The dining hall at Rathore Mansion did not invite you in. It announced you small, temporary, easily forgotten. Forty feet of coffered ceiling, sandstone pillars carved with hunting scenes, a table that seated twenty-two and was set, this morning, for six. The chandeliers were Venetian. The silence was not. It had weight here, the specific gravity of a family that had built its fortune on things that didn't appear in annual reports, and knew better than to speak carelessly inside its own walls.
Morning light cut through the latticed jharokhas in thin gold bars, landing across bone china and polished silver. A bearer moved along the far wall, invisible by training. The smell of cardamom chai and toasted bread sat beneath something older. Sandalwood. Money. The particular tension of people who despised each other performing the theater of breakfast.
Baldev Singh Rathore sat at the head of the table like a man who had never once questioned his right to be there. Seventy-one years old. Still broad across the shoulders. The kind of Rajput patriarch whose power had less to do with documents and more to do with the fact that three states knew his name and none of them said it lightly. His hands, knotted at the knuckles now, folded the Economic Times with the precision of a man who'd spent decades folding much larger things into shapes that suited him. Markets. Men. Entire alliances.
He set the paper down.
"Advait ki flight kal subha 7 baje land kar rahi hai."
(Advait's flight lands at 7:00 AM).
His voice carried to every corner without effort, the way authority does when it has never had to raise itself.
"Dopeher tak woh Headquarters main hoga."
(He will be at headquarters by noon).
The table absorbed this. At the left flank, Rudvik Rathore's grip on his fork changed.
The knuckles went white first. A slow press. The tines of silver cut faint crescents into his palm. He didn't feel it.
He was the eldest grandson. For fourteen months he had sat in the Rathore Group boardroom. Signed with Dadaji's proxy. Fired three VPs. Approved the Dubai acquisition. Moved pieces on a board the law said was his until a will said otherwise.
The press had called him the next Chairman. The board had stopped CC'ing Dadaji.
Advait was landing in twelve hours.
Twelve hours. That was all Rudvik could think. Not the acquisition. Not Dadaji’s silence. Not the way the board had stopped CC’ing him last week.Just twelve hours until the real Rathore came home to take back what was his.
Rudvik looked down at his palm. The crescents were beading red. He set the fork down. Picked up his linen napkin. Wiped his hand clean. His pulse hadn’t slowed. It couldn’t. Not with twelve hours on the clock. No one at the table noticed. They were all counting the hours.
Waiting for the real Rathore.
Across from him, Indrajit Rathore and Vishakha Rathore exchanged the kind of look that didn't need words. A shared inventory of threat. Of what Advait's return meant for the architecture they'd spent over a year quietly constructing around Rudvik. Vishakha's hand found her husband's forearm under the table. A small movement. A steadying one.
At the corner of the table, away from the main current by choice and temperament, Devendra Rathore cut his toast into precise halves and said nothing. He was fifty-eight, still military in his posture, a man whose guilt expressed itself as discipline. He did not look up. Next to him, his wife Anuradha's hands stilled over her plate for just a moment. The way a person freezes when something they've been quietly hoping for, and quietly dreading, finally arrives. She reached for her water glass. Set it back without drinking.
Priyanka Rathore, Rudvik's wife and the only daughter-in-law who'd survived three years in this house without becoming collateral damage, didn't sit. She circled. Refilling chai, adjusting a spoon, catching a bearer's eye with a look that said not today. All without spilling a drop or drawing Dadaji's notice.
In the Rathore Mansion, survival wasn't about loyalty. It was about knowing exactly when to disappear. And Priyanka had made disappearing into an art form.
At the far end, Reyansh Kapoor hadn't looked up from his phone since Baldev's announcement. Twenty-six, leather jacket slung over his chair even at breakfast.
He'd walked into this mansion at eight years old, holding his mother Ridhima Kapoor's hand. Baldev's daughter, widowed, unwanted. The house had never quite decided what to do with him.
So he'd decided for it. Bikes. Border towns. A life that didn't require signing in blood.
He took a slow sip of his black coffee. Over the rim of the cup, his eyes moved to Rudvik's white knuckles. The corner of his mouth did something that was not quite a smile.
"Bhaiya," he thought, without warmth. "You should have enjoyed it while it lasted."
(Brother... you should have enjoyed it while it lasted).
In the shadows near the courtyard window, the silence broke.
Reyansh let out a short, sharp bark of laughter. He'd been sitting there quietly, tossing a heavy silver coin between his fingers. An old habit from nights spent at roadside dhabas instead of boardrooms.
"What are you laughing at, you bastard?" Rudvik snarled, turning on him.
Reyansh caught the coin in his palm with a metallic slap. He was the only one in this house who didn't want the chair of the business, and that made him the most dangerous person in Rudvik's eyes. He looked up, his eyes gleefully malicious.
"Main toh soch raha tha, bhaiya,"
He said, his tone the particular kind of mild that was actually a blade. (I was just thinking, brother).
