I bathed the mafia boss’s scarred Pit Bull in the basement sink after everyone else had fled—but when the dog chose me, its ruthless owner revealed a horrifying scheme.
I bathed the mafia boss’s scarred Pit Bull in the basement sink after everyone else had fled—but when the dog chose me, its ruthless owner revealed a horrifying scheme.
Everyone — guards, servants, even the cook — had fled the mansion the moment the rival gang attacked. I was the only one left. The only one stupid enough to hear the low, broken whimpering coming from the basement.
I found him there.
The mafia boss’s legendary Pit Bull.
Scarred face, half an ear missing, dried blood on his neck. The same dog that had torn three men apart last year. Everyone called him “Shaitaan”.
He was trembling beside the sink, eyes full of pain.
My hands shook as I filled the basement sink with warm water.
“Easy, boy… I’m not going to hurt you,” I whispered.
I never expected him to let me touch him.
But he did.
I cleaned every wound, every old scar, speaking softly the whole time. When I finished, Shaitaan did something no living soul had ever seen.
He licked my wrist…
then sat down at my feet and refused to move.
That was when the heavy footsteps came.
Kabir Raichand, the most ruthless mafia boss in the city, stood at the top of the basement stairs. Blood on his white shirt. Gun still in his hand. His cold eyes locked on the dog sitting loyally beside me.
For a long second, no one breathed.
Then Kabir’s voice cut through the silence like a blade:
“He has never chosen anyone.
Not me. Not my late wife. Not a single soul in twelve years.”
He walked down slowly, gun still raised.
“Do you know what that means, Ananya?”
I couldn’t speak.
Kabir stopped three steps away, looking at the dog, then at me.
A terrifying smile appeared on his face.
“It means the plan I made five years ago…
the plan that required a pure-hearted person who could control him…
has finally found its missing piece.”
He leaned closer, voice dropping to a deadly whisper:
“Congratulations.
You just became the most important person in my entire empire…
and the most disposable.”
Shaitaan suddenly growled — not at me, but at Kabir.
Kabir’s smile widened.
“Even better.”
Kabir’s smile widened.
“Even better.”
Shaitaan rose between us.
His scarred body was still wet from the bath, water dripping from his chest onto the basement floor. The dog lowered his head and released another warning growl.
Kabir slowly lowered the gun.
Not because he feared the animal.
Because he understood him.
“Interesting,” he murmured.
I backed against the sink.
“What plan?”
Kabir looked at me as though deciding how much of my life I was allowed to keep knowing.
Then he removed the magazine from his pistol, set the weapon on a shelf, and rolled his bloodstained sleeve above his wrist.
“Five years ago, my wife was murdered.”
I knew that story.
Everyone in Delhi did.
Naina Raichand had supposedly died when a rival gang attacked one of Kabir’s convoys.
Afterward, Kabir changed.
People said he became colder.
More dangerous.
Less human.
Kabir continued.
“The police blamed the Bedi family.”
“Didn’t they do it?”
“No.”
The answer came too quickly.
Too certainly.
I swallowed.
“Then who did?”
“My own people.”
The basement seemed to shrink around us.
Kabir walked toward an old steel cabinet built into the wall.
Shaitaan immediately followed him.
Then stopped.
Looked back at me.
And returned to my side.
Kabir noticed.
“So it’s true.”
“What is?”
“He trusts you more than he trusts me.”
“I just cleaned his wounds.”
Kabir almost laughed.
“You think kindness explains twelve years of conditioning?”
He opened the cabinet.
Inside was not money.
Not weapons.
Documents.
Photographs.
Hard drives.
And one photograph positioned separately from everything else.
Kabir removed it.
A beautiful woman stood beside him in a garden.
Naina.
Beside her sat a much younger Shaitaan.
“He belonged to her first,” Kabir said.
I looked at the photograph.
Naina’s hand rested on Shaitaan’s head.
“He loved her.”
“More than anyone.”
Kabir’s expression darkened.
“The night she died, Shaitaan survived.”
“He came home alone three days later.”
“After that, he attacked almost everyone who tried to touch the leather collar Naina had put on him.”
