CHAPTER 21! LOVED BY MONSTERS
Aadhira froze, her fingers locking so tightly into the dark fabric against her chest that her knuckles turned white.
The memory of the previous night-the rough hands dragging her, the sharp, agonizing pull on her hair, the sound of her favorite mint-green clothes tearing against the gritty warehouse floor-flashed violently behind her eyes.
Her stomach tightened into a painful, nauseating knot, a cold shiver running straight down her spine.
Aryav's expression didn't change. His dark eyes remained perfectly cold, steady, and unblinking as he watched the realization hit her.
"I wasn't going to leave you like that," he murmured.
A heavy, suffocating silence stretched between them. Aadhira was the first to look away, unable to bear the sheer, predatory intensity of his gaze. Her ears burned with a sudden, fierce heat.
"Oh," she whispered.
Brilliant. A truly intelligent, sophisticated response to a man who had just dismantled her entire defense mechanism with seven words.
Aryav stood up from the leather chair, his towering frame immediately casting a long shadow across the marble floor.
He didn't offer comfort, because comfort was a lie in his world. Instead, he buttoned his dark cuffs with practiced, clinical precision.
"The clothes are in the dressing room," he said, his baritone voice slicing through the quiet air.
Aadhira nodded quickly, keeping her eyes fixed on the silk duvet.
"Eat before you leave."
Then, he walked out. He moved with a smooth, silent grace, closing the heavy double doors behind him as if he hadn't just completely destroyed her ability to function like a normal human being.
Twenty minutes later, Aadhira stepped into the grand dining hall of the Rai Shinghania estate, and she immediately wanted to turn around and sprint back into the shadows.
Every single member of the clan was there. Dadi, Dadaji, uncles, aunts, cousins, children-the entire, sprawling dynasty had assembled around the massive, polished teak wood table.
The exact millisecond she crossed the threshold, the low hum of family conversations completely stopped.
Aadhira nearly died on the spot. Again.
Tara spotted her first, a sharp, knowing glint appearing in her eyes.
"There she is."
Aadhira seriously considered fleeing down the corridor, but Tara was faster. Within seconds, she was expertly maneuvered across the floor and dragged into an empty chair near the head of the table.
Dadi looked up from the end of the table. The matriarch's sharp, intelligent gaze flicked first to Aadhira, then over to Aryav's empty, high-backed chair at the head of the table, and finally back to Aadhira's flushed face.
A slow, deeply satisfied smirk appeared on the elderly woman's elegant features.
"Amazing," Dadi murmured.
Aadhira frowned, her heart doing a nervous flip. "Kya hua, Dadi?"
Dadi took a slow, elegant sip of her tea, her posture perfectly regal.
"Nothing, beta." The small smile remained fixed on her face, which was somehow infinitely more terrifying than an outright interrogation.
Right beside her, Myra leaned in close, her shoulder brushing Aadhira's.
"You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I've seen this family before breakfast." Aadhira whispered back fiercely.
Myra: "Fair. But it's good."
"How on earth is that good?!"
"It means you're finally becoming a family member," Myra whispered with a low chuckle.
Aadhira groaned, burying her face in her palms.
Dadi chuckled softly, her sharp voice cutting through the siblings' quiet bickering. "Leave the poor girl alone. Stop crowding her."
Aadhira immediately looked toward the elderly woman, her eyes wide with gratitude.
Salvation. Finally, a voice of sanity.
Dadi smiled warmly, the terrifying matriarch mask melting away into genuine kindness. "Did you sleep well, beta?"
Aadhira hesitated, the phantom weight of the heavy duvet still fresh on her skin. She nodded slowly. "Yes. Thank you, Dadi."
"Good." The older woman's expression softened completely, gesturing to the lavish spread of food before them. "Then eat."
Simple. Gentle. No judgment, no uncomfortable questions, and absolutely no sly comments about her spending the night in the forbidden wing of the house. Nothing.
And somehow, that absolute acceptance made Aadhira even more emotional. The tears she had been fighting back all morning threatened to return, not from fear this time, but from a profound sense of relief.
Nobody was making her feel unwelcome. Nobody was treating her like a scandal to be hidden away.
They were simply including her, weaving her into the fabric of their morning routine as if she had always belonged at that table.
An hour later, the heavy iron gates of the estate loomed behind them. Reyansh stood beside the driver's side of his sleek, dark sports car, casually spinning the keys around his index finger.