"Board mein baith ke kya socha tha? That he'd just not come back?"
(What did you think, sitting in the boardroom? That he'd just not come back? ).
A beat.
"Tum wahan itne comfortable ho gaye the ki tum bhool gaye, yeh kursi pehle se kisi ki thi."
(You got so comfortable there that you forgot, this chair already belonged to someone).
The courtyard went quiet.
Reyansh stood, unhurried, hands in his pockets. His bike keys jingled. The only sound. He was the only one who'd said it out loud. He was also the only one who could walk out of this mansion at midnight and not be missed until breakfast. Which was, in this house, the closest thing to freedom.
The private lounge at Milan was the kind of quiet money engineered. Thick carpet swallowed footsteps. Filtered air carried no scent. This was a space where people of consequence waited for the world to rearrange itself around their calendars.
Advait Rathore did not wait. He didn’t need to.
The world rearranged itself the moment his name hit the manifest. Pilots filed flight plans faster. Boards cleared their agendas. Men like Rudvik started bleeding into linen napkins twelve hours out.
He sat with his back to the floor-to-ceiling glass. Runways stretched behind him as pre-dawn dark bled into grey morning. A king between flights, conducting a board meeting with his own reflection.
He sat with his back to the floor-to-ceiling glass. Runways stretched behind him as pre-dawn dark bled into grey morning. He looked like a man conducting a board meeting with his own reflection.
Jacket off, folded with military precision over the adjacent seat. Cufflinks removed. Sleeves rolled to the forearm. The tablet in his hands displayed a Rathore Group financial overview. It was not the one filed with regulators.
Lean in a way that spoke of discipline. The stillness he carried was not absence of motion. It was a predator choosing when to expend energy. He had Devendra his father's jaw and Baldev his Dadaji's eyes. He had done something to both that made them unreadable.
He scrolled through a subsidiary report. Flagged three line items with a tap. Made a note in Gujarati shorthand that no one in that lounge could have read.
His phone buzzed. He looked at the sender. Answered on the second ring.
"Bolo." (Speak).
The voice on the other end was low, careful. A man who had made a career of selling information to the highest bidder and surviving it.
"Dadaji ka health report aaya."(Dadaji's health report came).
A beat.
"It isn't good, saab. Cardiac event last month. Minor, per the doctors. The family, the close family, made sure it stayed out of the press."
Advait said nothing. His jaw tightened, barely perceptible.
"Rudvik bhai ne Jhala Group se baat ki. Alliance ke liye." (Rudvik spoke with the Jhala Group. About an alliance).
The informant's voice dropped another register.
"He's had three private meetings with Dadaji's legal team in the last six weeks. The board restructure proposal is already drafted, saab. Signed with Devendra kaka's proxy. If Dadaji's health deteriorates before you're re-established in the power structure..."
The sentence didn't need finishing.
Advait's finger moved across the tablet. He pulled up the board composition. Counted the names aligned against him. Counted the ones who could be turned.
"Aur woh Dubai ke accounts" (And those Dubai accounts).
He said, his voice absolutely level.
"Jo Rudvik ne freeze karwaye the." (The ones Rudvik got frozen).
"Still frozen," the informant said.
"But tumhare naam pe jo naye shell khule hain na, saab, unse ab uska dhandha khatre mein hai."
(But the new shells you opened in your name, sir, his business is in danger because of them).
A long pause.
"Accounts unfreeze karne nahi ja raha."
(I'm not going to unfreeze accounts).
"Toh?" (Then?).
"Main jaa raha hoon uska dhandha hi band karne."
(I'm going to shut down his business entirely).
A long pause. On the other end, the informant stopped breathing.
"Samjha," the voice finally said, very quietly. Understood.
"Jaipur, aap kab pahunch rahe hain, saab?"
(Jaipur, when are you reaching, sir?).
"7 baje land karta hoon."
(I land at 7. A pause).
"Aur Rudvik ko bolna."
(And tell Rudvik).
"Ji?". (Yes?)
"Hisab ke liye taiyyar rahe."
(Tell him to be ready for the settlement).
He ended the call. For a moment he didn't move. Outside, a jet began its slow, massive turn toward the runway. All that controlled thrust, all that weight, pointing itself deliberately toward somewhere it intended to arrive.
Advait closed the financial report. Set the tablet face-down on the table.
He had been twenty-five when he'd left. When left was the word the family used, politely, in place of the accurate one. He had spent five years building infrastructure in markets Rathore Group had never thought to enter. Legitimate infrastructure, a paper trail clean enough to satisfy any scrutiny, and beneath it, the kind of architecture that took patience and cold intelligence to construct.
He sat with his back to the floor-to-ceiling glass. Runways stretched behind him as pre-dawn dark bled into grey morning. A king between flights, conducting a board meeting with his own reflection.
He stood.
The movement was sharp enough to make the air hostess flinch at the door.He picked up his jacket. Checked his watch. His face, in the glass reflection, was unreadable.
