3 months later, after the night at the hospital….

“Zen Kohli”, said the voice through Zoe’s self-designed nano bluetooth device.

It looked more like an ear stud than a high-tech communication gadget it was! Zoe decided to ignore the name and remember her reason for coming here, her Meera mom, to calm her nerves.

Zen Kohli! Zoe scoffed! She wasn’t interested in learning more about Zen Kohli!

She had heard enough about him to know that she didn’t like him or his ways at all!

If spending money frivolously was a sport, he’d be an unimpeded champion for many years running.

He is a useless third-generation rich kid who has probably come to play work-work because his family thinks he has played enough and has now ‘reached the ‘age’ where he needs to learn responsibility’!

Just the thought of ‘privileged’ people like him put Zoe’s teeth on edge.

She didn’t understand how such people didn’t make use of the god-given opportunities to them and attain even greater heights but squandered them on frivolous pursuits?

While people like her and Meera mom worked their bones off for years just to reach where they are now.

Zoe hated such kind of people, who valued their family in terms of money and not time, like Saavri Mahanta.

Well, if Zen wasn’t like that, the senior Mahanta wouldn’t have chosen him to be her successor.

She must have found his qualities resonant with her ideals to have decided on him to be her precious granddaughter Sara’s husband-to-be.

Zoe didn’t find Saavri Mahanta’s choice of a grand-son-in-law strange. Afterall, people of the same ilk attract each other.

Also, the Kohli’s ticked all the boxes in Saavri Mahanata’s prospective in-laws requirement list. Being rich and influential did have its own disadvantage.

The ones Zoe felt sorry for were the elder Kohli’s. Their precious offspring has brought calamity on their doorstep and they, unknowingly, were out welcoming it with arms wide open.

No one knew more than her, how poisonous Saavri Mahanta was under her gentle family person veneer. She was a termite-in-disguise that would suck these people dry and they wouldn’t even have time to cry for help.

Zoe was here on a mission. She was here to destroy the facade that Saavri Mahanta had created and show the world her true face!

She was also here to help the Kohli’s avoid the same fate that had befell her Meera mom all those years ago.

Zen Kohli didn’t even enter her consideration. People like him deserved to be tied for life to people like Sara. They were the perfect match!

The girl was as vain as him! A true ‘match made in heaven’, ugh!

But Zoe’s prejudice against the very rich and famous wasn’t without reason. They had the tendency to close their eyes, ears, and mouth against the people of their own kind.

For them, the rest of the world was too beneath them to give any notice to or offer a helping hand.

The street was littered with the moans and cries of helpless men, women, and orphans, who had dared to cross paths with one of them and paid the price.

Zoe determinedly shook herself out of her anger. She needed Zen Kohli, her purpose needed Zen Kohli.

He didn’t know it yet, but he was just perfect for her!

He was going to prove his worth by being useful for the first time in his useless life.

He will be the line that will reel in Saavri Mahanta and reel her in good! Neither he, nor Saavri Mahanta would realize the trap until the noose was tied tight around her vicious neck!

Lucky for her, Saavri Mahanta hadn’t changed a bit in the intervening years, nor had her lust for money and power. To satiate her greed, she has done things, taken paths, that are beyond normal comprehension.

She has always gotten away with it till now because the front she presented was too strong to be suspected, her cronies the same as her and her lackies too scared of her to even think of being disloyal.

Saavri Mahanta had been living in her safe bubble for far too long, it was time to shake things up.

And that’s why she was here, with just a little bit of help from her lil’ bro Danny.

Saavri Mahanta was planning to use her granddaughter Sara to build a matrimonial alliance with the Kohli family and then use that trust to access defence experiments and other national secrets.

The lady’s game this time wasn’t small or contained. Family or country, in front of her ambition and greed, nothing mattered.

So committing treason was not a big deal for her, nor was implicating innocent people like Mr.Prakash Kohli. Nothing and no one mattered to her, except herself!

That was the other reason for her being here.

From the moment she had gleaned Saavri Mahanta’s plan, she had decided to infiltrate the Kohli’s to:

1. Use Zen Kohli as the perfect scapegoat to snare Saavri Mahanta.

2. Save Mr.Prakash Kohli.

Her work with nano technology and Mr.Prakash’s lab’s work often coincided with the work for the national defence. As such, they had met and interacted on a couple of occasions.

Every time she had met him she had found him to be a man of impeccable morals, standards, and work ethics.

How could a man such as Mr.Kohli have a son like Zen was beyond her understanding.

But she was not here to understand the Kohli’s family dynamics. She was here to do a job and that’s it!

Jerking the infernal man off her mind, Zoe concentrated on the mission at hand.

She had wanted revenge and Saavri Mahanta had presented Zoe with the perfect opportunity herself!

If she couldn’t take advantage of the presented chance then she had no right to call Meera mom mom!

She had to place herself in position before Saavri Mahanta made her move.

That’s why she was here, in Érevna Laboratories Worldwide headquarters, inching towards her fate.

Waiting for the last and final round of the interview for the position of a Personal Assistant to Mr.Zen Kohli, the new MD!

Zoe was slowly yet surely inching towards her fate.

A fate that she believes ‘she’ has orchestrated for the sole purpose of exacting revenge on her family’s biggest enemy.

But she’ll very soon learn the importance of this self-directed ‘interlude’ in her life!