Tanya Oberoi did not process rejection. She processed revenge.
She had been taught from the age of six that the Oberoi name did not lose. Not in business. Not in love. Not in war. Her father, Karan Oberoi, had built a hotel empire by buying people or burying them. Tanya had learned early that tears were for the weak and that money was just a cleaner way to make someone disappear.
Rahul Malhotra had made her disappear from his life in under forty-eight hours. He hadn't shouted. He hadn't negotiated. He had just... stopped seeing her. After the Taj. After the contract girl opened her mouth and told the truth in front of a monument to dead wives.
Tanya returned to Mumbai on Sunday night. Alone. On her father's jet. The Presidential Suite at Taj Gateway was cleared out by her staff before Rahul even woke up. She left one thing behind: a red lipstick scrawl on his bathroom mirror.
WEAK
By Monday morning, Mumbai knew.
The Mumbai Mirror's Page 3 didn't name names, but everyone who mattered could read between the lines:
"Which billionaire bachelor's new romance imploded at the Taj? Sources say the heiress found him 'emotionally compromised' by a member of his household staff. The heiress flew home. The staff stayed. The bachelor lost 2.3 billion in the fallout. Moral: Don't mix business, pleasure, and poetry."
Rahul read it at 7:32 AM in his penthouse office. He didn't throw the tablet. He didn't call legal. He just set it down, face-down, on his glass desk and looked out at the city.
His phone rang. The caller ID was a number he had deleted three years ago. "Dad." It wasn't his father. His father was dead. It was Devyanshi, using the old emergency line.
"Oberoi pulled the Gateway deal," she said without greeting. "2.3 billion gone. The board wants a statement. They want to know if you're 'compromised.'"
"I'm not compromised," Rahul said. His voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. Someone older. Someone tired. "I'm done. Kill the story. Liquidate the position. Move the capital to the Singapore fund."
"And Tanya?"
"Tanya is not my problem anymore."
He hung up. He meant it. Tanya wasn't his problem.
Isha Sharma was.
Because he had spent twelve months treating her like a line item on a balance sheet, and now the entire market knew he couldn't function if she was in the same zip code. He had taken a woman to the Taj Mahal to make Isha jealous, and he had come back with nothing except the understanding that Shah Jahan had bankrupted an empire for love, and he, Rahul Malhotra, had bankrupted his reputation for the lack of it.
He didn't go home until 1 AM.
Isha and Vikram took the train back from Agra.
Second-class AC. Side lower, side upper. Because Vikram refused to use Rahul's jet after what happened, and Isha refused to let Vikram spend four months' salary on a flight for her pride.
The train was loud. It smelled like chai and diesel and life. It was the first time in a year Isha had been in public without a security detail or a contract watching her.
Vikram bought her tea. He bought her a magazine. Femina. "100 Women Who Changed India." He thought she might like page 34. Kalpana Chawla.
"Thank you," Isha said when he handed it to her. Their fingers touched for half a second. Neither moved away.
"For what?"
"For the tea. For the train. For not pretending I need a jet to be a person."
Vikram didn't answer. He looked out the window. The Deccan Plateau was rolling past, brown and endless. "I wouldn't leave you in Agra, Isha," he said finally.
It was the first time he had used her name like that. Not Ms. Sharma. Not Ma'am. Just Isha.
She looked down at the magazine so he wouldn't see her eyes.
They reached Mumbai at 11:40 PM. A black Maybach was idling outside the station. Rahul's car. Sent for him. Not for them.
"Take it," Vikram told the driver.
"Sir, Mr. Malhotra's instructions"
"Mr. Malhotra isn't here. I am. We'll take a cab."
The cab ride to Malhotra Mansion cost 340 rupees. It smelled like old monsoon and beedi smoke. Isha paid half. Vikram argued. She won.
The mansion was dark. The staff was asleep. The east garden was empty.
"Goodnight, Isha," Vikram said at the foot of the main staircase. His room was above the garage. Hers was behind the kitchen. Different wings. Different worlds.
"Goodnight, Vikram," she said.
Three feet apart. Always three feet.
Rahul stood outside Isha's door at 1:28 AM.
He didn't knock. He didn't breathe too loud. He just stood there, in a suit that cost more than her brother's education, and stared at a painted wooden door with a small brass number 4 on it.
He could hear her. Not talking. Breathing. Small, even breaths. Asleep.
He had a key. He had the master key to every room in this house. He had owned the house for six years. He had owned her contract for one.
