CHAPTER 14
RAGHAV
Cottage Cabin
I storm inside the cabin, Haider following me closely behind as the door slams shut behind us harder than it needs to. My arm throbs where the bullet grazed through, the makeshift knot of her scarf already soaked with blood. But I don’t bother looking at it.
“How the f*ck did this happen, Haider?” I demand, turning on him. “Tell me how a man with a rifle got this close to my estate, and none of you saw it coming.”
Haider stops near the desk, his shoulders straight, but I can see it in his eyes. He’s already gone over this a hundred times in his head.
“He wasn’t here for you,” Haider adds after a moment. “That is the gap. Siya Vardhaan wasn’t on our threat grid. We were watching for threats linked to you. Not to her.”
“That’s not an excuse.” My voice hardens as I slam my fist on the desk.
“From this moment on, anything that so much as breathes in Siya’s direction is a threat.
I want eyes on every movement tied to Siya Vardhaan while she’s inside this estate.
Track everything connected to her. Every call.
Every shadow. Nothing reaches this far again. Ever.”
“It won’t,” he says immediately.
That still doesn’t satisfy me.
“And finish him,” I say. “Break him first. Show no mercy.”
Haider doesn’t respond immediately this time.
“You really want him dead?” he questions, a little surprised.
I glare at him this time.
“I f*cking want to kill him myself, Haider,” I bite out. “I want to hear his scream when I cut his hands off before killing him. Those same hands that held a gun aimed at Siya.”
The room goes silent, and the only sound left is that of my heavy breathing.
“I want him alive long enough to understand exactly whose ground he stepped on before he dies. Then send whatever is left of him back to the Singhals. I want every man in that clan to look at him and remember one thing,” I say coldly.
“If anybody even thinks of touching my people at RK Estate again… this is how it ends.”
Haider exhales slowly, thinking it through.
“That kind of message won’t go unnoticed, Raghav,” he replies.
“He was sent by the Singhals. They’ll be waiting for a report.
If he disappears, they’ll start digging.
If he turns up dead… they’ll suspect.” He pauses.
“Sending his body back is not just retaliation. It’s a statement.
It tells them there is someone inside RK Estate who operates like them. Thinks like them. Answers like them.”
I don’t respond.
“And when they do,” Haider continues, stepping closer, “they’ll know it wasn’t the Vardhaans who killed him.
Nor was it the Reddys. Someone else stepped in.
Someone capable enough to intercept a threat like that, eliminate it, and send a message back without leaving a trail.
And then they’ll start looking for him. Looking for you. ”
Haider is being logical. But all I see is that red laser dot on her shoulder. All I hear is the crack of that shot. And I don’t like that.
I hold his gaze. “Let them.”
“That trail leads here, Raghav,” he presses. “It risks exposing you.”
I step a step closer.
“They already crossed onto my land,” I say quietly. “They already fired that shot. Do you think I care what they suspect after that?”
His jaw tightens.
“I care,” he says. “Because I’m the one making sure you don’t become a target again.”
“And I’m the one deciding what happens when someone comes after my people.”
We hold each other’s gaze.
“Raghav,” Haider breaks the silence first. “Think again.”
“Think again?” I bark out a bitter laugh. “They almost killed her tonight, Haider. She was this close to death. If I had been one second late, Siya would be dead inside RK Estate.”
Haider doesn’t interrupt, but something shifts in his expressions, as if he can read more into my words than I’m expressing right now. I don’t care if he does.
“Handle it,” I say, finally dropping onto the couch, forcing myself to get my breathing under control.
That’s when the door opens, and Siya walks in with Esha close behind her. She shouldn’t be here. Esha knows it too. I can see it in the way my resort manager avoids my gaze.
“I’m sorry, sir,” Esha says quickly. “I tried to take her back to her cottage, but she insisted—”
I groan in frustration, rubbing my palm over my exhausted face. When has Siya ever listened to me? She f*cking never does.
Esha glances at my face, reads both the silence and my frustration, and takes that as her cue to leave. The moment she is gone, Haider strides towards Siya in two steps. Whatever restraint he had been holding onto until now is gone.
“You,” he says, stopping in front of her. “Ever since you stepped foot in here, you’ve been nothing but trouble. All that was still manageable. But this…” He gestures towards me. “This is not.”
