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Raghav stares at me in shock.
“What?” I shrug. “You thought only you could dig into the past lives of the Shergills and Walias? We won’t do anything to know about you? I know more about you than you think. Because when people like you chase people like me, there’s hardly any room for secrets left,” I add, trying to get my point across.
Raghav looks displeased but hears me out keenly as I continue.
“Your gang is being hunted down by law enforcement agencies across the world’s most powerful nations. However, so far, none of these efforts have been successful due to your mastermind’s exceptional ability to stay hidden. Your network is widespread and extends across the globe, with connections to influential insiders in Indian political parties. This gives you tremendous power, enabling you to control many administrative decisions in the country. Your unlawful support to many gangs and politicians here in India has created tensions, causing public unrest and targeted hatred against the government. Want to know more or are you convinced that you are not the only one who can give surprises,” I mock.
Raghav shakes his head dismissively.
“Impressive. I’ll give you that. Anyone who knows this much about us is either our ally or they are dead. And you missed adding one critical piece of information—whoever we are, we are also the doom of the Shergills and Walias.”
I clench my jaw glaring back. If he thinks he can threaten to hurt my family and I would do nothing about it, he hasn’t realised my capability yet.
“As long as I’m in the way, no one can touch my family. Lay a finger on them, and I’m coming for you. I might be known for my righteousness, but harm them, and you’ll face my wrath.”
“Whoops.” Raghav takes a step back and mocks. “I didn’t expect anything less from you,” he sneers. “What will you do? Shoot me? Kill us all? What?”
“Killing you comes last. First, I’ll f*cking burn this place down and then bring your Bat Syndicate crushing down. So that before you die, you can see what happens when someone even thinks of hurting my people.”
Raghav fists his fingers.
“If it was someone else saying this, he would have been dead by now. So, don’t provoke me to kill you, Ayaan.”
“You might need provocation to kill. I don’t. The first chance I get, I won’t hesitate to do that. I will just pull the trigger,” I challenge, gripping my gun and pointing it at him again. Though Raghav is a bit far from me, my gun is loaded, unlocked and only waiting for me to pull the trigger.
Raghav curbs his anger before shaking his head.
“Put your gun down, Ayaan. Because whatever I’m going to tell you now will change your mind.”
Nothing he does or says will ever change my mind. I meant every word I said. If he comes for my family, I will burn down his empire into ashes. I glance at my watch. Only three minutes left for my sixty-minute timer. My exit plan’s about to kick in. I stare at Raghav, who heads to a giant glass window and slides the drapes before turning to me again.
“You do know a lot about us, but one surprise is still mine,” he says, looking out over another hall where a party is going on.
This one isn’t a masked party like the one happening above. I can clearly see unknown faces of men who are in expensive suits, tattooed arms and necks, some smoking and drinking, and some with guns in their holsters, peeking out of their suit jackets. But one man stands out among them all. He is around my dad’s age, tall and strong, with a few grey hairs. He is smoking an expensive cigar and talking to a group of men. As he takes another puff, I notice the blue inked tattoo of the Bat on the back of his palm. It’s imprinted on his skin as if he worships it. The same Bat emblem that has been the symbol of the Bat Syndicate. Their mark of identification and victory.
“That’s him. The supreme head of the Bat Syndicate, the mastermind as they call him – Tej Khurana. And you know what’s the best part, Ayaan?Heis your real father,” Raghav reveals with a grin.
The words hang in the air, heavy with a truth I never saw coming. The ground seems to shake beneath me as I process what Raghav just said. Tej Khurana? The mastermind of the Bat Syndicate? My father? How’s that even possible?
Kailash Shergill, the man who raised me, and Tej Khurana, the man who gave me life, are diametrically opposed in their ideologies and sentiments about their country and mankind. How can I just accept that I am a part of something so sinister?
“You are unnecessarily proud of being the righteous man, Ayaan,” Raghav mocks. “You may have been raised by the country’s most humble social reformer, who is a devoted follower of justice, but the reality is that you have mafia blood in you. And whether you like it or not, nothing will change the fact that you are Ayaan Tej Khurana and not Ayaan Kailash Shergill.”
Raghav’s words send my adrenaline soaring. My heart pounds in my chest as I try to process it. I stare at every movement, every action of the man Raghav has just introduced as my real father. I want to deny this fact, but there is something inside me that’s screaming aloud in my ears that this is true. That every word Raghav spoke has significance. Four years ago, when I got to know that Kailash Shergill wasn’t my real father, I wasn’t as affected as I am now, knowing the mastermind of the Bat Syndicate, Tej Khurana’s blood, runs in my veins. That I’m the son of the biggest international mafia, the most wanted criminal of his time.
Within a split second, my watch timer runs out, and I quickly aim and shoot, putting out the only red light in the room.
“Ayaan, stop!!” Raghav, who hadn’t expected me to do this, screams in the darkness, but I’m already out of his cabin. I lock his room behind me and shoot at the emergency alarms on the side wall as I run towards the exit.
As the sixty-minute timer ticked, I knew my escape from ‘The Roost’ was about to begin. My plan was simple: trigger the emergency alarms in the pub, causing chaos and confusion, which would give me an opportunity to slip away unnoticed. I make my way up the emergency stairs to the second floor, where I join the stream of people rushing towards the exit door as the emergency alarms blare on every floor. Wearing an eye mask to conceal my identity from the guards evacuating the insiders, I exit the pub with other people without arousing suspicion. I was confident that my plan would work perfectly. I had come to confront Raghav about his attempt to hurt my father, but little did I know that this would reveal secrets I wasn’t ready to face. The identity of my real father! The most wanted Mafia who was pursued by the most formidable law enforcement agencies in the world – Tej Khurana!!
CHAPTER 12
AYAAN
As I walk down the road, the sirens of the fire brigade and emergency service vehicles suddenly turn into the block, heading towards the pub. A black sedan, with tinted windows comes to a screeching halt before me.
“Get inside,” I hear Krish’s voice as the backseat door of the car opens.