I looked down.
Shaitaan was wearing no collar now.
Only an old dark mark around his neck where one had once rested.
“What happened to it?”
Kabir looked directly at me.
“That is the problem.”
“The collar disappeared.”
I frowned.
“So?”
“So Naina designed it herself.”
He reached into the cabinet and removed a technical drawing.
Inside the collar was a tiny storage capsule.
“A memory device?”
Kabir nodded.
“My wife had discovered that someone inside my organization was selling information.”
“Names. Shipments. Accounts. Judges. Police officers.”
“She copied everything.”
“Then she hid the evidence in the one place nobody would search without losing a hand.”
I looked at Shaitaan.
“The dog.”
“Yes.”
“But if the collar disappeared—”
“Someone removed it after her death.”
“Who?”
Kabir’s eyes became cold.
“That is what I have spent five years trying to learn.”
I stared at him.
“And what does that have to do with me?”
Kabir closed the cabinet.
“Because Naina left one message before she died.”
He removed an old phone.
The screen was cracked.
He pressed play.
A woman’s voice filled the basement.
“If Shaitaan ever accepts someone completely, do not frighten them away. He remembers what we forget. Trust his choice before you trust your own.”
My skin prickled.
The recording ended.
Kabir looked at the dog sitting against my leg.
“For five years, I brought people near him.”
“Doctors.”
“Handlers.”
“Soldiers.”
“People who claimed to know Naina.”
“He tolerated some.”
“He attacked others.”
“He chose nobody.”
I whispered, “Until me.”
“Until you.”
I hated the way he said it.
Like my kindness had become a job application I never submitted.
“You said I was disposable.”
“You are.”
My stomach dropped.
Kabir stepped closer.
“Because if the people who killed Naina learn Shaitaan has chosen you, they will assume you can lead me to whatever she hid.”
“I can’t.”
“They won’t care.”
“I know nothing!”
“That has never stopped powerful men from killing innocent people.”
Shaitaan growled again.
Kabir looked down.
Then something changed in his face.
“Show me your wrist.”
“What?”
“The one he licked.”
I hesitated.
Kabir’s voice sharpened.
“Ananya.”
I held out my hand.
A faint reddish mark crossed the inside of my wrist.
Kabir froze.
He grabbed the photograph of Naina again.
Then looked at me.
Then the photograph.
“What?”
He didn’t answer.
Instead, he pulled another picture from the cabinet.
Older.
Naina standing beside another woman outside a hospital.
The second woman was younger, thinner, wearing a nurse’s uniform.
My heart stopped.
I knew that face.
“Maa…”
Kabir slowly looked at me.
“You know her?”
“That’s my mother.”
For the first time since entering the basement, Kabir Raichand looked genuinely shocked.
“What was her name?”
“Savita Sharma.”
His face lost color.
“No.”
“What?”
“Your mother’s name was Savita?”
“Yes.”
Kabir stepped backward.
I had never seen fear on him before.
Not during the attack.
Not with blood on his shirt.
But now his hands actually trembled.
“Naina spoke about Savita.”
My throat tightened.
“How did they know each other?”
Kabir sat down slowly.
“Your mother saved my wife’s life once.”
“What?”
“Six years before Naina died, someone poisoned her at a charity hospital.”
“Savita was the nurse who noticed.”
“She refused to follow the doctor’s instructions because something felt wrong.”
“She called me.”
“She saved Naina.”
I stared at the photograph.
My mother had died when I was nineteen.
She never once mentioned Kabir Raichand.
“There’s more,” he said.
Of course there was.
There was always more.
Kabir opened another folder.
Inside was a handwritten letter.
My mother’s name appeared on the envelope.
“She wrote this to Naina.”
I reached for it.
Kabir stopped me.
“Before you read it, understand something.”
“What?”
“My wife believed Savita knew who was poisoning her.”
My blood went cold.
“She knew?”
“Apparently.”
“Then why didn’t she tell you?”
“That question has tortured me for years.”
He finally handed me the letter.
The paper was yellowed.
My mother’s handwriting trembled across the page.
I began reading.