He wasn't going back for reunion. He wasn't going back to grieve, or to negotiate, or to play the returning son grateful for his welcome.
He was going back for a hostile takeover.
The family just didn't know it yet.
The afternoon settled over the haveli like it always did in late winter. Sharp light, long shadows, the bougainvillea against the outer wall already rioting pink and orange in a garden that had no interest in the family's mood.
Priyanka moved through the east wing with a clipboard and the quiet authority of someone who had kept this house running through two boardroom coups, one funeral, and an exile, and intended to keep it running through whatever was coming now.
She confirmed the guest suite. Advait's old rooms, aired, cleaned, the mojaris he'd left behind still in the wardrobe because no one had touched them. She confirmed the kitchen's additions. She confirmed, wordlessly, that every bearer and domestic on the floor understood that today required a particular standard of invisibility.
In the sitting room adjacent, Anuradha stood by the window, her phone clutched in her palm. The screen showed a WhatsApp chat. Just 'A' as the name, no profile photo.
Last message: Seen 3 weeks ago.
She'd sent forty-three messages in five years. Photos of the house during Diwali. Dadaji's health reports. A video of the new fountain in the courtyard, the one he'd loved as a boy.
Eleven had blue ticks. No reply. Four had come back: "Maa, I'm fine. Don't worry." "Take care of your health."
She opened the camera now, out of habit. The garden was bright, uncomplicated. The bougainvillea he'd climbed when he was ten, the swing Rudvik had broken in a fight.
She wanted to send it. Her thumb hovered. Then she locked the phone and slid it into the folds of her saree. She pressed her palm against the cold glass and closed her eyes for one second. Just one.
There would be time to be his mother again later. Or there wouldn't. Either way, the ghee in the kitchen was burning. She had to go fix it before the staff panicked.
Advait was coming home. And her kitchen could not be in chaos.
Down the corridor, Devendra stood at the tall window with a copy of Business India open to a page he had not read once in twenty minutes.
The guilt that lived in his chest, low, chronic, the kind that becomes structural, arranged itself into its usual posture: chin up, expression neutral, the appearance of a man at rest.
He had done what he'd done. There had been reasons. The reasons, reviewed from five years' distance, were becoming harder to hold the way he'd once held them.
He turned a page he hadn't read. Perjury, quietly rehearsed.
From the courtyard below came the sound of a door, and then Rudvik's voice, clipped, already irritated from whatever meeting had preceded this, and then Reyansh's, unhurried, amused.
Thousands of miles away, inside a sunlit but chaotic top-floor studio in London, the atmosphere was different. Equally lethal.
The space was a collision of two worlds. On one side stood heavy, steel-framed drafting tables covered in hand-drawn jewelry sketches. On the other side, massive legal textbooks on international corporate compliance and maritime law lay open, their pages heavily highlighted in neon yellow and pink.
Wamika Roy stood in the center of the room. Her long dark hair was tied up in a hurried knot. A smudge of charcoal dusted her left cheekbone. She wore an oversized white linen shirt and basic denim, her bare feet planted on the cold wooden floor. From a distance she looked fragile. Up close, her jaw had a stubborn slant. Her dark eyes carried the kind of independence that had been paid for in full.
Her phone, lying flat on the drafting table next to a silver scale, began to ring. The caller ID displayed a single name that locked her body up. Alok Roy.
Wamika let out a slow breath. She picked it up and swiped the screen.
"Yes, Dad," she said. Her voice was flat. Professional. Not a daughter's voice.
"The arrangements are finalized, Wamika."
Mr. Roy's voice came through the line, detached and heavy with expectation.
"Your flight to Jaipur is booked for Sunday night. The match is settled with the Mehrotras. The corporate merger will be signed with your engagement registry."
Wamika didn't flinch.
"Wamika? Are you listening?" her father's voice barked through the speaker.
"I expect you to behave like a daughter of this family. Your jewelry hobbies and your consulting work are over. You have a duty to this bloodline."
"I heard you," Wamika said. Her voice was smooth. Calm.
"Send me the flight details. I'll handle compliance for the merger."
"Good. Don't create drama. I gave them my word."
The line went dead.
Wamika lowered the phone. She didn't look at her sketches. She looked at her passport lying open on the legal texts. The gold emblem gleamed under the studio lights.
She set the phone down.Wamika thought of the list then.The one she naver said out loud.
Dad picked my college. My internships. My clients.He called it discipline.
She called it a cage.She was done living in his.
Five thousand miles away, Advait Rathore boarded a flight.
Two storms. One city. No mercy.
Neither of them knew their first look would be the last peace either of them had.
Not love at first sight. Hate at first sight.
**Hey lovelies 💙 Thank you for reading Chapter 1 of *Terms of Obsession*.
I’d be so grateful if you dropped a comment. Show your love towards the Author.
Your support = why I can keep writing.
> [Razew] ✨
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