The Adopted Son: Revenge

**Chapter 1**  

The verdict fell like a sheet of paper placed gently on the table, not like the thunder people imagine.

“Three months,” the doctor said, not meeting Raka’s eyes, choosing instead to stare at the glowing scan results on the screen. “It might last longer if the chemotherapy responds well. But I have to be honest, Mr. Raka. At this stage, it has already spread to the liver.”

Raka nodded. He did not cry. He did not ask “why me.” He only thought of strange, small things that felt odd to think about at a moment like this—whether he had turned off his laptop at the office that morning, whether the quarterly report for PT Wiratama Jaya had already been sent to Bu Wiratmi’s email, or whether he should buy some souvenirs before going home, as if this body that was already betraying him still deserved to be treated like an ordinary day.

He left the hospital at two in the afternoon, carrying a brown envelope filled with lab results he would not show to anyone at home. Not because he wanted to keep it a secret. But because he knew that if he spoke first, it would become one more thing he had to handle alone—comforting other people about his own death.

The Wiratama family house stood at the end of a high-walled street, with a fountain that kept running even in the middle of the day. Raka had lived there for fifteen years, ever since he was ten, ever since Father—the man he once called Father, before everyone started calling him “Mr. Wiratama” in front of him, as if to emphasize the distance—had found him at Wening Asih Orphanage and brought him home.

He entered through the back door, as usual. Not because he had been ordered to. But because the house had a kind of unspoken choreography, and he had long memorized his place in it.

In the living room, his eight older siblings were gathered. A rare sight—usually they were each busy with their own worlds. Mbak Wulan had just returned from a board meeting, still in her blazer. Mbak Retno sat on the sofa with her white coat draped over the arm of the chair. Mbak Prita, the police officer, stood near the window with the posture of someone always interrogating a room. The others—Nadya, Citra, Bu Larasati the teacher, Ken the musician, and Sari the writer—sat in a circle, and in the middle of them all was a young man Raka had never seen before.

“Raka,” Bu Wiratmi stood up from the sofa, smiling thinly, the kind of smile she usually wore when announcing something that had already been decided and needed no discussion. “You’re home at the right time. Meet Bimo. Father’s biological son.”

Raka stood still. Not because he was shocked that a biological son existed—the rumor had circulated for years among people close to the family, about Father who once had a relationship with a woman before marrying Bu Wiratmi, about a child who had been “missing” for years. What made him silent was the way everyone in the room looked at Bimo—as if looking at something that had just arrived carrying a gift—while looking at Raka as if looking at a piece of furniture that was due to be replaced.

“Sit down, Raka,” Mbak Wulan said without fully turning her head. “We need to talk seriously.”

He sat in the chair at the farthest end, the place that had always been his since the beginning.

“Here’s the thing,” Bu Wiratmi began, still in that soft tone that somehow felt heavier than if she had spoken sharply. “Father passed away three years ago, and all this time it feels unfair that Bimo, the only biological son, doesn’t get the position that should rightfully be his. This company is Father’s inheritance, after all.”

“This company runs because of Raka’s work,” Ken said quietly, the only one who seemed to feel the need to speak honestly, even though his voice was drowned out by the others’ nods.

“Raka helped, yes,” Bu Wiratmi cut in quickly. “But the big strategic direction, the relationships with investors—that still came from Mbak Wulan as the CEO.”

Raka wanted to laugh, but he held it back. He remembered the nights he stayed up preparing the proposal for that Singapore investor, while Mbak Wulan presented using the slides he had made, answering technical questions with answers he had prepared through W******p messages the night before. He remembered when the company nearly collapsed last year because of a cash-flow problem, and he was the one who quietly renegotiated with three major vendors until three in the morning, while the next day Mbak Retno—who didn’t even know the details—received congratulations from the extended family for “successfully saving the family business.”

But he said nothing. He had long learned that arguing in this room was the same as shouting at a wall that had already decided not to listen.

“So,” Bu Wiratmi continued, “we feel it’s better if Raka focuses on resting for now. Bimo will take over operational matters starting next week.”

“Rested,” Raka repeated, flatly.

“Not fired,” Mbak Prita said from near the window, her tone as if reading out an article of law. “Just an adjustment. You’ve never officially held a position all this time, after all.”

That was true. He had never held an official position. No name on a business card, nothing in the organizational structure. He was simply the person who was always behind the scenes, doing everything others could not or would not do—and that, he realized only now, sitting in that end chair with the brown envelope in his backpack containing a verdict he had not told anyone—was exactly what they wanted. So that if one day they wanted to throw him away, there would be nothing they needed to answer for.

Bimo, who had been silent the whole time, finally spoke. “Mas Raka, I’m sorry if this makes things awkward. I didn’t—”

“It’s fine,” Raka cut in, and he himself was surprised by how flat his own voice sounded. “Welcome.”

He stood up. No one stopped him from leaving. No one asked if he was all right, even though he had just come home from the hospital with a face that—he was certain—must have looked pale if anyone had truly looked at him. No one did.

In his room, the small room at the end of the hallway that, when he was a child, had been called the “temporary guest room” and had never changed its status in fifteen years, he sat on the edge of the bed and opened his laptop.

There were seven draft emails he had been keeping all this time, never sent, containing small negotiations he had quietly maintained for this family—a special discount from a logistics vendor he had obtained through his personal connections, informal agreements with three distributors who trusted him rather than the Wiratama name, access to one financing channel that had long saved them from crushing bank interest.

He did not delete them all at once. That was not his style, and besides, he was not ready yet—he did not yet know how far he was willing to go, whether this anger would last until tomorrow morning or fade the way it usually did.

He only opened one email, the smallest one: the packaging-vendor discount agreement that saved the company around eight hundred million a year—an amount no one would notice until next month’s invoice arrived far more expensive than usual.

He wrote a short reply to his contact at the vendor.  

His finger paused for a moment above the send button.

Then he pressed it.

Not because he already had a grand plan. Not because he wanted dramatic revenge. But because for the first time in fifteen years, he wanted to feel what it was like to let something fall, and let someone else catch it.