UNEDITED!!!

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"It's just a two storey building so there is not elevator, can you climb up the stairs to reach my apartment or you want me to take you somewhere else...um maybe to the park to talk if you find difficult to climb?" Rk asked Radha.

"Park! Park! Park!" Ruhi jumped in his arms excitedly.

"No, it's fine. I can manage. If Ruhi wants to go to park, we can go there. Choice is yours, Rishu" Radha said with a small smile.

"Baby, we will go to park later. Now we will go home and eat your favorite chocolate sandwich, okay?"

"Okie, papa" Ruhi agreed. Rk pressed a kiss on her chubby cheeks before ascending the stairs taking two steps at a time not bothering to wait for Radha.

Radha slowly walked up and by the time she reached Rk's apartment door, she was breathless and sweating. She hesitantly stepped into his house and found him rummaging something in the fridge and Ruhi was seated on the bean bag.

"Nice place. You are maintaining it so clean, Rishu" Radha said, remembering how neat and clean he used to keep his room and study table when he was young. My boy hasn't changed much. She thought.

"I just moved in here 10 days back and I don't have many things so the place is dust free, clean and spacious." Rk replied with a shrug. "You want some sandwiches?" he asked politely.

"No, just give me a glass of water, please" Radha asked.

He didn't know why but he felt kind of disappointed that she said no to eat the sandwich prepared by him.

"Glasses are in that cupboard" he pointed his chin to the cupboard where he had placed the glasses and cups, indirectly asking her to help herself to a glass of water and he continued spreading the dark chocolate spread on the bread slice. Once he was done spreading excess chocolate paste, he stuffed that whole slice of bread in his mouth and then started preparing another set for Ruhi. He still eats while he cooks, my impatient boy! Radha thought with a smile noticing his action.

"Ruhi, c'mere" Rk called and Ruhi ran to the kitchen island after discarding her train toy on the floor. He showed her the plate and she took a chocolate sandwich with both her hands. "Thank you" Ruhi looked up at her daddy and said with her baby smile before taking a bite of her sandwich.

"You're welcome, sweetheart" he smiled.

Radha stood there silently, adoring her son and her grand-daughter. How I wish I wasn't separated from my son all these years. She thought with tear brimming eyes.

"Shall we start with the talk now?" Rk asked after settling comfortably on the bean bag. Ruhi sat on his lap and quietly ate her sandwich and Radha sat on the couch opposite to him.

"Yes" Radha nodded.

"Well, go ahead with your lies" Rk mocked her.

"First thing, you have to trust me and my words. I'm not here to spin lies. I'm here to tell you what happened exactly and why we got separate and also I am here to beg you to forgive me."

"I promised to hear your side story but I didn't promise to forgive you so you can't expect that from me"

"Not today but one day, I am hoping you will forgive me"

Rk huffed and raked his fingers through his hair. "Get to the point, will you?"

"Rishu, whatever I am going to tell you now is truer than the truth but it's really a sick truth so you have to..."

"I have done a lot of sick shits so don't bother about me, I can handle whatever it is. All I want to know is why you left me all alone."

"Firstly, I want you to know that Vihaan is your half brother..."

"Well, it isn't news to me. I knew it already. You left my dad for a rich man and had his kid..."

"I didn't give birth to Vihaan but yeah, I am his mother!" Radha considered Vihaan as her own son though he wasn't.

Rk frowned in confusion. "You mean to say my dad..."

"Yes, you and Vihaan share the same father but not the same mother."

"No, no, no, it's not possible. He is a Mehra and I am a Kundra. My dad loved you so much and he wouldn't have cheated on you" Rk denied to agree.

"Your father never loved me" Radha said hurtfully. "Mohan and I had an arranged marriage and we never found love in our marriage life. Though I tried to love him, I couldn't because of his betrayal..."

"So you eloped with a rich man who showered you with love, not even caring for your son, right? First tell me, you only gave birth to me, right?" he asked cunningly.

"I didn't elope with Mr. Ritesh Mehra and of course you are my blood" Radha scoffed getting offended by his words.

"Then why the hell you left me?" he wanted to know answer for that one single question, nothing more, nothing less.

"I was forced to leave you." Radha's voice cracked as her eyes stung with unshed tears.

"Who the fu..." he held his realizing his daughter was with him. "Who forced you?" Rk asked, angrily.

"Papa, I finished" Ruhi interrupted, showing her empty plate to him. "Good girl" Rk wiped off the chocolate from the corner of her mouth and her fingers using a tissue. "Ruhi baby, why don't you go to the bedroom and play with your toys?"

