Towards Zero

Summary: We are similar. My father and I. We have same weakness. You.

◇◇◇

The dust rises in puffs of golden mist. Rukzaar's grip on Amrit's hand tightens. Race course is alive with excitement yet between the two of them a different kind of worry lingers.

Two guards from Huzenabadh estate sit on the stands behind them keeping a weary eye on the two young women. Farida hasn't returned from her closeted conversation with Veer.

The elections are drawing closer and associated tensions are mounting. Amrit ignores the judgemental looks thrown her way for sitting with the opponents of her mother in law.

Fact that Farida Begham had the upper hand and best odds at taking lead in elections seems to somehow turn itself on Amrit, even as the fact remains that Veer as Akif had long associated himself with Farida's party.

"Aap ab bhi uss baat ko lekar pareshan ho?" Rukzaar asks after a moment, her low tone effectively covered against the bubble of other conversations. "I'm sure Khala and Bhaijaan has made up already."

"Of cause they would," Amrit smiles at Rukzaar indulgently. "Their arguments never run deep and they both enjoy venting at each other. That's not what I'm worried about."

She sighs and decides to share with Rukzaar anyway.

"Despite everything - jo bhi unhone ki, Veer will never go against his mother."

Instinctively, both girls turn and look at the family stands where Nalini is still missing from her seat.

"He won't agree to be her opponent, despite being against everything she stands for. He will talk with her. Give her yet another chance which I'm not sure if she deserves. Keheni toh nahi chahiye, what you must be thinking of me - I'm talking like this about my mother in law -"

"Babhi jaan," Rukzaar squeezes her hand understandingly. "I wouldn't judge you on your love for Bhaijaan."

"I'm scared of her Rukie," Amrit confesses slowly. "Im scared of the power she has over Veer. She could break him and I may not be able to put him back together again."

"I think you shouldn't worry so much Babhi," Rukzaar shakes her head.

She stands up to wave at Anwar who had just returned to the course.

The smile he offers her in return lights up his entire face. Rukzaar turns back to her, her eyes alight.

"I don't think she has that power over him anymore."

*

Nalini doesn't flinch at the sight that greets her in the study. It takes much of her self control, yet she manages to hold the impassive face.

Veer sits behind his father's desk, contour of his face sharp in the crisp morning sun. He rests his chin on clasped fingers and looks at her, very much like how Mahendra used to, once upon a time.

He doesn't rise to greet her, which tells a lot.

"You found it," Nalini summarises, her eyes watchful.

"Bethiye Ma Sahab." Veer indicates the chair with a hand. "Baith ke baat karte hai."

Nalini marches towards him, braces her hands on the table, leaning down to scowl at him.

"Are you feeling proud now? Proud of him? Are you going to show me just how much of his son you are?"

"I don't think there is a need to show that Ma sahab. You've always known my father and I are made of same metal. Same strength and same weakness. Aap. Aur aap par bharosa."

Nalini slumps on the chair, her eyes still burning.

"You think I wronged him?" She exclaims. "For all he did to me - he - he -!"

"Aap unhe kabhi samjh nahi paye, na aap kabhi humein samajh paaye. I'm not supposed to show this to you.

"Haan - dyaan rahein. It is just a copy. But you need to read this Ma Sahab. Aap ne jiss insaan ko tabah kar di shaayad unhe shanti milein."

Nalini takes the offered folder with a dismissive look and flips through it. Her eyes pause as she reads the content of Mahendra's last will.

"On second thoughts," Veer continues. "I don't think he and I are similar at all. I don't think I'd be able to bear such an insult on my love - I don't think I'd understand and forgive. Perhaps that came from you. This trait of holding grudges."

"Yeh - yeh -"

"He has bequeathed Prem enough to make a life away from the ruins of ours. To school him and then support him. If he wanted Prem dead would he have done all that?"

Nalini opens her mouth.

"Before you tell me he did not know," Veer presses on pointing at a particular line in the will.

"He did." He taps on the paper.

"Stop lying to yourself. Stop tainting his memory. Stop calling your sins his own. Stop. Just stop."

Nalini closes her eyes to a shuddered exhale. She had spent decades telling herself the same thing over and over again that the lie had become truth to her. Veer's words prick at that self made bubble, force her to acknowledge that - yes - Mahendra had always known.

He had known from the moment she fell back into Chandra's arms. Apart from those hazy days of bliss before Veer was conceived- before she decided to read those annals and the world came crashing down - Nalini and Mahendra had never been intimate.

Of cause, he knew that she carried another's child. And he hadn't tried to snatch that little hope from her, hadn't seen that as an act of rebellious disgrace.

No; he had named the child Prem.

"Stop it!" Nalini rises to her feet abruptly, shaking, her voice turns shrill. "Stop it!"

"If he wanted to teach you a lesson - to take Prem away - he had no need to plot so much. You of all people could not have stopped him."

"Stop!"

Veer too rises, hands held out in a gesture of peace.

