The Vile.

Chapter : 66

The Secrets.

Some people are born evil, some are made and some force the almost nonexistent darkness to surround them as a shield. It's a defense mechanism to hide the good, the vulnerable part inside you. It saves you from any and every threat of being used, being exploited, being deceived. The more Vasudha learns about Danuj, the more she feels his pain, the more she is getting answers to her questions, the more she is seeing through the man who keeps that hard and unbreakable facade only to cover up the broken parts inside him.

"Destroyed you say? Why? How?" She asks Nihal. Nihal looks at Maya, who clears her throat before continuing from where Nihal left.

"Pravakaran ji, he was Devraaj uncle's assistant. Devraaj uncle had immense trust on him. Devansh joined the company at the young age of sixteen. He was a pro at whatever he dealt with. His father built him that way. His intelligence, his calmness and his sense of responsibility turned him into one of the strong pillars of Sachdev Industries within a year. The one person everyone looked forward to, no matter how small the problem might be. He turned into the person all of us started depending on. Who would believe that at the age of being a kid he solved his employee's  problems like it wasn't a problem at the first place. He was feared but respected. His aura screamed authority but every single person loved him for the man he had become. He earned every bit of it. He was a true man, he was calm, collected, responsible and  extremely compassionate.

Compassion, the only thing that caused his downfall.

Whenever I used to get time Devraaj uncle used to ask me to learn things from D' and I did. He taught me everything without hesitation, whatever I am today is mostly because of him. He was planning to run the company in a joint venture with his younger brother i.e. Ekansh. He once told me that I was doing well and if I kept learning that fast, he would love to choose me as their GM. I was happy. Everything was going really well until he decided to bring Ekansh to office along with him.

They had this stark difference in characteristics that any one, except D', was able to understand that something was totally not right with Ekansh. He had this peculiar attitude of turning into a very decent man infront of D' and being downright insulting to others, at his absence. He was exploitng D's blind trust on him.He had always been cunning and deceitful. I saw that at the very beginning, just like my father did.

The Sachdev Industries earned many friends and well wishers in its long journey, but it also made countless enemies, one amongst them turned out to be Pravakaran ji himself. He had a son, who he so wanted to make the next GM. But when he saw that D' was hell bent in training me into becoming something that he thought would be appropriate for the company, Pravakaran ji felt insulted and took it as a challenge. The fact that Devraaj uncle didn't even offer his son the chance, made him angry and somewhat hostile towards D'. So he did what he felt right. He grew closer to Ekansh and started filling his mind with conceited ideas that were already harboring inside Ekansh's mind, the only thing they needed was the push. And Pravakaran ji did that for him.

The office had one sole person who would've died but kept his loyalty towards Devraaj uncle and D' as strong as steel : Raghu chacha. One fine day when I was just about to leave for office, I saw him standing at the door from the window upstairs, contemplating on something very seriously. My father reached the door and opened it. He was surprised to find Raghu chacha there, nevertheless, he was welcomed inside.

I still remember him sitting infront of my father, his palms joined in a namaste gesture, only, it wasn't a namaste, he was crying and pleading. He said he was frightened about Ekansh's behavior and he suspected that Ekansh and Pravakaran ji was planning something together, something evil, something vile. When my father asked why was he thinking that way, he said that he heard them talking, they were discussing something about a 'No Devraaj, no Devansh, Ekansh will be the only name for the future generations' and also the mention of terms like a 'showdown' and something like a 'no turning back'.