Chapter 1:- HAPPY 18TH BIRTHDAY.
Chapter 1: Happy Eighteenth Birthday
MAYA.
The radiator in the basement storage room clanked like an old man with a bad cough, spitting out lukewarm air that never quite reached the mattress on the floor. I pulled my knees up to my chest, tucking the frayed edges of the grey wool blanket under my toes, and stared at the digital clock blinking on the microwave upstairs through the gap in the floorboards.
11:47 PM.
Thirteen minutes.
My glasses slipped down the bridge of my nose—the left hinge had been held together with a strip of clear tape since October, and every time I breathed too hard, the crooked lens caught the dim yellow light from the hallway and turned everything into a smeared watercolor. I pushed them back up with the knuckle of my thumb, careful not to smudge the glass. I couldn't afford lens wipes. Hell, I couldn't afford a toothbrush unless Aunt Meera felt generous enough to toss a spare hotel sample down the stairs.
In thirteen minutes, I would be eighteen.
My stomach twisted into a tight, cold knot that had nothing to do with the fact that dinner had been half a bowl of watered-down dal and two cold rotis left over from yesterday. It was fear. The kind of low, buzzing dread that sat right behind your ribs and made your fingers go numb.
For seven years—ever since the brakes on my parents' SUV mysteriously failed on the Shimla highway when I was eleven—I had lived in the dark corners of my father's own house.
My house.
That was the joke, wasn't it? Every marble tile in the foyer upstairs, every crystal chandelier my mother had hand-picked in Milan, every single rupee sitting in the multi-crore trust fund at HDFC Private Wealth belonged to me. My father, Rajesh Malhotra, hadn't been stupid. When he drafted his will, he’d put a steel lock on the entire estate. Until Maya Malhotra turned eighteen, not a single property could be sold, not a single share liquidated, and not a single account drained. My Uncle Vikram and Aunt Meera were named legal guardians—paid a modest monthly stipend from the trust to feed, clothe, and educate me until I came of age.
They had pocketed the stipend, pulled me out of St. Xavier's to "homeschool" me—which really meant scrubbing grease traps and ironing Vikram’s silk kurtas—and locked me in the basement whenever guests came over, telling the neighbors I had "severe psychological trauma" from the crash and couldn't handle human contact.
I looked down at my hands. The knuckles were red, chapped raw from bleach and freezing tap water. My oversized sweatshirt—one of Vikram’s discarded ones from five years ago—hung off my thin frame like a sack.
They aren't going to just hand over the keys at midnight, a quiet voice whispered in the back of my skull.
I’d been turning that thought over for three months. Vikram was drowning in debt. I knew because I was the one who emptied the shredder bin in his study every Tuesday, and even torn into confetti, bank notices from Dubai casinos and red-ink margin calls weren't hard to piece together. He needed liquid cash. Immediately. And the second the clock struck twelve, the ironclad trust would transfer solely into my name—unless I wasn't around to claim it.
If a minor dies before reaching legal majority, the estate defaults to the surviving next of kin.
I had read that clause in the copy of the will I’d found hidden behind a false panel in my father’s old bookshelf two summers ago. I’d memorized every word of it until the legal jargon burned into the backs of my eyelids.
Footsteps creaked on the wooden stairs above me. Heavy, deliberate, and paired with the sharp, rhythmic click-clack of expensive heels.
My breath caught. I scrambled off the mattress, shoving my battered notebook under the lumpy pillow, and stood near the door with my head bowed—the posture I’d perfected over seven years so I wouldn't look too tall, too defiant, or too awake.
The bolt slid back. The door swung open, flooding the cramped room with harsh overhead light that made me wince.
Aunt Meera stood on the threshold, draped in a plum-colored pashmina shawl, diamond studs glittering in her ears—my mother’s diamond studs. Behind her loomed Uncle Vikram, wearing a tailored camel-hair coat and smelling faintly of imported scotch and peppermint.
Neither of them was yelling. Neither of them was holding a broom or a stack of unwashed dishes.
Instead, Aunt Meera was smiling.
It was a wide, polished, terrifyingly bright smile that didn't reach her dark, calculating eyes. Seeing it made the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up.