"I haven't begun to stop Ma sahab," he says softly. "You are the one who should stop. Stop hating him. Bhagvaan ke liye - even in death he wanted to make sure you were loved. That you were happy. He didn't deserve this. I don't deserve this."

He makes a move to leave and pauses.

"If you were so afraid of this will thinking it will chase Prem away you can be rest assured. I have no intention of making a mockery of my own family in public. Nor do I intend to go against Baba sahab's wishes. Prem will stay, where he belongs. Aap ke pass. Aap ke saat. Lekin -"

His eyes are sharp when they turn back to his mother.

"If he finds himself at the centre of a conspiracy, toh phir hum aap ke bhi toh bete hai. The same poison runs in my veins too. It doesn't take me long to forget promises given. And I am capable of all the worst things you've ever done."

"What do you mean -" her voice stutters and Veer's smile in reply is sharp.

"I'm sure you know."

*

Nalini comes to take her seat with shaking knees. Veer has changed.

She has no idea what his father's words to him had been, but they had snapped something in him. As if the bindings that had kept him tamed were suddenly undone, and something wild within him had broken free.

Something inside her responds to it by hardening, drawing spears all over her conscience. Veer had declared war and war he shall get.

Chandra shifts to lend her his ear to murmur, eager to know what the conversation had been all about.

"You were right," she tells him through clenched teeth. "Fruits of poison grows into poison only."

Her hands do not stop their trembling, she clutches at them, biting her lip until she tastes metallic tinge of blood.

"Ab humse aur saha nahi jaata. Ab bass. Ab bass."

Chandra watches her with narrowed eyes.

"Iss samasya ka samadaan hum de chuke Nalini," he says heavily. "It is your heart that has you at a limbo. It is you yourself who keeps reopening these festering wounds. And there will be no roundabout way about this. You will have to say the words. I'm done with assuming things to have you pull back at the last moment."

"Say the words?"

"Ji haan."

"Ask your man to do it."

"Do what Nalini?"

The woman scowls, agitated at how Chandra seems to insist her to speak those condemning words. Her eyes takes a full circle of her surroundings and stop at a sight in distance.

Veer arrives to much cheer from the crowd, who had admired him prioritising his friend over the obvious victory in preliminaries.

Both Anwar and him share a few words in the guise of checking their horses, heads bowed close together.

In the guest stands, Farida Begham sits with few well known faces of her party's elite. It is no secret that the woman had brought associates to talk Veer into the muddy waters of politics - against his own mother none the less.

Hum aap ke bhi toh bete hai...

Nalini hasn't forgotten the threat of those words. Maybe they would not want to go to great lengths after all, Veer has been ever ready to ruin her - just like his father.

"Ask him to kill my son, Chandra. Does that satisfy you as an answer? Ask him to take his bloody gun and put it to use. Ask him to shoot Kuwar Veer Pratap Singh."

"Perfect," Chandra chuckles into the fist he presses to his mouth. "That is just what I have instructed him to do."

Elsewhere, under the sun that has started to heat up for the day Veer shares a brief account of his conversation with his mother with Anwar.

"Are we to expect her to listen?" Anwar asks for courtesy. Not that he really believes there is any hope of bridges being built between those two.

That kind of world peace notions suited Amrit most and even she has given up trying to make peace between Rani Sahiba and Veer, which said a lot as to where matters stood.

Veer clenches his jaw, turning away to hide a flicker of displeasure.

"No." He says shortly.

"Perfect," Anwar replies, "I have men stationed to watch Ammie and our girls. At the same time your man Shravan Singh has a trail on Ali's new lapdog."

The mention of that man brings such fury to Veer's face that Anwar knows whatever happens the guy will not walk away from Daulatabadh unscathed.

"Let him put one toe off the line," he promises savagely. "I will make him aware of Pratap Singhs' wrath."

"Let's hope he would know to keep his head on his shoulders. While he does sound like a man deserving death, I don't want his blood on your hands." Anwar says haltingly watching the murder written across his best friend's face.

"You do not give me Farook Ansari and hope to keep him alive," Veer shakes his head.

"But I'm not foolish enough to go for any piece of meat Rathod waves in front of my eyes.

"No. I've lived among these predators long enough to learn that if the prey has come to you, it is surely spiked with poison. And that man does not deserve an easy death."

"I mean it Veer. Something will happen today."

"Of cause," Veer says dismissively. "This is the beginning of the end my friend. What happens today will decide which side of that end Ma sahab ends up."

*
Towards Zero is a great read if you are in for a murder mystery. Zero in this sense means the moment of crime. We are heading towards it, from several directions at once. Somebody will be hurt, in the upcoming chapter.
Hi people, hope you had a great diwali/ deepavali or in general a great holiday. I did, I went home after a long time and had taken some much needed time for myself.
Now I'm back, hopefully for good. I'm going to update CK until its finished before turning to other stories I have for you.
Hopefully, you enjoyed the chapter. Tell me in the comments and please vote!
See you again soon! Thanks for reading!