Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
Greesha
“I’m sorry if I’ve... tainted the memory,” he says quietly.
My eyes stay on the chip in the coffee table, my frown deepening. I don’t want to remember the sound of my laughter. The warmth of that day. But I do.
“It’s not tainted,” I whisper, voice gravelly. “It just... hurts.”
He stiffens. And so do I—because I hate that he still reads me.
There was a time when that dent in the table made me giggle. When I clung to moments like that, especially during my marriage. When I was being... owned.
Karim didn’t let me live in the past. His voice, his fists, his presence—they forced me into the now. Into submission. Into survival. The marriage was a prison. A performance. I was the delicate wife who served her husband her body—polished and packaged like she wasn’t dying inside.
But in the moments where I dissociated—where I needed to escape—I thought of him. My Advik. The only real thing I’d ever thought I had.
“It hurts because it’s real,” he says gently, as if coaxing me back from that dark corridor in my head.
I stare at the table.
“I used to...” I stop myself, breathe. “I used to remember us. When I was with Karim.”
His name still tastes like rot in my mouth.
“It was easier to live in the past than the present—back then, at least.”
“Karim?” he asks softly, like he may already know but needs me to say it.
“My husband. Who was also my target,” I say it numbly. Without color. Like I’m reporting on someone else’s life.
He nods slowly, carefully. “Did our past help?”
I let out a faint, sad laugh. Still staring at the damn dent. “It was better than the present, Vik.”
He flinches at the old nickname. His hand lands, feather-light, on my lap.
I freeze. And then I snap.
I shoot up from the couch, almost knocking his hand away. “You...”
My bitter laugh burns through the quiet. “You’re bringing everything back. Making me think and remember and fucking feel—and I can’t. I can’t...”
He stands too, posture rigid with restraint, as if one wrong move will shatter me.
“You can feel,” he says hoarsely. “Feel, Greesha. And I’ll be here.”
“Why?” I hiss. My eyes blaze. “Why the fuck should I let you see me like this? You—who failed that night?”
I shove him—wound or not. I shove him.
“Why the fuck should you be the one who sees everything when you’re the same man who betrayed me?”
I’m not yelling anymore. I’m screaming. My voice breaks and rises and cracks and still—still—I can’t stop.
“I LEFT you! I fucking left you! So why can’t you leave me?”
His eyes brim, his throat working.
“I can’t,” he whispers, breaking. “I could never. I never wanted you to leave me.”
“Why wouldn’t I have left you!?” I snap.
“You didn’t give me a chance to explai—”
“Explain WHAT?” I roar. “A chance to what? To escalate the emotional cheating to something physical?!”
His face crumples. But I’m not done.
“I LEFT at the first sign of you wavering! You think I should’ve waited? Waited for a second time? A third? How many chances did you want, Advik?!”
“Baby—”
“Don’t!” I yell. “Don’t call me that.”
I step closer, fists clenched.
“You never gave me a reason to be jealous of her. That woman. Her presence was so fucking subtle, I didn’t even know how to bring it up without imagining you scoffing at me.”
My breath catches.
“I tried,” I say, quieter now. “Early on. I tried to tell you. But you... you made me think it wasn’t a big deal.
Because you were loving me. Paying attention to me.
I would gather all the signs and your love was so present.
She would disappear in the background for the most part.
Like I was the only one. And then—that night—I wasn’t. ”
Tears sting the corners of my eyes.
“You broke us that night,” I whisper. “I left because I couldn’t give you any chances. Not a single one. I left before you could leave me.”
“I would’ve never—”
“You did!” I scream, my voice fraying. “When you said you wanted to kiss Aarohi! Well, you did! Now you’ve kissed her. You’ve fucked her. So tell me—how was it?”
His tears fall freely now.
“I—”
“How was it?” I seethe. “When I was dying with a stab wound through my fucking chest—how was it? HOW WAS IT, Advik?! When I crawled back into the unsafe life I left behind because I couldn’t stay in the safe one you ruined?”
