The Corporate Monster ✅

P I E R C E D

Aniket had always known that money was worthless when compared to true friends. He had learned that throughout his earlier years, moving from place to place and trying to conform with the rest of his peers.

Chinna had been a good acquaintance in his college years, but Aniket was starting to have doubts about his former friends' intentions. Good or bad, he knew that Chinna would never try to harm him in any way—at least, he wouldn't hurt him when it came to his life. But, his whole life revolved around Krithi, and Chinna had hurt her before, and for that, Aniket would need time to recover and forgive Chinna completely.

His cousin was a different species. There was a thousand connotations in that single, twisted smirk of Chinna's. Before, Aniket could read his friend like a book. But that wasn't the case now. He can't even decipher his expression; how will he learn his heart's language?

"Go in." Chinna hollers from the car. Aniket stands in front of his childhood house, looking up at the marble pillars with disdain. What if his mother doesn't accept him? Of course, she still does not know that he was her nephew, her sister-in-law's son. But that was good. Aniket loved his mother. Whether her husband was a good man or not, did not matter to him when it came to Maykala. She was his everything before Krithi came into his life.

But now, now he wasn't sure what he wanted in life. He wavered like a broken tree stump in a storm. The rest of him was gone, and so, he felt useless. Sure, Krithi had proved the value of a life to him, and he will never attempt suicide, but that doesn't mean that the thoughts of it haven't crossed his mind in the past two months without Krithi.

After the acid attack, he had enough of himself. He had proved to his heart that he was toxic to Krithi. Besides, she wasn't happy to be with him. And when you love someone, you want them to be happy. If not for you, then for themselves. While Krithi had been happy on the outside, she was a boiling teacup on the inside, her China heart about to shatter with his every wrong move.

"Don't tell her, Cheenu. Don't tell her that I am not her son." Aniket exclaims as Chinna meets him at the steps of the house.

Chinna smiles faintly at his cousin, mentally smirking as he nods his head in agreement. "Don't worry, Ani. It'll be fine." He reassures. "I won't tell our mother anything."

Aniket's head whipped up from the engagement ring on his finger, and looked up at his former best friend with suspicion dancing in his eyes. "She didn't raise you, Cheenu." He said possessively.

"She didn't give birth to you, Ani." Chinna argued, knowing that he has already won the war. This battle was too easy. "But, still, either be my brother, or my pawn."

"I am not your brother, Cheenu." The nickname rolled off Aniket's tongue without any realization. Chinna and Aniket had been best friends since their high school years, and went through quite a rollercoaster together during their college years. It was hard for both of them to think of each other as enemies. But when their beloved mother came into play, it was hard to predict or judge the rivalry between the two men.

Chinna smirked outwardly, brushing over his stubble with a blank mind. "Technically speaking, cousins are like brothers." He pauses, retrieving an example. "Your wife? She calls her cousin, her sister doesn't she?" Chinna knew that mentioning Krithi was like pouring salt on Aniket's healing wound. But when Aniket was so intent in separating him from his goddamn mother, Chinna was ready to go to any extent to prove his best friend wrong.

Aniket, ever the hothead, runs off to ring the doorbell without another word. Whilst he was waiting for the door to open, he casually monitored his mother's precious garden. He didn't know what it was with woman and flowers, but his mother was obsessed with them. The usually preposterous garden, filled with lilies, orchids, roses and other unidentifiable scented demons, was hanging its head in its lack of beauty. The flowers were sad, the green planted rotted with lack of love. The whole place seemed as if it had lost its life.