My name is Arjun Mehra, twenty years old, studying in New Delhi, living a quiet student life until one evening rewrote everything I believed about love, power, and survival forever.
I met Kavita Rao at a charity event in Gurugram, her presence commanding silence, silver hair glowing, eyes observant, calm, ancient, and warm, like someone who had lost everything once.
Later she invited me to her South Delhi mansion for tea, where hours passed quietly, stories unfolded slowly, and loneliness echoed beneath her success, wealth, faded marriage, and empty corridors.
I fell in love without noticing the moment, not for money or security, but for how she listened, understood pain, and looked at me as if I mattered deeply truly.
Three months later, during relentless rain, I knelt before her and promised devotion beyond age, judgment, and fear, believing courage alone could protect us from consequences yet unseen approaching swiftly.
The announcement exploded across families and friends, bringing outrage, ridicule, and disbelief, my father shouting disgrace, my mother crying endlessly, while I chose distance over obedience despite tradition, blood, history.
I left home, arranged everything myself, and married Kavita quietly inside her villa, surrounded by powerful businessmen whose curious eyes reminded me how alone youth can feel among wealth, whispers.
On our wedding night, candles filled the room with perfume and heat, while my heart raced, unsure whether anticipation or dread tightened my chest slowly, painfully, silently, inwardly, endlessly, alone.
Kavita emerged in white silk, sat beside me calmly, and handed documents, land deeds, and keys to a Rolls-Royce, gifts so heavy they frightened me instantly, deeply, inwardly, profoundly, utterly.
She explained she needed an heir, not romance, revealing wealth meant danger, relatives waited hungrily, and marriage was strategy, protection, and inheritance, not tenderness alone, carefully, calculated, coldly, patiently, deliberately.
When she demanded I truly become her husband, fear shook me, yet curiosity anchored me, until she stopped everything to confess her ex-husband’s death quietly, precisely, deliberately, without remorse, hesitation.
She described standing still while he died from betrayal and anger, admitting she chose silence over mercy, then warned me trust was dangerous currency inside, this, house, forever, alone, counted.
I slept uneasily, woke to moonlight and emptiness, wandered corridors, and uncovered a portrait of Rakesh Rao, whose eyes seemed alive, accusing, watching me, silently, endlessly, coldly, patiently, without, blinking.
Hidden behind the frame, I found his sealed will, revealing a son in London, shattering her claim of childlessness and igniting dread inside my chest, mind, heart, simultaneously, violently, completely.