The morning after returning from the village,
The entire house was quiet..... too quiet.
the kind of silence that felt deliberate, as though even the walls were waiting for a truth to break free.
Khushi sat in her study, her diary half-open beside the glowing laptop, but tonight the diary was forgotten.
This wasn't a night for words of her heart; this was a night for secrets.
Her pulse quickened in her throat as the cursor blinked on the screen, the way a heartbeat stutters before a storm.
Karan sat next to her, legs sprawled carelessly, but his eyes sharp, his fingers poised above his laptop. He smirked at the tension in the air.
"You know, for someone pulling off a high-stakes operation, I deserve a superhero name. Something dramatic. Like Batman."
Ron, lying flat on the rug with a half-eaten packet of Parle-G, barely looked up. "You can be Biscuit Boy. Fits better."
Khushi threw them both a look, but the corner of her lips twitched despite herself. "Focus. If Sanjay Patil buried something, tonight we dig it out. No jokes, no distractions. Understand?"
Ron raised his hand lazily like a schoolboy. "Yes, Captain Khushi."
The glow of two laptops lit their faces, three young conspirators united by blood, betrayal, and the desperate need for answers.
Karan's fingers danced over keys, the rhythm fast and unrelenting.
"Alright, first crack.
Patil Enterprises' payroll. Let's see how clean Sanjay keeps his house."
The screen filled with columns of numbers, neat rows of names and digits. He frowned.
"Interesting… look here. Neha and Nisha are listed as consultants."
Khushi leaned closer. "Consultants? For what?"
"Apparently for sucking up oxygen," Ron muttered, his biscuit crunching loudly.
But Karan wasn't laughing. "They're pulling five-figure salaries. Consistent, every month. No job description, no deliverables. Just… names."
Khushi's jaw tightened. "Fake employees. He funnelled money through them. Paid them to sit pretty, all under the company name."
Her chest burned. For years, she had thought her father's cruelty was punishment enough, but now she saw it clearly. He had twisted their family's bloodline into a ledger, each life nothing more than a transaction.
"Search Aai," she said, her voice cutting through the room. "Anything under her name. Any account, any document."
Karan's brows knitted, his fingers moving quicker. The screen refreshed, a pause that stretched too long, until he froze. His lips parted in shock.
"What?" Khushi demanded.
He swallowed. "There's an account… in Sonali Patil's name. Still active. Dormant for fifteen years. Opened just two months before her death."
Ron sat upright, biscuits forgotten. "How much?"
Karan's voice was barely steady. "Rs. 1.4 crore."
The room seemed to tilt. Khushi gripped the edge of the desk as her breath came sharp. Ron coughed, choking on air more than food. Karan's words hung there like a thunderclap that refused to fade.
Khushi pressed closer, eyes glued to the numbers. "This… this was never declared. Not in the inheritance papers, not in Sanjay's statements."
"Because he didn't know," Karan said quietly.
And suddenly it made sense.
Aai had known.
She had known her husband's deceit, his schemes.
So she had built one last fortress, hidden money away not for herself but for them, for the children she knew she might not live to raise.
Khushi's throat closed.
She pushed away from the desk and stood, pacing, her hands trembling.
"She left us something. She left us hope, and he never found it. That money… It's untouched. It's ours. It's hers."
Ron's voice was small, unlike him.
"It's like Aai never left.
She was still protecting us."
Khushi stopped, staring at the ceiling as though she could see through years of betrayal.
"But this can't be everything.
Aai wouldn't stop with just money.
She knew Sanjay too well.
She would leave a will, a property deed, something we could hold. Something that proves we were hers, not his toys."
Karan was already searching. The government will register Blinking on his screen. He scrolled, checked again, and his lips pursed.
"There's no will under Sonali Patil. Nothing official."
"She wouldn't leave nothing," Khushi muttered.
And then Ron spoke, his voice hesitant. "Wait. I remember… once she said something about a letter.
To her brother. She said, 'If anything happens, my brother will know what to do.'"
Khushi froze.
The words unlocked a memory buried under years of pain. Her mother's soft voice, her hand brushing Khushi's hair, the quiet assurance that someone would always be there.
"Her brother," Khushi whispered.
"Mama. He lives in Pune. I went there for vacation. I still remember the house."
Karan leaned back, eyes shining.
"Then that's where we go. If anyone knows what Sonali Aai left behind, it's him."
The night grew heavier, the air charged with something more dangerous than electricity...truth waiting to be unearthed.
And though they laughed in between their grief, the silence that followed told them all the same thing.
This wasn't over.
The secrets had only just begun to breathe.