He trembles, wrecked, whispering, “I’m sorry. Fuck... I’m so sorry.”
His voice breaks. “You... you were in that nightmare because of me, weren’t you?”
I blink. His words slam into me.
“What?”
He clutches his hair, eyes wild and tortured—unseeing.
“I... fuck—I made you do it, didn’t I?” he says, spiraling. “You chose that assignment because I wasn’t your safe space anymore.”
My chest caves. My heart is pounding too loud.
“I didn’t choose it because of you,” I rasp, voice raw. “I chose it myself.”
But he’s already pacing, tormented by the idea that he’s the reason I nearly died. The reason I left. The reason I’m a ghost of who I used to be.
And maybe... he’s not wrong.
But the urge to not let him carry this gnaws at my spine, like barbed wire wrapping tighter and tighter.
“I...” My voice is paper-thin. “I chose it, Advik. I did. I made the decision.”
But he’s too far gone—spiraling, fractured, drowning in his own guilt.
“You... you were there because of me. You almost died.”
He’s rambling now. Trapped in that loop.
So I scream. “I CHOSE IT!”
That breaks through. His eyes finally lock on mine.
“I consented to the assignment, Advik.”
Each word is a blade dragged across my tongue.
“I consented to be his wife. His vessel. His punching bag. I consented to the—” The last word rips out of me like it has claws, “—rape.”
And then—
Something detonates inside me.
I stumble back, breath shallow, limbs numb. The air feels too thick, my skin too tight. The silence after the word is unbearable—like the world stopped and listened.
The memories come surging. Smothering. Gasping. Gnashing.
And just like that—I’m gone.
Advik’s face blurs. His voice is nowhere.
There’s no one here.
No one left. Just him.
??????
“Get on the bed, nafasam!”
Karim’s lust-ridden voice said in Dari. He’d already torn the burqa off somewhere between the hall and the bedroom.
I still felt the ghost of his hand clutching my hair painfully tight. I was sure he’d yanked a bunch off my skull.
The moment I landed on the bed—more like thrown—I knew the moment I’d been dreading was here. He hadn’t taken me yet. But tonight he was.
My heart thudded against my throat, my body shivering uncharacteristically. I knew this. I had expected this. But I couldn’t retaliate. Not yet.
I was fully capable of ending his life within seconds, but what would that do? Nothing. I wouldn’t accomplish anything. The mission would fail. So I let him.
I let him manhandle me and tie my hands too tightly to the headboard. Enough to make my skin scrape off. My stomach, resting on the mattress.
My neck craned dreadfully—to look behind me, desperately hoping I could see before he did what he intended to. But I couldn’t. My position wouldn’t let me—blinding me to the looming horror.
He grabbed my hair again, bending my neck at an unnatural, painful angle. Fear paralyzed me. Fear I needed to perform. But found it so easy to.
He kept muttering curses and words of appreciation for my body—in Dari. But I couldn’t focus. I kept staring at the wall inches away from me. Obscured behind the bars of the headboard.
It was almost like I was imprisoned behind them. My body was shaking with real terror. Not knowing when he’d strike next.
I felt his hands all over, bile rising in my throat with every slap and stroke.
Before I could blink, my ankles were shackled. I didn’t resist. Couldn’t. What would be the point?
I screamed at appropriate times. Grunted at others. Sobbed when I was supposed to. My brain was hoping—miserably—that my act was an act. But it wasn’t.
The word ‘stop’ was lodged in my throat like a feeble protest. But it was too weak to change the course of the next hour. Hell, the twenty-four hours—when I’d be tied to this rank-smelling bed.
Every excrement of my body left to rot beside me. Until he decided he needed a cleaner whore.
I couldn’t even bring myself to think that I needed help. Because I didn’t. I couldn’t even ask anyone.
I chose this.
Thrust.
I made this decision.
Thrust.
I consented to rape.
Thrust.