Ishqbaaz FF: Consequences. Chapter 15 on Page 39 (02/08/17) - Page 22

He looked different.

During her time in the Oberoi Mansion, Anika had always considered Tej to be the only one whose unrelenting aura of arrogant power rivalled that of Shivaay's. Like Shivaay, that essence had always made him appear much more intimidating, unapproachable and all round larger than life than perhaps he truly was.

She certainly did not remember him as the shadow of that once great man who currently sat beside her.

Tej had lost a significant amount of weight, his hair had streaks of grey running through it and his eyes looked oddly sunken. He looked tired, not just from his journey to London, but from a bone deep exhaustion that had aged him faster than Anika would have thought possible. Where there had once been a giant, the Patriarch of the great Oberoi family- there was now simply an almost unrecognisable shell.

It shook her, really shook her to the core, to see what had become of Tej because if this was the state of the strongest member of the Oberoi family? She dreaded to think what had happened to the others.

Perhaps Rudra, Soumya and Priyanka really had come to Anika and Omkara out of sheer desperation.

"Mr Oberoi?"

"Please, Anika. My eldest son hasn't called me Father for a long time, but as my daughter-in-law I beg that you please do me the honour."

Anika didn't say anything, but gave a short nod. Even Tej's voice had changed.

Less imposing, softer, deeper.

"I came here to try to persuade all of my children to come home, but I hear Rudra has somehow managed to do it already."

"Yes, Omkara will be sorting out tickets with him and Priyanka later today."

"I have always underestimated Rudra." Tej ran a hand absentmindedly through his hair, the action reminding Anika of something Omkara had started doing since he'd cut his hair. "I don't proclaim to really understand any of my children, but Rudra... I always think I know everything there is to know about him and I don't know how many times he has to prove me wrong for me to realise it."

"Omkara and I have never been close. He was always... too different. I didn't understand him at all. As a child all he cared about was drawing and writing and imagining. I thought it was a phase. We all did. Why would anybody choose to do art for a living when they could have the power and prestige associated with the Oberoi family business? You have to understand- Shivaay is 5 years older than Omkara. By the time Omkara was 6 or 7, Shivaay was already in secondary school and excelling. He was everything a scion of the Oberoi family should be. Naturally I just assumed my own son would follow suit."

Anika smiled at the thought of a frustrated Tej wondering why Omkara could barely pull a passing grade out of his ass in Maths, while excelling at the more niche subjects like Urdu Literature, and why he couldn't for the life of him understand the difference between meiosis and mitosis, but could sculpt an accurate model of the Oberoi Mansion by the age of 12.

"I was... dismissive. He would bring me a painting or a sculpture and I would nod and say 'Very nice son, now have you done your maths?' and send him away. I'd always be at work and when I wasn't at work, I was constantly comparing him to Shivaay, and finding my own son lacking. At the time I suppose I thought tough love would eventually bring him onto the right track but obviously, it didn't. It just created a deeper and deeper wedge between us until- well, until the wedge became a crevice became a canyon."

Anika was no longer smiling. Images flitted through her mind of a young Omkara running to his father with a new poem he had gotten a Gold Star for at school, running away and crying to his mother when the poem was summarily dismissed as his father told him to go away, he didn't have time.

"He must have hated you."

"No. For a long, long time, as children are wont to do, he tried his best to please me and turned his hatred elsewhere."

Anika's eyes widened as the surprise realisation of what Tej meant hit her. "No!"

Tej nodded and Anika saw a deep sadness in his eyes before he turned back to look out at the lake. "Throughout his childhood and for the early part of his teens, Omkara despised Shivaay. And I encouraged the rivalry. Of course I did. I wanted Omkara to take the business from Shivaay as ruthlessly as I had taken control of it from Shakti. I needed something to motivate him to do so since Shivaay was clearly the more qualified one and far more suited to the task. But then something happened."

He went quiet for a moment, until Anika prompted him by scuffing her foot on the ground.

"Rudra."

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Shivaay had been 21, Omkara 16 and Rudra 11 and it was the first time Tej Singh Oberoi would experience what the bond between them would soon become.

