CHAPTER 3! AADHIRA
The night wrapped itself around the Rai Shinghania mansion like a silent, suffocating storm.
It was the kind of darkness that didn't just hide things; it swallowed them whole.
Aryav stood alone on the west-wing balcony, a high, jagged perch that overlooked the sprawling city of Mumbai-a city that currently sat in the palm of his hand, trembling.
The cold wind brushed past him, tugging at his silk robe, but he didn't flinch. He leaned slightly against the freezing marble railing, his posture deceptively relaxed, like a leopard watching a far-off kill.
A cigarette rested between his long, elegant fingers. The faint orange glow was a tiny, violent spark in the gloom-the only light near him.
His eyes were closed.
Smoke slipped slowly, almost rhythmically, past his lips.
He wasn't thinking loudly.
He never did.
His thoughts were quiet.
Heavy.
Controlled.
Silence didn't surround him.
It worked for him.
The wind carried the grey smoke into the dark sky, a ghost of the fire burning inside him.
Then-soft footsteps.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Small.
Aryav didn't open his eyes.
He didn't need to turn.
The air in the mansion was calibrated to his presence, and he knew the weight of every soul that walked these halls.
But this weight... this one was different. It was his own.
It was always Ayaan.
Ayaan walked beside him, his small shadow merging with the larger one.
He climbed onto the heavy velvet chair placed near the railing. Even standing on it, the top of his head barely reached Aryav's shoulder.
His small, pale fingers rested on the cold marble, mirroring his father's grip. He didn't speak immediately.
He just watched the profile of the man the world called a devil.
Then, softly-
"Dad... are you angry?"
Aryav slowly opened his eyes.
The city lights below-thousands of lives, thousands of debts-reflected faintly in his obsidian pupils.
He didn't look at the boy.
"No," he said. His voice was a low, melodic vibration that seemed to come from the stone itself. "Why?"
Ayaan looked at the cigarette held between Aryav's knuckles, the ash growing long. "Then why are you smoking?"
Aryav stared at the glowing tip for a second, his expression a mask of Arctic indifference.
Then, without a single word, he flicked the cigarette away. It arched into the abyss like a falling star, the glowing tip disappearing into the darkness of the gardens below.
Ayaan noticed.
He always did.
He understood the silent language of his father-the way a flick of a wrist was more of a promise than a thousand oaths.
Silence settled again, thick and heavy with the scent of rain and expensive tobacco.
The wind moved gently between them, the only witness to the two Shinghanias standing on the edge of the world.
Then Ayaan spoke again, his voice dropping into a register that was far too small for the weight of his words.
"Mom is coming tomorrow, Dad..."
Aryav didn't react.
Not a muscle in his jaw moved.
Not a flicker of his eyelids.
He remained a statue of charcoal and ice.
He knew.
She had never really left.
Not from the boy.
Not from this house.
Ayaan continued, his gaze fixed on the horizon-the direction of the airport, the direction of the past. "This time... for forever."
Aryav finally turned his gaze toward the city again, his eyes narrowing. "And so?"
Ayaan looked down. His small fingers started playing with each other, twisting and pulling. It was a nervous gesture-a rare, startling sight.
His fingers didn't stop moving.
He didn't like not having an answer.
Aryav noticed.
Of course he did.
He watched the tremor in the boy's hands with a clinical, sharp focus. He hated weakness, but in Ayaan, he saw a reflection that needed to be shielded, even from himself.
Ayaan hesitated. Then, he spoke the words that the entire Shinghania Empire had been too terrified to whisper for five years.
"Will you marry her this time, Dad... please?"
The wind seemed to pause.
The very molecules of the air grew stagnant.
Aryav looked at him slowly. He didn't look like a father; he looked like a judge deciding a soul's fate. The playful arrogance was gone, replaced by a terrifying, still vacuum.
"Why?"
Ayaan kept looking at his fingers, his voice growing softer, breaking the silence like glass. "So... she can start living with us."
He paused, then added the one truth that Aryav couldn't manipulate away. "I don't want visits anymore...
I want her to live here with us."
Aryav didn't say anything.
The silence stretched.
It was heavy.
It was deep.
It was the kind of silence that preceded a massacre or a coronation.
Ayaan didn't look up.
He just stood there on his chair, a small prince waiting for the king to speak, his heart beating a frantic rhythm against the cold marble.
After an eternity, Aryav looked back at the dark horizon. His voice returned to its usual state-calm, controlled, and utterly unreadable.
"Ayaan...
Some decisions are made in silence.
"Go. Sleep."
Ayaan nodded quietly.
He didn't argue.
He knew that tone.
It wasn't a rejection, but it wasn't a promise either.
It was a wall.
He climbed down from the chair, his bare feet soft on the stone.
He walked toward the balcony doors, his small frame looking lonely in the vastness of the west wing.
Before leaving, he stopped for a second, his hand on the handle... as if expecting his father to say his name. To say her name.
Aryav didn't say anything.
Ayaan lowered his head slightly, a small shadow of disappointment crossing his face, and walked away.
The door closed softly behind him-a click that sounded like a lock turning.
Aryav's fingers tightened slightly on the marble railing.
The stone cracked faintly beneath his grip.
Aryav stood there.
Silent.
The cold wind brushed past him, but he didn't feel it.
For the first time that night...