"Ready?" he asked, throwing her a lazy grin.
Aadhira nodded. "Yes."
Tara stepped forward and wrapped her arms around Aadhira in a sudden, fierce hug.
Myra followed immediately after, squeezing her tight. Even Aarush stepped forward, looking mildly emotional, which was highly alarming given his usual detached demeanor.
"Come back soon," Tara said, patting her shoulder.
Aadhira let out a soft laugh, her defenses finally relaxing. "I literally live forty minutes away, Tara."
"Still," Aarush chimed in, his tone unusually grounded. "Don't be a stranger."
Aadhira smiled, but as she moved toward the passenger door, her gaze involuntarily drifted back toward the towering mansion.
For a brief, fleeting second, her eyes searched the upper balconies, hunting for a specific silhouette framed against the glass.
Aryav.
She didn't know why she was looking for him. Maybe because she hadn't thanked him properly for extracting her from that nightmare.
Maybe because she still had a thousand unanswered questions. Or maybe because her mind was completely scrambled by the way he had looked at her before he left.
Unfortunately, the windows remained dark. He was nowhere to be seen.
The drive back through the bustling streets of Mumbai was unusually quiet.
For once, Reyansh wasn't cracking jokes or blasting music. He sat with his hands loose on the steering wheel, his jaw set in a firm, uncharacteristic line.
Aadhira stared out the window, watching the city blur past, her thoughts spinning out of control. Something felt entirely wrong.
One specific question kept returning to the forefront of her mind, repeating again, and again, and again until the silence in the car became too heavy to bear.
Finally, she turned her head. "Reyansh."
"Hm?"
"Where is Shaurya bhai?"
The lazy grin completely disappeared from Reyansh's face, his eyes shifting to the rearview mirror for a split second before locking back onto the asphalt. "He'll be home later, Aadhira."
Aadhira frowned, her intuition flaring. "Why wasn't he at the breakfast table? He would never leave me alone after last night."
Reyansh kept his eyes fixed strictly on the road ahead, his voice dropping into a flat, professional tone. "He had something to handle."
Something to handle.
It wasn't an answer. It was a shield.
And deep in her bones, Aadhira knew exactly what kind of handling required her brother to vanish into the shadows.
Elsewhere, far beneath the concrete grid of the city, the air in the soundproofed basement was thick, stagnant, and heavy with the iron stench of blood, damp concrete, and absolute fear.
A man screamed-a raw, agonizing sound that tore through the throat before ending in a wet, choked gasp.
Then another voice joined the chorus, pitching higher into pure hysteria before abruptly cutting into dead silence.
Vivaan leaned casually against a heavy steel table in the corner of the room, his expensive tailored trousers protected by the shadows.
He was watching the center of the floor, his face perfectly expressionless, his eyes cool and detached as he checked a notification on his watch.
Across the blood-splattered concrete stood Shaurya Agrawal.
The pristine white linen shirt he had worn the night before was now ruined, the sleeves rolled tightly up to his elbows, exposing the corded muscles of his forearms.
There was no loud yelling from him. No dramatic chest-thumping.
One of the remaining guards on the floor started crying.
It wasn't a loud, defiant sob; it was a quiet, broken whimpering-the specific kind of crying that came when a human being realized with absolute certainty that nobody was coming to save them, and that the laws of the outside world no longer applied inside this room.
Shaurya slowly turned his sharp, intelligent eyes toward him. The man's whimpering stopped instantly, his jaw locking in terror.
To the side, one of the bound men tried to frantically crawl away, his knees slipping in the dark pool on the floor.
Without breaking his stride, Shaurya reached down, his fingers locking like iron clamps around the man's collar, and effortlessly dragged him back into the center of the light.
The man sobbed, his voice breaking into frantic, desperate pleas.
He begged.
He promised money.
He cried for mercy.
Shaurya didn't react. Not once. His face remained a mask of cold, calculating, and terrifying emptiness.
Because every time he looked at these men, he didn't see broken cartel soldiers; he saw Aadhira.
He saw his little sister trembling on a dark road, crying, terrified, her clothes torn because these men had assumed they could use her as leverage.
They had assumed a lawyer only fought with paper.
The man's voice completely broke, his hands folding in a desperate prayer. "Please-"
Shaurya stopped, looking down at him with eyes that were entirely devoid of humanity. His voice was low, smooth, and chillingly calm.
"Did she say please?"
The man froze, the breath catching in his throat.