He didn't use it.
He stood there for twenty-two minutes. The same number of years Shah Jahan took to build the Taj. The same number of minutes it took Tanya to pack her bags and leave.
Then he went upstairs. To his room. It still smelled like Tanya's perfume. Chanel No. 5 and ambition. He opened all the windows. The Mumbai air came in. Hot. Humid. Honest. The smell didn't leave.
He didn't sleep.
Tanya didn't sleep either.
Worli Seaface. 72nd floor. Her penthouse was 18,000 square feet of revenge. White marble, white furniture, white rage. The city was a circuit board below her, all the lights people who didn't matter.
She had a Macallan 25 in her hand. She wasn't drinking it. She was holding it, watching the city bend through the glass.
Her phone was on the marble counter. On speaker.
"He didn't chase me, Dad," she said. Her voice was not crying. Tanya Oberoi didn't cry. She calculated. "He didn't call. He didn't text. He let me leave. He let me take the jet. Do you know what he did instead?"
"What?" Karan Oberoi's voice. From Delhi. From the other end of an empire.
"He stood outside her door. The staff told my driver. He came home at 1 AM and stood outside the contract girl's room for twenty-two minutes. He didn't go in. He just... stood there. Like a dog who knows he's not allowed inside."
Karan was silent. Karan Oberoi understood men. He understood power. He understood that his daughter had just been replaced by a girl who owned nothing except a book and a look of pity.
"What do you want, Tanya?"
Tanya looked at her reflection in the window. Perfect. Sharp. Symmetrical. Everything Isha Sharma wasn't. And Rahul had chosen the other one.
"I want her to vanish," Tanya said. "Not dead. Dead is messy. Dead brings police. Dead makes him a martyr. I want her scared. I want her gone for a week. I want him to search and find empty air. I want him to feel what I felt when he looked past me at the Taj like I was furniture."
"You're asking me to call Mitesh."
Mitesh. No last name. Karan's 'fixer' in Delhi. The man who made problems take vacations. The man who had made a journalist who wrote about Oberoi land scams 'move to Canada' in 2019. The journalist was still in Canada. He still didn't write.
"Yes," Tanya said. "I'm asking you to call Mitesh."
"You don't hurt her," Karan said. It wasn't a question. It was a line. "Scare, yes. Hurt, no. Oberois don't do blood unless it's business. This is personal. Personal gets sloppy."
"I don't want blood," Tanya lied. She wasn't sure that was true. "I want her to understand her place. She's a contract. She's a 500-dollar item. She looked at me at the Taj and felt sorry for me. I want her to be sorry for herself."
Karan sighed. The sound of a father who had built a monster and was now watching it feed. "Send me her photo. Her schedule. Her usual routes. Mitesh will need 48 hours."
Tanya hung up. She opened her phone. She had photos. The photographer had sent her all the rejects. The bad angles. The candid ones. The ones that didn't make her look like a goddess.
She found one. Isha, in the background, blurred, looking at the Taj Mahal. Not posing. Not aware of the camera. Holding that dusty book. The Story of the Taj. Morning light on her face. She looked... real.
Tanya's jaw locked. She forwarded the photo.
To: Dad
Text: The contract girl. She walks to the market from the back gate around 4 PM most days. Alone.
She threw the phone onto the couch. She drank the Macallan. All of it. It burned. Not enough.
Tuesday, 3:47 PM.
Isha was in the library. She was reading The Palace of Illusions. Draupadi's story. A woman traded by men, owned by contracts, who still found a way to be fire.
She liked it.
At 3:58 PM, she marked her page. Page 112. She stood up. She told the kitchen boy, "I'm going to the market. I'll be back in an hour. Tell Chef I'll help with dinner when I'm back."
She took the back gate. The staff gate. The one by the east garden. The one without cameras. Rahul had cameras everywhere except there. He said staff deserved privacy.
The walk was two kilometers. The road was crowded. Afternoon traffic. Scooters. Buses. Women buying vegetables. A man selling green mangoes with chili powder.
Isha liked the noise. It was real. It was not the mansion. It was not contracts.
At 4:11 PM, a white van slowed next to her. No plates. Tinted windows. The kind of van that didn't exist in police databases.
The side door slid open.
Isha turned. She had time to think wrong. and run and Vikram.
She didn't have time to do any of it.
A hand came out. Male. Gloved. It covered her mouth. Another hand grabbed her arm. She was pulled in. Not dragged. Lifted. Like she weighed nothing. Like she was a package.
