142|The Old Guard—Part 1

At 8:00 PM on the dot, the Gopals' motorcade pulled up at the entrance. Austin would not have expected anything less. After all, Vishal, the head of the Gopal family, was a stickler for time.

The bodyguards were the first to step out of their cars, surprising Austin when two of them helped Vishal out of his sleek Bentley and placed him in an electric wheelchair.

Austin had known for some time now that the patriarch's health was failing him, but he would never have imagined such a rapid decline. The man in the wheelchair was a far cry from the one Austin last saw at the Foundation's charity benefit four months ago.

While he was still trying to hide his horror at the elderly man's pitiful appearance, Austin's world was thrown off balance yet again when Navya, Vishal's only daughter, stepped out of the second Bentley, their capos right behind her.

Exquisitely dressed in a navy power suit that did very little to hide her stunning figure, her raven hair styled in an angled bob, Navya playe