Shaurya's grip on his collar tightened until the fabric groaned. "Did any of you listen when she did?"
Silence.
A second later, a horrific scream echoed through the basement rafters. Vivaan didn't even blink, his gaze remaining fixed on the corner of the room as the sound reverberated off the reinforced walls.
Hours had already passed since the sun rose over City. Most of the men who had been in that warehouse the night before were already dead.
The remaining few staring at the floor desperately wished they were.
Vivaan checked his watch one more time, his tone clinical. "She's awake. Reyansh is dropping her back to the agrawal manstion now."
Shaurya finally paused, lifting his head. The raw, volcanic fury in his eyes hadn't faded in the slightest, but a thin layer of control settled back over his features. "Hm."
"You should go home, Shaurya. Let my men clean this up."
"No."
Vivaan sighed softly, rubbing the bridge of his nose. Of course not. An Agrawal protective instinct was a relentless, terrifying thing once unleashed.
Shaurya looked toward the silent bodies lining the perimeter, and then shifted his focus to the very last surviving man tied to a heavy wooden chair in the center of the room.
His voice carried the weight of an absolute, unbendable law.
"Nobody touches my sister and gets to keep their hands."
The man in the chair began to weep silently, his head hanging low.
Suddenly, the heavy steel door at the top of the basement stairs groaned open. Nobody announced the visitor.
Nobody needed to. The entire atmosphere of the room shifted instantly, the air growing noticeably colder as the ambient tension rearranged its focus.
Conversations stopped.
The breathing of the remaining guards slowed to a crawl. The raw fear in the room shifted its direction entirely.
Aryav Rai Shinghania entered the basement.
Even surrounded by the horrific scene of blood, steel, and death, Aryav's presence dominated the space effortlessly.
He walked down the concrete steps, his dark overcoat unbuttoned, looking as though he were entering a corporate boardroom rather than a slaughterhouse.
His eyes moved methodically across the room-taking in the bodies, the deep crimson stains on the concrete, the terrified, weeping survivors, and finally, Shaurya.
A long, heavy silence followed.
Neither man spoke.
Neither needed to.
Because Aryav already understood exactly what had transpired in the hours since he left the warehouse, and Shaurya already knew that Aryav would have done the exact same thing if their positions were reversed.
For a moment, the two titans of city's underworld simply measured each other.
The prisoner started crying harder.
Not because Aryav had arrived.
But because the look on Shaurya's face changed.
For the first time all morning, Shaurya looked relieved.
And that meant someone worse had entered the room.
Aryav: "Why is he crying vivaan?"
Vivaan: "Because you're here."
Aryav: "That's rude. I haven't even spoken yet."
Vivaan: "Exactly. That's the scary part."
Aryav glanced at the survivors.
"How disappointing."
Shaurya looked at him.
Aryav took a slow drag from his cigarette.
"You started without me."
"I took that personally."
Aryav exhaled smoke.
"The only reason those men are still breathing is because you haven't seen her crying today."
Shaurya closed his eyes briefly, his chest rising and falling in a heavy exhale.
It was the very first crack in his iron composure all night. Then, he gave a single, firm nod.
Because for the last twelve hours, that was the only variable that mattered in his calculations.
Aadhira was safe under a Rai Shinghania roof. Everything else-the blood, the retribution, the cleaning of the city-could wait.
Aryav took another drag of his cigarette, his eyes locking onto the man tied to the chair opposite him.
It was the exact same guard who had looked at Aadhira like an object, the one who had asked if they could "have her first" before the execution.
Aryav pulled out the chair opposite the prisoner.
"Sit."
Shaurya frowned.
Aryav's smile was slow.
"The poor man has been terrified of you all morning."
He glanced toward Vivaan.
"It would be rude if he didn't get the complete experience."
The lawyer pulled the chair back, the metal scraping harshly against the concrete, and sat down, his cold gaze locking onto the target.
Aryav tapped the ash from his cigarette into a nearby tray, his face transforming into a mask of pure, unadulterated psychological malice.
Only then did he lean forward, his eyes locking onto the trembling man.
"Now," Aryav whispered, a small, smile touching his lips.
"You wanted five minutes with her."
Aryav's voice was almost gentle.
"You now have five minutes."
The man looked hopeful.
Aryav's smile widened.
"You wanted her afraid."
Aryav tapped ash into the tray.
"Let's see how much of that fear you can survive yourself."