Naina, if anything happens to me, do not trust the man who brings Kabir his medicine. I saw him switch the vial. I also saw who paid him.
My breathing stopped.
At the bottom was one name.
Rajiv Raichand.
I looked at Kabir.
“Who is Rajiv?”
His expression hardened.
“My younger brother.”
The man currently serving as chief financial officer of Kabir’s empire.
The man who had organized tonight’s engagement party.
The man who had been standing upstairs thirty minutes earlier welcoming guests while armed men attacked the estate.
I whispered, “Your brother tried to poison your wife?”
Kabir said nothing.
Suddenly Shaitaan stood.
His ears lifted.
The dog turned toward the basement stairs.
A second later, footsteps appeared above us.
Kabir immediately reached for his gun.
“Behind me.”
I did not argue.
The basement door opened.
A man descended slowly.
Elegant black sherwani.
Expensive watch.
Perfectly calm face.
Rajiv Raichand.
He stopped halfway down the stairs.
His eyes moved toward Kabir.
Then me.
Then Shaitaan.
And finally the letter in my hand.
His smile disappeared.
“Where did you get that?”
Kabir raised the gun.
“My wife had it.”
Rajiv stared at him.
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand my wife suspected you.”
“No.”
Rajiv took another step.
“Kabir, listen to me.”
“Stop.”
Rajiv stopped.
Shaitaan began growling.
Not softly.
Violently.
Rajiv looked at the dog.
Then at me.
“What did she do to him?”
Kabir’s voice was ice.
“She bathed him.”
Rajiv’s eyes widened.
“And he let her?”
Nobody answered.
Rajiv suddenly looked terrified.
“Get her out of here.”
Kabir frowned.
“What?”
“Now.”
“Why?”
Rajiv pointed at me.
“Because if Shaitaan chose her, then Naina’s backup plan worked.”
Kabir lowered the gun slightly.
“What backup plan?”
Rajiv laughed once.
It sounded broken.
“You thought the evidence was hidden in his collar?”
Kabir went still.
Rajiv shook his head.
“The collar was bait.”
My stomach tightened.
“Then where is the evidence?” I asked.
Rajiv looked directly at me.
“Inside the person Shaitaan was trained to recognize.”
Silence.
Kabir turned toward me.
“That makes no sense.”
Rajiv’s eyes dropped to my wrist.
To the faint birthmark Shaitaan had licked.
Then he whispered:
“Naina never trained Shaitaan to choose a pure-hearted stranger.”
Kabir’s face changed.
“She trained him to recognize blood.”
I stopped breathing.
Kabir stared at me.
Rajiv continued.
“Savita Sharma wasn’t just Naina’s friend.”
He looked at Kabir.
“She was the woman Naina trusted with her newborn daughter the night everything went wrong.”
The basement disappeared around me.
I could barely hear my own voice.
“My mother only had one daughter.”
Rajiv shook his head.
“No, Ananya.”
“She raised one daughter.”
Kabir’s gun slowly lowered.
Rajiv delivered the sentence that shattered whatever remained of my life.
“You were born Ananya Raichand.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
Shaitaan pressed himself against my leg.
Kabir whispered, “Whose daughter?”
Rajiv looked toward the dead woman’s photograph.
Then at Kabir.
And for the first time, the ruthless mafia boss seemed afraid of the answer.
Rajiv said quietly:
“Naina’s.”
Kabir’s face emptied.
“And the father?”
Rajiv smiled bitterly.
“That is the part Naina died trying to keep from you.”
Before he could say another word, a shot cracked somewhere upstairs.
Then another.
Kabir’s guards began shouting.
Rajiv turned toward the stairs.
His face went white.
“They found her.”
“Found who?” Kabir demanded.
Rajiv looked back at us.
“The woman who can prove Ananya’s real identity.”
My heart stopped.
“Who?”
Rajiv whispered:
“Savita Sharma.”
I stared at him.
“My mother is dead.”
Rajiv shook his head.
“No.”
Then the basement lights went out.
And somewhere in the darkness, a woman screamed my childhood nickname.
The name only my mother had ever called me.
Part 2 read more in the comments.