"Okie, papa" Ruhi kissed his cheek and he put her down on the floor from his lap and she ran to the bedroom.

"Leave the door open, sweetheart" Rk instructed when Ruhi tried to shut the door.

"Okie" she agreed again surprising him and let the door wide open so that Rk can keep an eye on her from the place where he was seated.

"Your father" Radha answered

"What?" Rk got back his attention from Ruhi to his mother.

"Your father forced me to leave you" she said as a lone tear rolled down her cheek. "And he refused to give you to me"

"What? Why would he do that? He loved me if not you and he wouldn't have done that injustice to me. He wouldn't have separated you from me because he knew how much I loved you and needed you then. You are simply seeding venom on me about him knowing he is no more to come and tell me the truth" Rk wasn't ready to believe her.

"Rishu, you have to trust me here. I am telling you the truth. Your dad had an affair with Mr. Mehra's wife..."

"No!!!"

"Trust me, please"

"It's not easy to trust you. It's not easy to trust anyone, not even myself." He said pulling his head in frustration.

"Rishu, please..."

"It's been nearly 17 years... I almost forgot I had a mother... I think it's better to leave that way. I don't want you now. I don't want to listen to any shit you throw at me."

"Rishu, please don't leave..." Radha held his hand when he stood up to leave the place. "Please hear me out and then decide whether you want me in your life or not."

Rk didn't say anything but just sat back on the bean bag and stared at the floor.

"As far as I know Vihaan's dad was a divorcee..." Rk broke the thickening silence.

"They got divorced when Mr. Mehra came to know about his wife's illicit relationship with your father"

"But how you ended up with Mehra?"

"I was sold to Mr. Mehra for a lump sum by your father as he needed the money to clear his debts" she said feeling disgusted.

"What?!" Rk asked, horrified. So it was true? It wasn't a rumor that my father sold his own wife for money? He committed suicide when his sick secret was out and got insulted by the society! Oh no!

"Mr. Mehra's wife Sharadha was a heroine and she worked in your father's production, consecutively, for three movies and in that time they fell in love with each other. Your father wanted to marry Sharadha but she wasn't ready to settle down so soon because she was in the peak period of her career, giving back to back successful movies. Your father..."

"Call him by his name. I don't want you to remind me that horrible man was my father" Rk said, irately.

"Well, Mohan's mother forced him and got us married. We had you by mistake..." Radha stopped feeling guilty for saying that and hurting her son more than already he was.

"Though it was a mistake, Mohan and I really loved you, Rishu" she quickly said to soothe him.

"No one can better understand this than me because Madhu and I had Ruhi by mistake but now she turned out to be our best mistake and we love her so much so yeah I believe you in this matter" Rk said to ease her guilt. Radha nodded.

"I won't say I was blissfully ignorant of your fa... I mean Mohan's deceit... I had this vague idea that he was seeing some other woman but I didn't bother to confront him because I didn't know where to go after he threw me out of his house. Yes, I was weak. Maybe I would have confronted him and walked out of his house if it was just me...but I had you to think about. I feared he will take you away from me... so I acted as if everything was normal. I lived my life for you; taking care of you and watching you grow up to a smart little boy..." Radha smiled remembering Rishu's childhood "... and he lived his life earning money and lavishing it on that woman."

"Look at the irony, you didn't confront him and fight against him for deceiving you, fearing you might lose me but in the end you did lose me along with your dignity" Rk taunted. Radha hung her head down in shame because her son was right. She did lose her dignity, respect and above all her son, her only happiness.

"Then what happened?" Rk asked.

"Few years later, Sharadha married Mr. Mehra, he was a rich hotelier, had chain of hotels in Germany... they had Vihaan soon after their marriage but he wasn't Mr. Mehra's..."

"How can you be so sure about that?"

"Sharadha told Mohan and Mohan told me. She was a month old pregnant when she married Mr. Mehra"

"She could have fucked anyone and got pregnant..." Rk's loathsome towards Vihaan didn't let him to agree Vihaan was his brother.

"No, just by seeing Vihaan for the first time I knew he was your father's. Vihaan was just like you when you were 5 years old"

Rk ignored her words about Vihaan and impatiently waited for the further story.

"Sharadha lived with Mr. Mehra for hardly two years before coming back to India to act in movies again. That time Mohan's production house was going through a bit of rough patch so she made her husband fund for Mohan telling he was the one who made her a star and she feels so grateful for him. Soon Ritesh Mehra and Mohan became friends and they started a joint venture. Things were going good. I was the one taking care of you and Vihaan because his mother was busy with her work. You used to play with that little boy..."