Siya lowers her gaze in guilt.
“That man came here to kill you,” Haider continues, his tone hardening. “And because of that, Raghav put himself in the line of fire.”
Still, Siya remains silent and takes it all without a word.
I don’t stop Haider either because none of what he’s saying is wrong.
I know why he’s doing this. The man is shaken, much more than he’s letting on.
He’s spent years watching my back, years making sure nothing gets close enough to touch me.
And tonight, for the first time in a long while, he feels like he has failed in that responsibility.
I understand his anger. Hell, I should probably be saying far worse myself after the stunt she pulled tonight.
Yet hearing him raise his voice at her makes me bristle.
I’ll have to tell Haider not to do it ever again.
This little scolding session is the first and the last. Because my mind has already placed Siya in a space where nobody gets to speak to her harshly.
Not in front of me. Not behind my back either.
“I owe my life to him,” Haider says, though there’s still no softness in his tone. “Everything I have is because of him. Keeping him safe isn’t just my job; it’s a promise I made to myself. And tonight, I failed because of you.”
I look at Siya now, who swallows, letting each of his words sink in. She doesn’t defend herself, doesn’t argue or justify. She just stands there and listens.
“You brought that threat here, Siya Vardhaan,” he says. “But whatever games you’ve been playing until now, they end here. Because from now on, I won’t let you gamble with his life inside this estate. Not under my watch.”
With that, Haider steps back, his jaw tight, his anger still evident in the rigid set of his shoulders. Then he turns and walks out, shutting the door behind him.
A heavy silence settles between us. Siya finally looks up at me. Her gaze moves to my arm, to the blood, before returning to my face. There are a hundred things she could say, but she says none of them, and neither do I.
A moment later, she walks towards me, and only then do I notice the first-aid kit in her hands.
Her fingers reach for the scarf tied tightly around my arm, now soaked dark with blood.
I catch her wrist before she can touch it.
She looks at me, not with defiance but with concern.
Something I don’t often see directed at me.
The moment my grip on her wrist loosens, she carefully starts untying the scarf.
The knot loosens, and the cloth falls away, causing fresh blood to seep out.
Her jaw tightens as she examines the wound through the torn sleeve of my shirt.
She then looks around, walks to the small pantry counter, and comes back with water and a clean cloth.
I don’t stop her, don’t move either. I just watch her.
No one has ever done this for me. In my world, wounds are meant to be dealt with alone.
Care like this was never a part of it. So, when she sits beside me, close enough for me to feel her warmth, and her trembling fingers move to the buttons of my shirt, my body reacts differently.
Siya doesn’t even ask and simply starts unbuttoning my shirt. My gaze locks onto her face. Her eyes remain lowered, fully focused on what she’s doing, but I still catch the slight tremor in her fingers. She’s rattled. Guilty. Shaken because that bullet had been meant for her, and it hit me instead.
Button after button, she slowly opens my shirt.
And with every accidental brush of her fingers against my skin, my control slips another inch.
This isn’t some random woman touching me.
This is Siya. The same woman I’ve been trying not to think about since the day she walked into my life and turned it upside down without even trying.
For a moment, she pauses. Then she looks up at me, and our eyes meet. Her breathing is uneven now. Mine is worse. Because the problem is not her tending to my wound. The problem is the way my body reacts to her closeness.
My hands itch to grab her waist and pull her flush against me just to see if she’d still look this breathless afterwards.
F*ck. I shouldn’t be having such thoughts.
She finally eases the shirt off my shoulders, taking extra care not to hurt my injured arm. All the thoughts I’ve kept locked away regarding her surge to the surface all at once again.
I’ve been with women before, but never like this. Never enough to let my guard down, never enough to let them this close and undress me. Siya is the first. Sitting here without touching her back is unbearably more painful than the wound left by the bullet.
The pain should be drowning everything else out. Yet here I am, acutely aware of her in a way that feels dangerous, like a man who has just discovered what it truly means to want a woman and can no longer control the hunger that comes with it.
It’s unsettling how badly I want her right now.
My thoughts come to an abrupt halt as Siya swallows, her gaze fixed on my wound. Little does she know that she’s driven by guilt that was never hers to carry. Because when I choose to step in, when I decide to protect someone, I own every consequence that follows. No one else.