He didn't light another cigarette.
Tonight...
the fire was already inside him.
.
.
.
Malpensa Airport was huge. Glass everywhere. Loud. Fast. No space to think.
A place where the air always smelled of expensive espresso and the cold, metallic tang of jet fuel. It was a city within a city, and today, it was Aadhira Agrawal's personal purgatory.
She was running-not with the grace of the models she dressed, but with the frantic, desperate energy of a bird caught in a storm.
Her heavy tote bag, a chaotic treasury of charcoal pencils, silk swatches, and loose threads, thrashed against her hip like a living thing.
"Radha Rani, humne aapka kya bigada tha?" (Radha Rani, what did I ever do to offend you?) she whispered, her voice hitching as she dodged a group of businessmen.
"Radha Rani, teen alarm ignore kiye the... TEEN.
Woh bhi pyaar se.
Aapne seedha flight miss karwa di??
Yeh kaisa management hai??"
Beside her, kashvi was the tether to her kite, dragging her through the terminal by the crook of her elbow.
"Aadhira bhaag!!"
"Main bhaag rahi hoon!! Meri aatma nahi bhaag rahi bas!!"
"Gate band ho jayega!"
"Meri life already band hai Kash!!"
"Passport kahan hai?"
"Bag mein!"
"Bag mein kahan??"
"Bag mein hi hai yaar main bag ke andar thodi hoon!!"
Than she checked.
"Passport... passport... haan obviously last moment pe gayab hoga...
main hi pagal hoon jo organized hone ki acting karti hoon."
"Hey bhagwan"
"Bhagwan dekh rahe hain... par clearly unhone mute pe daal rakha hai tujhe." kashvi said .
She was digging into her bag, eyes down, searching for a passport that seemed to have buried itself in silk, when she hit it.
She didn't hit a man...
She collided with stillness.
And stillness... did not move.
THWACK.
The impact was visceral.
Aadhira bounced off a chest that felt less like flesh and more like armored plate.
The air left her lungs in a tiny, soft squeak-the sound of a velvet cushion being crushed.
Her glasses didn't just slide; they skewed across her face, blurring the world into a smear of grey and charcoal.
Strong, steady hands-fingers that felt like ice-wrapped iron-clamped onto her shoulders to steady her.
For a heartbeat, the airport's roar vanished. The air around this stranger was stagnant, heavy with the scent of bitter oud and the ozone of a coming thunderstorm.
"Sorry! Bohot badi wali sorry! Sorry!"
She fixed her glasses.
"Main dekh ke chalti hoon usually... aaj bas... life thodi kharab chal rahi hai."
"Aap theek ho na? Main bhi theek hoon.
...Aap deewar ho kya? Hile hi nahi!"
she stammered, her voice trembling.
She caught a glimpse of a razor-sharp jawline and a silk tie the color of a bruised sky.
She didn't look into his eyes.
She didn't dare. Even through the blur of her tilted glasses, she felt a gaze that didn't just see her-it dissected her.
With a frantic, kitten-like scramble, she wrenched herself free, adjusted her frames with shaking fingers, and bolted.
"Okay breathe... breathe... nahi ho raha... chhodo...koi paani do... nahi time nahi hai... mar jaungi main."
She didn't see the man remain perfectly still, his eyes tracking the frantic swing of her ponytail until she was swallowed by the crowd.
At the boarding bridge, the "Final Call" light pulsed like a warning.
Aadhira skidded to a halt, her chest heaving, the cold airport air burning her throat.
She turned to kashvi, and for a moment, the childish chaos evaporated.
The woman who had survived five years in the cutthroat ateliers of Milan stood there, her bottom lip wobbling with a sudden, sharp grief.
"Kashvi" she breathed, her voice dropping into a low, fragile register.
"Haan?"
"Agar main wahan se bhaag ke wapas aa gayi na..."
"Main tujhe ghar ke bahar khada rakhungi." kashvi said.
"yarr sun to le Main wahan jaake awkward ho gayi toh?
Pause.
Ya phir kisi ne pehchana hi nahi toh?
Sach mein bol rahi hoon yaar..."
"Aadhira..."
Kashvi holds her face
"Tu darr rahi hai?"
pause
"Haan."
"Theek hai."
"Main bhi darr rahi hoon."
Kashvi pulled her into a fierce, fragrant hug, the scent of Aadhira's lavender perfume mixing with the sterile air.
"Aadhira, listen to me.
Tu pagal hai... par tu best hai yaar."
"Wahan sabko hila degi tu."
Our boss is currently tearing his hair out. "He didn't say you resigned...
He said Milan lost its Golden Thread."
Aadhira let out a small, watery giggle that sounded like breaking glass. "He's always had a flair for the dramatic. Tell him I'll send him a sketch of my funeral shroud if I don't survive the first week."
"Go!" Kashvi pushed her gently toward the gate agent.
"Radha Rani is already in the cockpit, probably yelling at the pilot to wait for you."
Aadhira nodded, clutching her boarding pass like a talisman.
As she walked down the jet bridge, the light of Italy faded behind her. "Okay, Shree ji," she whispered, her fingers tracing the edge of her seat as she sat down. "It's just us. Keep the sky steady.
"I'm very small...
and the Rai Shinghanias...
" aur Unko pata bhi nahi chalta... kya toot gaya."
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