Chapter 20 -The Devil's Devotion
Eshaan Vikram Khanna's POV
I'm unlucky.
I'm not grateful.
I should not have been born.
I'm useless.
I'm bad luck.
I'm hurt.
These are the words that shaped me. These are the words I grew up hearing, over and over again, like a curse tied to my existence. No lullabies, no bedtime stories, just these words, hammering into my skull, reminding me that I was nothing more than a mistake-a shadow in the grand design of fate.
I don't remember what it feels like to be wanted. To be loved.
I was never held with warmth. Never kissed goodnight. Never told that I was enough.
My father didn't have me because he wanted a son. He had me because he needed an heir. That was my only purpose. That was the only reason I existed-to carry his fucking legacy forward. But even that wasn't enough for him. Nothing was ever enough for him.
He never wanted a child. He wanted a weapon.
At the age when other kids ran freely under the sun, when they played, laughed, and lived without a care in the world, I was shackled.
At 13, when children were learning how to dream, I was learning how to kill.
At 16, when teenagers were experiencing their first love, I was burying my father. And by the time the dirt settled on his grave, I had already taken his place. At 16, I became the underground mafia king.
Sixteen years. Sixteen fucking years of nothing but blood, betrayal, and survival. I've slit throats before I ever held a lover's hand. I've watched bodies fall before I ever saw a sunrise worth remembering.
Sixteen years of craving something as simple as a gentle touch, a soft whisper, a love that never came.
And that's when I understood-love is a myth. A pathetic illusion we cling to because the truth is too painful to face. Love never existed.
People think they're in love. They tell themselves they are. They chase it, they fall for it, they destroy themselves for it. But in the end, it's all a fucking lie.
Even my own mother, the purest soul I've ever known, was trapped in that lie.
She said she loved my father. The same man who burned down her family, slaughtered the people who raised her, destroyed everything she once called home-just because they refused to hand her over to him. And yet, she still loved him.
How? How the fuck do you love a man who stole everything from you?
I asked her once. I was just a kid, still naive enough to believe that love could be real. I asked her why she stayed, why she never ran, why she didn't hate him for what he did.
She smiled.
She fucking smiled and said, Because I love him.
That day, something inside me broke.
Love? If that was love, then love was the most dangerous poison of all.
It made my mother stay quiet when she should have screamed. It made her endure when she should have left. It made her watch while he betrayed her, slept with other women, lied to her, humiliated her, and still... she stayed.
She knew.
She knew he was cheating. She knew he was with another woman, touching her, kissing her, giving her everything my mother longed for.
And yet, she stayed silent.
Because she loved him.
Love destroyed her. Love made her weak. Love took everything from her and still, she embraced it like it was the only thing keeping her alive.
But me? I refuse.
I refuse to be weak.
I refuse to be like her.
Love is not for people like me. It never was. It never will be.
All my life, I craved warmth, but now I know-I was born to be cold.
But everything changed one day.
December 5.
The day she walked into my life. The day my world shifted. The day I saw her and felt something I never thought I could feel-something raw, something terrifying, something that made my heart feel like it was about to explode.
Aaradhya Vidya Kapoor.
She came into my life at my worst moment. When I was drowning in the darkness, suffocating in my own demons, she appeared-like a light I never asked for but desperately needed.
And for the first time in years, I felt something close to peace.
I don't know why, but the moment I saw her, I felt like I was looking at my mother.
The mother I lost. The mother who was taken from me before I could even understand what loss meant. The mother who was fucking killed because of my father's rivalry.
She looked like her. She carried the same warmth, the same gentleness that I had craved my whole life.
I felt my mother's presence near her.
And maybe... just maybe... that's why I couldn't look away.
She was breathtaking.
Just by looking at her, I forgot how to breathe.
She fell for me first. Or at least... that's what she thinks.
But if only she knew. If only she knew that I had already fallen.
I was possessed by her before I even knew her name. Obsessed with her before I even touched her. She was in my veins, in my fucking soul.
But then a thought struck me-was this love?
No.
I didn't believe in love.
Even though I loved her, it wasn't the kind of love people dream about. Because love is just a fucking myth. A beautifully wrapped lie that makes people blind.
But I am blind for her.
Mad for her.
Insane for her.
I could take my last breath just to say I love her, but even then, my love wouldn't be enough.
Because what I feel for her is more than love.
It's obsession.
It's possession.
It's devotion.
She was an angel sent to me. A gift from the heavens.
And I know-deep in my heart-I know that my mother sent her to me.
When my father died, when the world looked at a sixteen-year-old boy and laughed, when they underestimated me, thinking I couldn't handle the empire he left behind...
They forgot something.
They forgot that my bloodline only knows how to make people suffer.
And I made them suffer.
I burned their doubts to ashes. I rose from the dirt, from the betrayal, from the pain. I took everything they thought I couldn't have.
But my Aaradhya... she was the only thing I never had to take.
She came to me willingly.
She was the one who proposed first.
And while she stood there, looking at me with those innocent eyes, waiting for my answer-
I was searching for her like a madman.
Imagine this-falling for someone at first sight, just by looking into their eyes.
And then... meeting that same person again.
Not just meeting.
Watching her kneel before you.
Watching her confess their feelings.
Not knowing that the man standing before them was already lost in them before they even knew his name.
And watching her propose to me... what do you expect me to do?
I usually visit my mother's orphanage-the one she built with her own hands. She loved children. She found happiness in their laughter, in their innocence. And I? I was jealous.
I envied how freely they lived, how easily they smiled, while I was out there, breaking bones and shedding blood just to survive.
After my mother's death, I stayed away from the orphanage. I didn't have the strength to return, not when every corner of that place still smelled like her warmth. But when I finally did... everything changed.
That was the first time-the first thing-I ever truly adored.
Because that was where I saw her.
I only saw her eyes. Her long hair covered the rest of her face as she ran, playing with the kids, laughter spilling from her like music. But her eyes-those eyes were all I needed to see.
Eyes like golden skies, as if they had drowned the sun within them.
Eyes that reminded me of honey's sweetness, the amber warmth of love.
Eyes like dark wood-a place to be lost and never found.
Eyes like burning stars, like the mysteries of the universe yet to be discovered.
Eyes worth living and dying for.
I was drawn to her, captivated before I even knew her name.
And maybe that's why, when she finally knelt before me, when she confessed her feelings with those same eyes locked onto mine...
I had already fallen.
I am a man who knows how to respect women. I have never touched a woman for pleasure. I have never laid with one.
And yet, I accepted her..
My mom sent her to me.. as she can't see her son suffering..
And the main thing is that the real story starts from here ðð
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