"I don't remember" Rk dismissed.

"At one point, Mr. Mehra felt Sharadha was neglecting their son and focusing only on her career so he asked her to quit acting but she refused. One night they had a fight and she came to our house, drunk..." She paused not knowing how to explain to her son that that was the night his father and that lady slept together and got caught in her husband's hand.

"Where were you fucking?" Rk seethed harshly, getting the picture. Radha cringed at his words.

"You were sick that night so I was in your room, taking care of you" she said. He rolled his eyes. "Even if I wasn't sick they would have kicked you out of the room and fucked, because you were just a show piece in that house, woman!" Rk thought but for some reason he didn't want to say it out loud and hurt her.

"When Mr. Mehra caught them in an awkward position, he lost it. Things went pretty ugly from that night. He stopped funding for all the ongoing projects which resulted in heavy loss to the production house. He threw a divorce notice on Sharadha's face but she pleaded him to forgive her and take her back. She couldn't let go of the luxury life she had with Mr. Mehra but he was stubborn in his decision and they got divorced and he got full custody of Vihaan which Sharadha let go without a fight."

What a messy life yaar? Rk thought with a dramatic sigh. The whole story was giving him a headache.

"Mr. Mehra wasn't satisfied with the monetary loss he created to Mohan. He wanted to defeat him emotionally so he thought to take me away from him like how Mohan took his wife away from him."

Rk burst out laughing. "What a foolish move? Defeat him emotionally? Fuck! That stupid Mehra paved an easy way for Mohan to get rid of you and for that he even paid a price."

"Mr. Mehra knew his son was attached to me so he thought I will be a good nanny for Vihaan..."

"You could have taken me along with you"

"I begged Mohan to give you to me but he didn't. Your were his source of income. You were a famous child artist then and you earned good money for him so he didn't let you go. He said Vihaan was also his blood so I can grow him up..."

"So you went to clean that Vihaan kid's poop leaving me in the hell?"

"Rishu, you don't know how much I fought for you..."

"Yeah, yeah, I know you would have fought for me so hard just the way you fought for your honour and dignity" he mocked giving her a wide smile. Radha felt like he slapped her so she looked away from him.

"Mr. Mehra took me to Germany..."

"Why the fuck you are giving so much respect to that man who separate us for his own benefit?"

"Sorry, I used to call him 'Mr. Mehra' so I am using the same now. Well, he wasn't as bad as I thought. He never disrespected me. He only saw me as his son's care taker. He even taught me his business."

"Why?"

"Soon after he took me back to Germany, he was diagnosed with brain tumor so he taught me his business and asked me to pass on the business to Vihaan when he was matured enough to handle it. One year later he passed away and I was solely left with little Vihaan's responsibility and the business..." 

"And in that busy schedule of yours, you totally forgot about me, you forgot the worthless Rishu!" Rk finished the sentence for her with a fake smile.

"Rishu, I didn't know Mohan committed suicide and you were alone..."

"For how long?"

"8 years... 8 years later, I came to India to see how you were doing and that was the time your first movie got released. I was there in the movie premiere and watched you from afar. You were grown up from my little boy to a handsome man..."

"Whoa! So soon you came to see me..." He clapped his hands and laughed.

"Rishu, I spent all my life thinking and worrying about you but I just couldn't reach you"

"You came to see me after the premiere at my place, right?" Rk said.

"But you refused to see me." She added. "Then I talked with Bittuji and he only told me that Mohan's death and what all you went through at such young age..." Radha's voice cracked and her eyes welled up. 

"Bittuji didn't tell anything about meeting you or your son Vihaan to me" he said quickly to change the topic from him. 

"I didn't tell him anything about Vihaan and I asked him not to tell about our meeting as well. I didn't want you to know about Vihaan because I worried you will hate me more thinking I had another kid"

"But still I hate you" Rk declared.

"I know" Radha sounded low with hurt.

"You could have tried to reach me again, right?" he asked. He was angry with his mother when she came to meet him after 8 long years so he wasn't ready to see her but hoped she will come again for him but that never happened and that made him hate her more. 

"I told the truth to Vihaan that I wasn't his mother when he turned 14 years. He was a very understanding kid and he asked me to go see my son, so I came to India on your movie premiere. When you refused to see me I went back to Germany and thought in another three years Vihaan will finish high school and he will be able to handle the hotel business and I can permanently come back to you but..."

"But what?"

"Vihaan got a girl pregnant on his 16th birthday. That girl gave birth to Krish and left him at our door step. Vihaan was too young to handle a new born baby so I had to..."