Tej had returned home from a week long business trip and gone straight to Omkara's room to make sure he was studying hard for his upcoming GCSEs. Omkara would get straight A*s, he would then do A-Levels and again get the A*s required for Cambridge and, if Tej could persuade him, he would pick the same Cambridge college that Tej himself had gone to- St. John's. Notorious among Cambridge students for being full of unapologetic, elitist dickheads, Tej figured that any son of his would surely feel as at home there as he himself had.

He had found, instead, Omkara's study in the midst of a huge renovation. Shivaay, a streak of paint on his cheek and flecks in his hair, stood in the doorway commanding the men moving furniture in and out of the room. Tej had stood, apoplectic with rage, a few feet away until he had gathered himself enough to keep from slapping the breath out of his nephew.

"Shivaay."

"Yes Bade Papa?"

"What have you done to my son's study?"

"I'm turning it into an art studio. Don't worry, his desk is in his room so he's still studying for his exams. This is for afterwards. Provided that he does well in every exam, which obviously he will so I'm pre-emptively preparing the studio now."

"And what, pray tell, is someone studying maths and economics going to do with an art studio?"

Shivaay gave him a look of mock confusion. "Who on earth is studying maths and economics? I just graduated, Rudra just started secondary school and Prinku's a baby? Surely you don't mean Om? The boy whose hobby of an art sculpture just won an international competition?"

"What is Omkara doing sending in sculptures to art competitions?!"

Shivaay's eyes had flashed so dangerously that Tej wondered whether a weaker person would have simply backed away at that point. But Tej was not a weaker person and this was his goddamn son's life this arrogant imbecile was messing with.

"Not that it matters, but Om didn't do anything. Rudra found it and showed it to me, I sent it off. You see, Om and I have been talking, really talking since I got back from University... and I think it's time we all had a serious discussion about his future."

"I am his father and he will do what I know is best for him and his future. He is a child and understands nothing."

Shivaay held up his palm, silencing Tej. He then barked an order for all the men working in the room to leave. He waited until the area was clear before continuing.

His voice was coated with a layer of ice that would allow no debate. "What is Om's will stay Om's. What is Rudra's and Priyanka's will remain theirs. I will keep what is mine and I will run the business with you and father as we all believe is best. If Om ever changes his mind and decides he wants to help, then he will train and he will learn and he will join. Until then, he will do what will make him happy."

"And what is that?"

"He is going to study whatever he wants at A-Level and during those years he will also build a portfolio and then he is going to apply to the Slade School of Fine Arts in London."

"With whose permission?"

Shivaay shrugged, as though the veiled threat meant nothing to him. It didn't. "Mine. Bade Ma's. Yours. You will give Om permission to do this, or I will take everything. I am the oldest son in our generation of the Oberoi Family. You and father hold equal shares but while yours will split 3 ways, father's will all come directly to me. Do you think I'll have any difficulty persuading Omkara to sign his over to me should you force him into a life he hates and doesn't want? And what do you think I, as the majority shareholder, will do with that power to the man who ruined my younger brother's life?"

And so Tej had been outmanoeuvred by a man several decades his younger. If he hadn't been furious and simultaneously terrified for the future of his own son... he would have been truly impressed.

As he had been many a time in the years following in which Shivaay had negotiated deals and situations with a ruthless intelligence which had grown their company at an exponential rate.

From that moment, he had watched as Shivaay, Omkara and Rudra had become a unit. 1 soul split into 3 bodies. Shivaay the head, Omkara the heart and Rudra... Rudra their very spirit. It had been Rudra's idea to bring Omkara's art to Shivaay, knowing he could and would help him achieve his dreams. Rudra the peacemaker who saw through everyone's pretences and in his own way manipulated them for the most utilitarian outcome.

Underestimating both Rudra and Shivaay, Tej had, in a misguided last-ditch attempt to keep Omkara on the right path told him that if he decided to follow Shivaay's decision, then he was to stay out of his way and not come crawling back to him when it inevitably ended in disaster.

That had done nothing but solidify Omkara's simmering resentment into full blown hatred, turned firmly and singularly onto his father. Since he no longer wished to rival Shivaay, and owed his happiness and his future to Shivaay, Omkara hated Tej even more for fostering his longstanding bitterness towards Shivaay and keeping him from becoming close with him earlier.

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Anika was crying. Not just a few tears, but violent sobs which had Tej reaching into his pocket for a handkerchief. "Anika, beti, why are you crying?"

"Be-because it's just s-so sad." She scrubbed at her face with the handkerchief, blowing her nose before trying to hand it back.

