The door closed behind them with a soft click that felt louder than anything Sunaina had heard all evening.

Raghav didn't switch on the main lights. Only the lamps near the wall were on, throwing a warm, dim glow across the room. Shadows stretched long over the polished floor. It looked like the kind of room where serious conversations happened, where deals were signed.

Not where she should be alone with him.

Sunaina's fingers tightened around the edge of her dupatta. Her throat felt dry, her smile already gone.

"You can sit," Raghav said, moving toward the bar counter near the side wall.

His voice was smooth, lazy, as if they had all the time in the world.

"I'm fine standing," she replied, trying to keep her tone neutral.

Her back automatically found the support of the nearest wall, as if distance from the door might somehow keep her safer. She watched him pour himself a drink like this was a casual after-dinner moment, not something that made her skin crawl.

He glanced at her over his shoulder, observing the way she stayed near the wall.

"Nervous?" he asked, lips twisting into a half-smile. "You don't need to be. We're almost engaged already."

Almost engaged.

The words made her stomach tighten.

"I'm just tired," she said. "It's been a long day."

He walked toward her, glass in hand, taking slow, unhurried steps. The ice clinked against the glass, too sharp in the quiet room.

"You did really well at dinner," he said. "My father was impressed. That's rare."

She didn't answer. She didn't know what the right answer was.

Raghav stopped in front of her, close enough that she had to tilt her head slightly to meet his eyes. He studied her face like she was a painting he was deciding whether to buy.

"You're even more obedient and submissive than I expected," he murmured.

Her heart lurched.

Obedient.
Submissive.

She swallowed. "I just tried to be respectful."

"Respectful," he repeated softly, like he was tasting the word. "Good. My wife should know how to behave in front of my family."

His free hand rose, fingers brushing a loose strand of hair away from her face. The touch made her flinch before she could stop herself.

His eyes sharpened.

"You're shaking," he said. "Why?"

She forced a weak smile. "It's cold."

"It isn't," he replied.

He was right. The room wasn't cold. Her body was.

Her mind flashed to her Dad's face if she said anything, if she complained, if she pushed Raghav away too hard. She knew that look. Disappointment first. Then anger. Then the quiet, controlled violence that followed once they were alone.

Raghav set the glass down on the side table without looking away from her. The small sound of it touching the wood made her start.

"Relax........ Sunaina," he said softly. "You're mine now. You don't have to be so scared."

I'm scared because of that.

She didn't say it aloud.

He placed his palm on the wall beside her head, leaning closer, his body caging hers in without actually touching. The scent of his cologne pressed against her senses. Expensive. Heavy. Wrong.

"You know how this works, right?" he asked. "Engagement, wedding, then you belong here. To us. To me."

Her hands curled into fists, nails biting into her skin.

"I-I understand," she said, because every time in life she had tried to not understand, it had cost her something.

He smiled, but there was no warmth in it. His gaze dropped to her mouth. "Good. Then let's skip the pretending."

His other hand came to her waist, fingers sliding over the fabric of her sharara, pulling her toward him. The movement was slow, deliberate.

She stiffened. The wall pressed into her back. His body blocked the front.

"Raghav, please.." she managed.

"Please, what hnn?" he asked, tone almost bored. "You're going to be my wife. You think I don't have the right to touch you?"

Her throat closed.

This felt familiar in the worst way. A man deciding what her body owed him. Her fear dismissed as inconvenience.

She tried to push at his chest, the old reflex rising from somewhere deeper than thought.

He didn't move.

His grip on her waist tightened, dragging her closer, chest against chest now, his breath hot against her cheek.

"Don't be dramatic," he whispered. "We're just starting early."

Panic clawed up her spine, hot and sharp, colliding with all the times she had swallowed the need to protest to survive.

Not again.

"Raghav, stop," she said, stronger this time, shoving at him harder. "I said no."

The word echoed in the room, too loud. Her own voice startled her.