"So once again you had to play Mother India...oops Mother Germany, in this case"

"Last year, I again went to India to see you but I heard you left the film industry and moved somewhere else to live with your wife and daughter. We were separated for years because circumstances weren't in our favour, Rishu but now everything is fine..."

"What exactly you want from me?" Rk cuts her off and asked tiredly. "My forgiveness? Okay, I forgive you because I know waiting for someone's forgiveness can kill you and I don't want that for you." he rubbed his face with his palms and took a deep breath. "You want me to support you financially? Fine, I will provide for you, after all you gave me birth. What else I can do for you? Tell me?"

"You don't have to do anything for me. Let me do things for you as a mother. Let me take care of you, Rishu..."

"Take care of me?" He laughed "I am not severely sick and lying in hospital bed that you daily come and visit me with fruits and Horlicks bottle! I'm perfectly fine to take care of myself and my daughter"

"Everything is not a joke, Rishu..."

"Oh please! My whole fucking life is a joke" he shouted, getting pissed.

I lived a life of lie!

I lived a life of pain!

I lived a life pinning with unrequited love!

So I have right to get mad and shout! He told to himself.

"I think you should leave now" Rk wanted her out of his house before he ended up in an emotional mess.

"Rishu..."

"I heard your story. I said I forgave you. I even sympathize for you... I really do though I feel partly you are at fault. If you were strong enough to fight for your right...forget it. There is no use in thinking about the past which isn't pleasant." He stood up and took out his phone from his pocket.

"Bittuji, come here now and get her back to her home" Rk ordered and hung up.

"Bittuji will take you home" he informed Radha.

"Can I cook dinner for you, Rishu?" Radha asked hopefully.

"No thanks. I'm not in the mood to eat anything and Ruhi will eat only cookies and drink a glass of milk at night times."

"Ruhi is such a wonderful kid, so pretty and adorable"

"I know" Rk smiled genuinely as he looked at Ruhi who was sleeping on the bed now.

"So what's wrong with you and Madhu? Why you guys aren't married? Why you are living alone here? I thought you were living with them in that big house..."

"Don't ask me unnecessary questions!" he snapped.

"Alright" Radha shut her mouth and looked down at her knotted fingers. "Madhu loves you, Rishu" she opened her mouth again after a minute of silence. Rk glared at her silently warning her to shut her mouth but she didn't get the message. "If she hadn't loved you, she wouldn't have come to my house the other day with Vihaan to fight with me for leaving you"

"Will you keep quiet?"

"Sorry"

Five minutes later, the door bell rang and Rk opened the door.

"Hi" Madhu said with a small smile.

"Where is Bittuji?" Rk asked. He didn't expect to see her.

"He is waiting down in the car. I thought I will check on you. Are you okay?" she asked, hesitantly.

"Of course, I am fine. You can take her with you." he opened the door wide for her to get in and pointed to Radha.

"Ruhi?" Madhu asked for her daughter, not finding her in the living room.

"She is sleeping. I can bring her when she woke up or you can carry her now"

"You can keep her with you if you want"

"I would appreciate that. Thank you." Rk managed to pull a smile.

"But she will cry for me at midnight..."

"I will bring her to you if she cries. It's just a five minutes' walk from here to your place..."

"No, I meant to say I can stay here with you two if you want and Bittuji can take your mother..." Madhu badly wanted to stay with him and make sure he was alright after knowing everything about his past life.

"No, you can take Ruhi with you, now" he didn't want to stay nearer to Madhu. It hurts him.

"It's okay. Let her stay here with you. I will leave." She said feeling upset and turned to Radha, silently asking her if she was ready to go. Radha nodded and collected her purse from the couch.

"Can I come and see you tomorrow, Rishu?"

"Give me some time" Rk said without looking at her.

"Alright" Radha agreed. Madhu went into the bedroom to kiss her sleeping daughter and promising to meet her tomorrow.

Once the two ladies left his place, he shut the door and went to take a short nap. He stretched besides Ruhi and turned to his side to face her.

"I don't want my mother. I don't want Madhu. All I want is you, Ruhi. You are enough for me. You are enough to keep my days moving" he said caressing her cheek with his finger. "But my days are so boring and I am starting to feel so lonely..." he breathed, feeling miserable.

Ruhi stirred in her sleep and rolled closer to her daddy, wrapping her little hand around his neck, unknowingly offering him solace.

"Grow up soon, Ruhi baby, so that I can tell you the truth and seek for your forgiveness and then... I can die, peacefully!" he whispered and closed his eyes not before kissing Ruhi's forehead.

...To be continued!!!

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