Tej winced. "Er, no. You keep that, beti. It's for a you."

"Y-you just wanted what was best for him. And you could have been right. But you weren't. And he hates you, he really does hate you. For what? And Shivaay? What is Om going to do when he sees Shivaay again? They were so close and... and now they're not and- and is it my fault? Rudra blames me, I know he does. And I've been telling myself it isn't my fault and Om has been telling me all along that it isn't my fault but is it my fault? Did I cause this? I'm sorry I'm being so selfish I've just made this all about me but- but I'm so worried because I know that if only I hadn't come into your lives, you wouldn't all be so separated and miserable."

Tej had heard enough. Placing a hand on Anika's cheek, he shook his head. "Anika, stop. You came into our lives for a reason and the paths which may have unfolded if you had not are irrelevant." He waved his hand as though waving away the ghosts of those very paths. "You made choices, Omkara made choices, Shivaay made choices- we all made choices and we live with the consequences. What good is feeling guilty for consequences of choices which were not yours to make? I live with Omkara's hatred because I know that it is the consequence of choices I made, it is my right to be guilty. But you left Shivaay because of his choices, and the only one who has to live with those decisions is him. Omkara left the family and that was his decision but he made that choice on the back of Shivaay's. They share equal blame for all that has followed, not you. You have done the best with the fallout from the terrible choices that were made for you, beti, and for that you should be nothing but proud."

Unable to hold herself back any longer, Anika threw her arms around her father-in-law and sobbed into his shoulder.

She had known that it wasn't her fault. She had known it.

But it still helped to heal her wounded heart to know that other people knew it too.

"""""""

She was humming.

Ranveer didn't know why, but for some reason that bothered him.

To describe him as a bull in a china shop would be a somewhat extreme understatement: Ranveer Singh Randhawa was more akin to a bulldozer in a china shop.

"Stop humming. Your family and your life are total f**king disasters, what on earth do you have to sing about?"

She stopped for a moment, and then resumed her humming.

Louder this time.

He wondered what it was about this woman that crawled under his skin and refused to lie still. This woman who he had met and thought he knew and categorised as a wounded animal or a sly and cunning snake of a vixen- the shadow he had thought he could overpower and manipulate was somehow all of those things and none of them.

And it bothered him.

The song she hummed seemed to reach across the room and at once both wound and caress him and it was stoking the flames of his temper in a way he had never thought possible. Ranveer had a temper, sure, but it was never one which threatened to explode outwards. He internalised. He processed. He worked at extinguishing the root cause.

He acted.

He did not react.

And he certainly didn't react in the way this woman was making him. Because she was, undoubtedly, a woman. Dressed in tight jeans and black boots which made her legs appear longer than his own and a plain white shirt which was modest and unremarkable and probably cost more than his monthly salary.

He knew she had no makeup on and yet the perfect pink pout, the rosy tinge to her cheeks, the darkly framed seduction of her eyes were all more beautiful to him than any woman he could think of at that moment.

"What song is that?"

"Hmm?"

"That you're humming. What is it?"

She looked at him for a moment, clearly thrown by the sudden change of his attitude. And then, in response... she started to sing.

"There are moments when you fall to the ground

But you are stronger than you feel you are now

You don't always have to speak so loud, no

Just be as you are.

Life is not always a comfortable ride

Everybody's got scars that they hide

And everybody plays the fool sometimes, yeah

Just be as you are."

The song was slow and her voice almost haunting. Ranveer felt, in that moment, suspended in a place beyond reality.

It was just him. And Priyanka Singh Oberoi.

He was standing in front of her almost without registering that he had moved. Her voice faltered off and the silence rang around them as she looked up at him, her eyes locked with his.

"Did your brother kill that girl?"

"No."

And no matter what his every instinct had been screaming at him since the day the case first crossed his desk, in that moment... he believed her.

Chapter Thirteen- Head & Heart

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Massive apologies for the delay between chapters recently. I have an exam next Friday so I've been studying and my placement this term has been kind of hectic and all over the place so I'm mostly just sleeping, working and studying.

Thank you all so much for taking the time to read and Like and Comment. It means so much and makes me super happy that you're enjoying the story. There are a few huge scenes coming up so I'll try to update more regularly, but if not I apologise in advance.

Hope you enjoyed this chapter :)