"Look at you, standing in the dark like a little bat," Meera cooed, stepping down two stairs and resting a manicured hand on my shoulder. Her fingernails dug just slightly into my collarbone through the thin cotton. "Come up, beta. Quickly. It’s almost midnight."
"I—I didn't finish polishing the silverware, Auntie," I mumbled, keeping my voice flat and small, staring at the toes of her suede boots. "I can do it before—"
"Oh, forget the silver! Tonight is your eighteenth birthday, Maya!" Vikram’s booming laugh echoed off the concrete walls, warm and jovial, like he hadn't locked me in a closet for twelve hours last week because I accidentally burned his toast. He clapped his hands together. "A milestone! Your father would never forgive us if we let his only daughter turn eighteen in a basement. Go wash your face. Your aunt laid out something proper for you in the guest bathroom."
My pulse hammered against my throat. Why? Why the sudden act? There were no guests tonight. The house was dead silent. Even the watchman had been given the night off—I’d heard Vikram tell him at dusk not to come back until morning.
"Where are we going?" I asked quietly.
"Just a midnight drive up toward the ridge," Vikram said smoothly, checking his gold Patek Philippe watch. "Fresh mountain air. Maybe stop at the overlook point with a cake. Come on, don't look so terrified. You’re an adult in ten minutes."
I didn't have a choice. Saying no in this house only ever resulted in bruises hidden under long sleeves, and if they were already planning something, locking myself in a basement with no phone and no window wouldn't save me. At least outside, under the open sky, there was space to run.
I walked up the stairs slowly, my bare feet cold against the polished Italian marble of the hallway. In the downstairs guest bathroom, a pale blue woolen sweater and a pair of dark jeans lay folded neatly on the counter next to a pair of worn sneakers. No phone. No purse. Not even a hairbrush.
I changed quickly, tying my long, tangled black hair back into a messy knot at the nape of my neck, and adjusted my taped glasses. When I stepped out into the foyer, Vikram was already jingling the keys to his black Mercedes SUV.
"Get in the back, Maya," Meera said softly, holding the rear passenger door open. "I’ll sit up front with your uncle so you have plenty of room to stretch out."
The leather seats were freezing, smelling of vanilla air freshener and leather polish. As the heavy door clicked shut, I heard the subtle thud of the child safety locks engaging from the driver's console.
My heart sank right into my boots.
Child locks. On an eighteen-year-old's birthday.
I kept my face completely blank, turning my head toward the tinted window as the iron gates of the estate rolled open and the SUV eased out onto the empty, pine-lined road winding up into the hills.
Outside, the November mist hung low and thick, curling around the trunks of towering deodar trees like ghostly fingers. Nobody drove up this stretch of the mountain after ten at night. Not the locals, not the tourists, and certainly not the police. Because three miles past the old scenic overlook lay the border fence of the Blackwood Reserve—what the villagers whispered about in hushed, superstitious tones as the Forbidden Forest.
People went into those woods and didn't come back. Hikers vanished without a trace. Search dogs refused to cross the treeline, whining and tucking their tails between their legs until their handlers dragged them away. They blamed bears, leopards, or steep ravines, though anyone who grew up near the foothills knew the elders hung dried silver-leaf bundles above their doors for a reason.
Vikram didn't slow down at the scenic overlook.
The headlights sliced through the fog, illuminating the rusted metal barrier separating the paved road from the jagged dirt trail leading straight toward the cliffside above the Forbidden Forest. He turned the wheel sharply, the heavy tires crunching over loose gravel and pine needles as the SUV bounced into the dark treeline, completely hidden from the main road.
I gripped the edge of the leather seat, my knuckles turning white. My mind raced, scanning every inch of the interior. No sharp objects. Doors locked from the outside. Windows electronically disabled.
Ten yards from the edge of the precipice, where the earth dropped sheer and vertical into a sea of pitch-black canopy hundreds of feet below, Vikram killed the engine.
The sudden silence was deafening. Only the faint ticking of the cooling engine and the low howl of the wind through the pines filled the space.
"Come out, Maya," Meera said. The syrupy sweetness was gone from her voice, stripped away like paint in acid. She sounded bored. Impatient. "Let's look at the stars."