His expression changed. The lazy amusement vanished. Something darker slid into place.

"You think that matters?" he asked quietly. "Your father already agreed. Do you really believe your 'no' is stronger than his 'yes'?"

Her heartbeat hammered in her ears. She could almost hear Maulik's voice.

Don't argue with people more powerful than you. Always stay within your limits.

Raghav's hand moved up to her jaw again, thumb pressing in to tilt her face up.

"You're beautiful when you're scared," he said.

Anger surged through her.

She wasn't even sure where the impulse came from, just that suddenly her knee snapped upward, slamming into his thigh, close enough to make him curse and jerk back in pain.

It wasn't a perfect hit, but it was enough.

His grip loosened.

She didn't think.

She ran.

The corridor blurred. Her dupatta snagged for a second on a decorative corner and ripped she didn't stop to fix it. The polished floor threatened to make her slip, but fear kept her feet fast and sure.

She didn't stop. Her breath scraped her throat raw, footsteps slamming against the marble as if the sound alone could keep panic from swallowing her whole. The corridor stretched ahead long, cold, empty. Doors lined the walls like silent witnesses who would never speak.

Behind her, somewhere in the shadows, she could still feel Raghav's fingers on her wrist, on her jaw, on her waist. The memory burned like iron.

If she slowed, he would catch up.
If she froze, it was over.

Her pulse hammered in her ears. Every second felt borrowed.

She turned a corner. Another hallway. Another dead stretch of silence. He had chosen this part of the mansion for a reason. No staff. No family. No exit she could see. The realization twisted like a knife.

He wanted her alone.
He wanted her scared.
And he almost got what he wanted.

But not tonight.

Her bare feet skidded across the floor as she spotted a staircase at the far end narrow, half-hidden behind a curtain of shadows. Maybe it led outside. Maybe it led deeper into the house. Maybe it was a trap.

Didn't matter, not to Sunaina. It was movement. It was away.

She ran harder. Every muscle screamed. The world blurred at the edges, but she kept going because even if the whole mansion was designed to swallow her, she would rip her way out before she let herself break.

Her breath tore at her lungs by the time she reached the main staircase. She gathered her sharara and almost flew down, ignoring the way the guard near the entrance frowned, then looked away when he recognized her face.

Engagement candidate. Not his problem. That's what the guards thought when they saw her like that.

She pushed open the heavy main door. Night air rushed in, cold and sharp. It hit her like a slap.

She ran down the steps, across the driveway, past cars that probably cost more than millions. She ran away from the glittering lights of the Singhaniya mansion.

No one called her name. No one followed.

Her feet ached, but her body didn't care. The sound of her own breath and the echo of Raghav's words chased her down the street.

You're mine now.

Your father already agreed.

You think your no matters?

Her chest hurt, but she kept moving, turning corners at random, anything to put distance between herself and that house. Auto horns blared. People laughed on the sidewalk. A couple argued loudly near a tea stall. The city didn't pause for her terror.

She barely registered where she was going until the air changed.

Less exhaust. More salt.

The noise behind her faded into a distant hum. Ahead, the world opened up into black water and broken waves. Streetlights lined the edge of the sea, casting orange halos on damp stone. The sound of the tide crashing against the rocks filled her ears, drowning out everything else.

She slowed to a walk, legs shaking. Her chest rose and fell too fast. Her throat burned. She tasted metal and salt on her tongue.

The place was still crowded in a scattered way. Couples sitting on the low wall. Groups of boys laughing too loudly. A vendor selling tea and bhutta from a small cart.

Nobody looked at her twice.

Sunaina walked to the farthest stretch of the wall she could find where the crowd thinned. She climbed up onto the low barrier, toes gripping cold stone as she stood facing the dark water.

The sea roared up at her, relentless, uncaring. Spray hit her ankles when a stronger wave crashed against the rocks below.

