"Reyansh! The cliff!" Sia's scream was nearly swallowed by the roar of the wind and the screech of the sedan ramming them repeatedly from the side.
Reyansh didn't panic; he went cold. His hands gripped the steering wheel so hard the leather groaned. He looked to his right, catching a glimpse of the man in the sedan—the man with the ruined face, the man he had mourned for a decade. Vikram Thorne Sr. didn't look like a father; he looked like a monster who had clawed his way out of hell.
"Hold on to me!" Reyansh roared over the sound of the grinding metal.
He didn't try to steer away from the cliff. Instead, he slammed the gear into reverse while the car was still moving forward, sacrificing the transmission to create a violent, jarring friction. The SUV spun, its rear tires skidding dangerously close to the precipice. With a final, desperate yank of the emergency brake, the vehicle slammed sideways into a massive boulder, stopping just inches from the drop.
The impact shattered the side windows, showering them in glass. For a second, there was only the sound of the rain and Sia's frantic breathing.
"Sia... are you okay?" Reyansh wheezed, his arm instinctively pinned across her chest to keep her from flying through the windshield.
"I'm... I'm alive," she gasped, her eyes fixed on the black sedan that had pulled over a few meters away.
The doors of the sedan opened. Aryan stepped out, his movements fluid and cocky, but he stepped aside as the older man emerged. Vikram Thorne Sr. walked with a limp, his charred skin glistening under the lightning. He held a detonator in one hand and a cane in the other.
"Ten years," Vikram's voice was a gravelly rasp, barely human. "Ten years I watched you play 'King of the Castle,' Reyansh. You did well. You kept the seat warm. But the empire belongs to the man who was willing to die for it."
Reyansh pushed his door open and stepped out into the mud, pulling Sia behind him. He stood tall, his silhouette defiant against the storm. "You didn't die for the empire, Father. You hid like a coward while your 'loyal' friend took the blame. You let Sia's father rot in an asylum for a crime you orchestrated."
"Deepak was a fool," Vikram spat, stepping closer. "He wanted to go public with the 'Bloodline' project. He wanted to turn the Thorne name into a charity. I had to erase him. And who better to play the killer than his own reflection?" He gestured to Aryan.
The Unwanted Romance reached a peak of tragic intensity as Sia felt Reyansh's hand tighten around hers. He wasn't just protecting her anymore; he was protecting the truth she represented.
"And Aryan?" Reyansh asked, his voice dripping with venom. "Did you raise him in the shadows just to be your hitman?"
"He's the son I actually needed," Vikram laughed. "The one who doesn't have a heart to bleed for a Mathur girl."
"Kill them, Aryan," Vikram commanded, his voice turning cold. "The girl first. Let Reyansh watch the Mathur line end before he joins them."
Aryan pulled a glinting blade from his sleeve, but as he stepped forward, the sound of a heavy engine echoed from the road behind them. A fleet of black SUVs with the Internal Security emblems skidded to a halt.
Gayatri stepped out of the lead vehicle. She wasn't humming now. She looked at her husband—the man she had thought was dead—and her face contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury.
"Vikram," she whispered, the name carrying the weight of a thousand betrayals. "You let me believe I was a widow. You let me carry the guilt of what Aryan did."
"You were always too ambitious, Gayatri," Vikram said, unfazed. "I knew if you thought I was dead, you'd expand the Thorne influence faster than I ever could. You did the work; now I'll take the rewards."
The stand-off was a circle of monsters. Reyansh stood in the center, the only one with something left to lose. He leaned into Sia's ear. "The second the first shot is fired, you run for the trees. Don't stop until you hit the main road."
"No," Sia whispered back, her fingers digging into his arm. "I'm not leaving you with them."
Suddenly, Aryan moved. But he didn't move toward Sia. He turned and slashed the blade across the hand Vikram was using to hold the detonator.
Vikram screamed, the device falling into the mud.
"I'm tired of taking orders from a ghost, 'Father'," Aryan hissed, his eyes filled with a different kind of madness. "The empire shouldn't go back to you. And it shouldn't stay with the 'Golden Boy'. It belongs to the monster you created."
Aryan turned his gaze toward Reyansh, a chilling smile spreading across his face. "One on one, Brother. No guns. No parents. Just the blood we share. If you win, you keep the girl and the throne. If I win... I burn it all down."
Reyansh looked at Sia, then at the brother he never knew. He stripped off his ruined suit jacket, revealing the blood-soaked bandages on his side. He stepped into the clearing, the rain washing the grime from his face.
"Stay back, Sia," Reyansh commanded, his voice a lethal promise. "This isn't about the company anymore. This is about every tear you've shed and every drop of blood they've taken from us."
The two brothers circled each other in the mud—the King and the Shadow—as the timer on the detonator in the mud began to blink red.
00:30... 00:29...
The cliffside was about to become a graveyard.
Author's Note
The Thorne bloodline is at war! 🩸⚔️ Father against Son, Brother against Brother! The Unwanted Romance has turned into a desperate hope for survival as Reyansh fights his own reflection for the right to breathe. 🥀🏰
Will Reyansh's injuries be his downfall? And what did Aryan mean by "burning it all down"? 🔥🕵️♂️
To my 5.1k+ readers—the climax is here!
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