The rear door swung open from the outside. Cold mountain air slapped me in the face, sharp enough to sting my eyes. I stepped out slowly onto the damp earth, my sneakers slipping slightly on the wet pine needles.
Vikram walked around the front of the car, his hands tucked deep into his coat pockets. He glanced at his watch. The luminous dial glowed green in the dark.
11:58 PM.
"You know," Vikram sighed, staring out over the black abyss of the forest below, "your father always thought he was smarter than everyone else. Locking everything up until you turned eighteen. Did he really think Meera and I were going to spend seven years wiping your nose just to walk away with crumbs?"
I didn't run yet. If I bolted toward the road, Vikram would tackle me in three strides—I was half-starved and light as a bird, and he was six feet tall and built like a bull. My only chance was waiting until they got closer to the edge, where the ground was uneven and slick with moss.
"You forged his signatures on the offshore accounts three years ago," I said, my voice steadier than I expected in the freezing air.
Vikram’s head snapped toward me, his eyes narrowing in the dim red glow of the taillights. Meera froze beside him.
"What did you just say?" Meera hissed.
"The Cayman Islands holding company," I continued, taking half a step backward—not toward the cliff, but sideways, angling toward the thick cluster of boulders near the front fender. "And the mortgaged deeds on the Pune warehouse. I found the bank statements in your shredder, Uncle. You’re four crores in debt to the syndicate in Dubai. Even if you take my trust tomorrow, they’re going to take half of it before sunrise."
For three seconds, neither of them breathed. Then Vikram’s face twisted into something ugly and raw.
"Smart little bitch," he spat, lunging forward. "Playing the quiet, half-blind idiot all these years while snooping through my study!"
I ducked under his outstretched hand, dropping low and darting toward the headlights, trying to reach the dirt track back to the main road. My lungs burned as I sprinted over the slick roots, gravel spraying behind my heels.
"Grab her! Don't let her reach the road!" Meera shrieked.
I was fast, driven by pure, blinding adrenaline, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird. Ten feet to the trees. Five feet—
A heavy hand clamped around the back of my sweater, yanking me backward so violently my feet left the ground. My glasses flew off my face, clattering somewhere into the dark brush. The world blurred instantly into smudged shadows and blinding red taillights.
I kicked backward with everything I had, my heel connecting squarely with Vikram’s shin. He roared a curse, his grip loosening for a fraction of a second—just long enough for me to twist free and scramble on hands and knees across the wet moss.
Blind without my glasses, disoriented by the swirling fog, I scrambled toward what I thought was the shadow of the boulders.
Then Aunt Meera’s heavy boot slammed straight into the center of my spine.
Air exploded out of my lungs in a silent gasp. I pitched forward—and my hands met nothing but empty, freezing air.
My stomach dropped. My fingers clawed frantically at the damp dirt, ripping through grass and loose pebbles as my body slid over the lip of the cliff.
"Happy birthday, Maya," Meera’s cold voice floated down from above, detached and cruel. "Say hello to your parents."
I tried to scream, tried to catch a root, anything—but the wet earth gave way completely.
Gravity swallowed me whole.
Wind shrieked in my ears as I plummeted into the pitch-black void. A jagged pine branch tore across my shoulder, ripping through my sweater and skin like a rusted blade, spinning me violently in mid-air. Pain flared white-hot down my side, followed instantly by the sickening, bone-crunching impact of crashing through dense upper branches before hitting the forest floor with a force that shattered every ounce of breath from my body.
Silence crashed down over the woods.
I lay twisted in the freezing mud and rotting leaves, staring up at a tiny sliver of silver moonlight filtering through the thick canopy hundreds of feet above. Something warm and metallic pooled beneath my cheek, soaking into my hair. Every breath felt like swallowing shards of glass. My left arm wouldn't move. My ribs throbbed in rhythm with my fading pulse.
In the distance, high above the ridge, the faint rumble of a Mercedes engine faded away into the night.
12:00 AM.
Somewhere out there, I was eighteen.
And down here, in the suffocating dark of the Forbidden Forest, the cold began creeping up from my fingertips toward my heart. Just before my eyes rolled back and the darkness claimed me entirely, a low, rumbling growl vibrated through the earth beneath my ear—and two glowing eyes, the color of molten amber, stepped out from between the ancient trees.