Her mind didn't show her her runway images, or magazine covers, or red carpets.

It showed her Maulik's hand raised.
Her mother's tired eyes.
The news article with Samiksha Kapoor found dead in her home written like it was just another line.

It showed her tonight's dining table.
Arvind's approval.
Her father's pride.
Raghav's hand on her, claiming.

Her heart twisted painfully.

If she went back, her father would listen to Raghav's version. He always did. He would call her dramatic, ungrateful, difficult. He would say a fiancé has rights. He would tell her to adjust. To behave. To make the alliance work.

And if she refused?

She knew the answer to that too. She had seen it in his eyes her whole life.

Rain hit her like a verdict. First a drop, then a sheet cold, cutting. People on the beach scattered toward shelter, umbrellas bursting open, feet splashing away across wet sand.

She didn't move.

Her deep reddish-pink sharara clung to her legs, heavy with water. The golden embroidery on her kurti dulled under the rain, no shimmer left only weight. A small tear in her dupatta fluttered with the wind, the ripped threads sticking to her arm like reminders of earlier struggle.

Even drenched, she looked like poetry standing in ruins.

No one is coming to save her.
No one ever did.
Not for her. Not for Samiksha.

Her long black hair stuck to her back and cheeks, soaked, messy. Her makeup was gone washed away completely. No kajal. No color. Only a bare face, raw with pain. And somehow, that bare face made her look even more heartbreakingly beautiful.

A beauty that helped nothing. A beauty that saved no one.

She took one shaky step closer to the edge."I can't do this," she whispered to the raging sea. "I can't go back. I-I don't want to."

The waves swallowed her words. The storm didn't care.

"Please," she breathed, voice small against roaring nature. "Please just let it stop. I'm tired... I'm so tired."

Lightning tore through the sky.

"You took my mother from me," she cried, words quivering like her soaked dupatta. "You never gave me happiness. Not once. Never."
Her hands balled into fists, nails digging into rain-cold palms.
"Why only pain? Why me? Why, God, why?"

Her knees hit the wet ground. The world blurred into salt and storm.

"Why can't I have happiness?" She looked up at the black sky as if it might finally see her, hear her. "Do I not deserve even a little joy? Am I-I that u-unworthy? "

The night stayed still. The wind stayed cruel.

Only her sobs moved.

Her body swayed with the storm frail, drenched, breathtaking. The kind of beauty that felt like a curse.

One more step.
One breath.
One decision.

She leaned forward, the torn edge of her dupatta trailing behind her like a final thread.

The waves crashed again. Wind clawed at her hair, pulling at the pins, making wet strands whip across her face.

There was a strange, cold clarity in her chest now.

No one is coming to save her.
One more step. That was all it would take. One second of courage or weakness, she couldn't tell which.

She inhaled, lungs filling with the cold, salty air as if it might be her last.

She leaned forward.

But before gravity could take her, a hand gripped her arm and yanked her back. Sunaina stumbled, collapsing straight into someone's chest.

That single moment was enough to break her open all over again.

God, you won't even let me die in peace? she thought, heart shattering with each passing second. And then she broke really broke sobbing into that stranger's hold, no restraint left.

Soon she was crying uncontrollably in his arms. The night carried only two sounds now her shattered sobs and the crashing waves, as if even the sea was grieving with her.

"Why did you stop me?" she choked, voice raw and shaking. "Why wouldn't you let me die? Why did you stop me? Why... why did you stop me?"

She thrashed weakly against him, desperate, undone. He responded by tightening his hold around her waist firm but controlled making sure she couldn't step toward death again.

Her voice dissolved into sobs again, each one jolting through her body, making her weaker. The fight in her muscles drained faster than she wanted to admit.

"Ssshhh... quiet, Sunaina. Quiet."
His tone was calm, but there was a trace of anger beneath it. Sunaina was too broken to notice.

Something in his voice stilled her. She stayed in his arms, trembling, hiccupping through the remnants of her sobs.

