.

“Yes,” he murmured, pressing a tender kiss to her cheek. “Finally we would be completely happy.”

For the first time in years, peace settled over them like a long-awaited dawn.

To be continued.

Precap: Arvind back at Shantivan.
Preeto slaps Anjali.

Next update would be published on Wednesday.

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