Her book fell. The Palace of Illusions. It hit the pavement and lay open. Page 112 up.
"In the end, we all become stories," it said. "In the end, all that remains is the way we were remembered."
The van door shut. The sound was quiet. A soft thud.
The van took a left at the next signal and merged into Mumbai. One white van in a city of a million.
No one saw. No one screamed. No one noticed.
Vikram knew at 5:32 PM.
He went to the library to return Rahul's Singapore file. Isha wasn't there. Her book was. The Palace of Illusions. Open to page 112. No Isha.
He went to the kitchen. "Has Isha come back?"
"No, Vikram bhai," the kitchen boy said. "She left at 4. Said one hour."
It was 5:33.
Vikram went to the back gate. The guard was new. Young. Bored.
"Did Isha Sharma go out? Small, kurta, book?"
"Yes, sir. 4:05. Hasn't come back yet."
Vikram's phone vibrated. Unknown number. A video message. 8 seconds.
He played it.
Isha. In a van. Hands zip-tied. Mouth taped. Eyes wide. Not crying. Furious. The timestamp on the video: 4:13 PM. Two minutes after she was taken.
The video ended. A text followed.
"She is unharmed. For now. You will not contact police. You will not tell Malhotra. If you do, she gets sold. There are markets for quiet girls. Do you understand?"
Then another text.
"Tell Malhotra to stay away from Oberoi business. Tell him some things are not for sale. She goes home in 5 days. If you behave."
Vikram's hands did not shake. His heart did not race. Something in him went cold and still and very, very quiet.
He had been a soldier before he was an assistant. Before Malhotra Tower. Before Isha. He remembered how to be cold.
He walked back to the east garden. He sat on the bench. He looked at his phone. Isha's face, taped, terrified, furious.
He had told her, "If it gets bad, find me."
She hadn't found him. They had taken her first.
He dialed a number.
Not 100. Not the police. The text said no police. He believed them.
He called Rahul.
Rahul answered on the first ring. "What."
"She's gone," Vikram said. His voice was flat. Steel. "They took her. At 4:11 PM. From the back gate. I have video proof."
Silence. For three seconds. Then a sound on Rahul's end. Glass shattering. The Macallan, probably. Or the mirror.
"Who," Rahul said. The word was not a question. It was a bullet.
"The text says Oberoi. Tanya. It says stay away from Oberoi business. Says she comes back in five days if we behave."
More silence. Then Rahul's voice came back. It was not Rahul's voice. It was something older. Something that had been buried under money and contracts and boardrooms.
"Where are you."
"East garden."
"Don't move."
The line died.
Vikram looked at the book on the ground by the gate. He had walked past it without seeing it. The Palace of Illusions. He picked it up. Page 112.
"In the end, all that remains is the way we were remembered."
Vikram closed the book. He held it tight.
He was going to make sure Isha Sharma was remembered as the girl who came home.
No matter what he had to burn to do it.....
Author's Note:-
Hey lovelies!💗
Chapter 11 "The Breakup & The Abduction" is here... and I'm sorry 😭
This one was hard to write. Tanya crossed a line. There is no coming back from this. No redemption arc. No "she was hurting too." She chose violence. She chose to buy someone's pain because she couldn't handle her own.
Rahul finally broke. Not with anger. With silence. With twenty-two minutes at a door. With the realization that you can't put a price tag on consequences.
And Vikram? You saw it. "I wouldn't leave you anywhere, Isha." He meant it. The soldier is back. The assistant is gone. And he's not calling the police. He's calling Rahul.
Isha didn't scream. She was furious, not afraid. That's who she is. Even with tape on her mouth, she's still fire.
Important note: Kidnapping is a crime. This is fiction. In real life, you call the police immediately. Always. Isha's story is not a guide. It's a warning about what happens when ego becomes violence.
Tell me in the comments:-
1. Tanya: Villain origin story complete or is there any humanity left?
2. Rahul vs. Vikram - who are you trusting to get Isha back?
3. Rate your stress level 1-10 after that van scene 😰
Chapter 12 "The Hunt" drops tomorrow at 9 AM. The mansion is going to war. And for the first time, Rahul and Vikram are on the same side.
We are at 1.3K views. Thank you for trusting me with the dark parts of the story. Thank you for caring about Isha 🙏
Breathe. Hydrate. Be safe. And remember - you are not Isha. You have a voice. You use it.
I love you all🌙😘
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