He didn't say anything. He adjusted his stance slightly, placing himself like a barrier between her and the sea, holding her until her struggles turned from frantic to feeble.

Her hands eventually curled into his sleeve instead of pushing him away.

Her legs gave. He shifted, letting her slide down just enough that her feet were flat on the ground but her weight still rested against him.

Through the storm-black sky, the clouds finally shifted. The moon emerged, pale and bright, washing them in silver light like a cruel kind of hope, like a promise she hadn't asked for.

A short distance behind them, four cars stood parked.
A white Mercedes S-Class sat at the center, surrounded and shielded by four black Range Rover SUVs.

Eight bodyguards stood around the vehicles with their backs to the crying girl and the man holding her, scanning the perimeter, making sure no one got close.

She lifted her face slow, hesitant, like waking from a nightmare and the world sharpened around him.

Everything else blurred.

Only he came into focus.

Her lips parted, soundless.

Shivansh.

She had known the moment he spoke, but seeing him up close was different. Too real. Too impossible.

Rain slid down his hair, flattening it back as if the storm itself wanted his features undimmed. His black three-piece suit clung to his body like it was tailored by the rain, not a designer outlining every controlled line of muscle beneath. The white shirt underneath was soaked through, slightly transparent, sticking to his chest and collarbones, making him look like he had walked straight out of a photograph expensive, powerful, untouchable.

He looked like a man carved out of calm and danger.

Her gaze trailed lower, catching on the loosened black tie hanging open at his throat. One button undone. Just one. But somehow that tiny imperfection was what made him lethal. Like he had rushed here. Like nothing not weather, not distance was allowed to come between him and stopping her.

The rain made his cufflinks gleam. Gold. Minimal. Royal.
Not showy just quietly dominant.

His sleeves were rolled slightly, veins running sharp beneath wet skin. His hand the one holding her was strong enough to anchor a storm. Knuckles tense, jaw flexed. A man who had control, but only because he allowed himself to.

If he wanted, he could break the world with the same hand he used to hold her up.

Her breath caught.

She finally dared to look at his face fully.



Sharp jaw, rain cutting down the line of his cheek like liquid glass. Stubble darkened by water, outlining a jaw built for command. His nose straight, lips pressed into a hard line not cruel, just deadly focused. Like she had interrupted something inside him no, awakened it.

Then his eyes.

God.

Deep brown, almost black in the storm light, burning with something between fury and protectiveness. As if he had stood at the edge of her death and silently declared war on it.

He didn't blink. He didn't look away.

He held her like she was something fragile, and looked at her like she was something unforgivable for trying to leave the world so quietly.

Her voice broke. Barely a whisper.

"You c-came..."

He stepped closer, erasing the gap like distance itself didn't dare exist between them. His drenched suit brushed her soaked kurti, water merging, fabric against fabric. His grip moved from her arm to her waist steady, possessive not requesting permission, simply taking responsibility.

Raindrops hung on his lashes, catching moonlight like tiny diamonds. His breath was warm despite the chill. Close enough for her to feel the storm inside him.

When he spoke, it wasn't loud.
It didn't need to be.

"You think I'd let you fall?"
His voice was a low burn.
Slow. Heavy.

Not a question. A fact. A verdict.

Her pulse stuttered.

She opened her mouth, but nothing came out not excuse, not explanation, not another plea for death. Just air, thin and broken.

He scanned her face once red eyes, wet lashes, torn dupatta, trembling mouth and something changed in his expression. Not softness. No gentling. Just a darker understanding, like he could read the bruised history behind her silence.

Lightning flashed behind him, outlining his silhouette in silver, the kind heroes aren't supposed to be but dangerously often are.

Sunaina's heart didn't beat.
It thrashed.

She wasn't at the edge of a death anymore.
She was standing inside a different kind of danger entirely.

And when Shivansh spoke again it didn't sound like a promise.

It sounded like a sentence.

"You believed you could end yourself while I still exist in your world? Hm?"

Her lungs forgot how to breathe. Her knees nearly gave out. Not from fear from recognition.

Because the sea wanted to swallow her. The world wanted to break her.

But he..
he looked like someone who would burn both down before letting her drown quietly.

And that was more terrifying than death itself.

He held her like the storm belonged to him.

His hand slid up from Sunaina's waist to her arm, then into her hair fingers threading through with slow precision, not rough but inescapable. A grip that didn't need force to command obedience. He tilted her face up, making her look at him, while the other hand stayed anchored at her waist like ownership carved into touch.

Their noses almost brushed. One breath. One misstep. One surrender.

Sunaina's chest rose in small, uneven breaths fear, memory, disbelief all tangled together. She didn't try to pull away. She didn't even blink. His proximity froze her pulse and accelerated it at the same time.

Shivansh lowered his face to hers, voice cutting through the rainfall like a blade wrapped in silk.

"I gave you two choices two years ago."

His eyes didn't soften.
They darkened.

"You made your decision, and I respected it only because you convinced me you could handle this on your own."

Sunaina's throat tightened. Her fingers hovered near his blazer, unsure whether to push him away or hold on. Her lashes trembled one blink away from tears, one whisper away from breaking.

He leaned closer.

"Clearly, I shouldn't have trusted you, Sunaina."

Her breath hitched sharply almost audible. The rain didn't seem cold anymore. His words were colder.

Shivansh's jaw flexed, a clear sign of of anger too controlled to be loud. Water slid down his cheek, disappearing at the sharp line of his jaw like even the rain knew not to linger.

His thumb pressed lightly at her chin, guiding her to meet his eyes directly.

"Do you have any idea how stupid your decision felt to both my heart and my mind back then?"

Her fingers curled into his shirt without thinking, fabric bunching under her grip. She didn't know if it was to steady herself or because she needed something solid, and he was the only thing that wasn't breaking.

He continued, voice deep and unhurried.

"But I stepped back, thinking you'd be afraid of my methods."

He paused just long enough for the meaning to sink into her bones.

"Turns out I should've listened to myself, not you."

The words hit harder than any shout could have.

Sunaina's breath faltered. Something inside her twisted - regret, shame, defiance fighting for space. She swallowed hard, but no words came. Her voice belonged to the storm, not her.

Shivansh moved even closer, and for a heartbeat their foreheads nearly touched. His hand in her hair tightened just a breath, just enough to remind her she was held not restrained, but chosen.

"You disappointed me tonight."

She flinched. Not because he was loud.
Because he was certain.

Her lips pushed out a fragile exhale, as if apology hovered there but refused to be born. She couldn't look away. He didn't let her.

Then he said it calm, lethal.

"But it's alright. Your stupidity just proved one thing-"
His thumb swept her jaw, slow, claiming.
"From now on, I will make the decisions for you. And you won't be able to stop me."

Sunaina's heartbeat knocked against her ribs like it wanted escape or wanted him she couldn't tell which. Fear mixed with something she hated herself for feeling.

His voice dipped lower, heat beneath restraint.

"Two years. Two years I stayed away because you asked me to."
His eyes flicked to her mouth, then back to her eyes with cold precision.
"Look where your choice has brought you."

She exhaled shaky, broken. He didn't loosen his hold.

Rain drummed around them. The sea roared. But Shivansh spoke like the world was silent.

"Don't worry, Sunaina."
His lips brushed close enough that she felt the words, not just heard them.
"Some destinies get rewritten by those strong enough to hold the pen."

Her pulse thundered. Her lashes lowered. For the first time since dinner, she wasn't running or drowning.

She was standing still in the storm.

And Shivansh Jadeja was the storm with arms.

The sea roared behind them. His grip never loosened. The night, the rain, her fate all held by one man now.