Tagline: Shruti finds the siblings at each other's throats and must choose between her husband's duty and her sister-in-law's heart.
The heavy mahogany door of the study didn't just close; it felt like a guillotine. Outside, the wedding music was still thumping—a remix of a Bollywood hit—but inside, the air was cold enough to freeze.
Shruti's POV
I stood in the hallway, my heavy bridal dupatta feeling like a shroud of lead. I had seen Rahul's face when he pulled Isha away. It wasn't the face of the man who had promised to love me three hours ago; it was the face of a hunter.
I didn't knock. I turned the handle and stepped in.
The scene was brutal. Rahul was towering over Isha, his phone held out like a weapon. Isha was huddled in a chair, her gold saree crumpled, her eyes wide with a terror I had never seen in a Negi.
"Rahul, stop," I said, my voice steady but sharp.
"Stay out of this, Shruti," Rahul snapped, not even looking at me. "This is a military matter. This is about national security."
"This is your sister!" I stepped between them. I looked at the screen—at the grainy photo of a handwritten note. My heart sank. I'm an artist; I recognize the rhythm of longing when I see it. This wasn't a spy's code. It was a girl's hope.
"You're a Navy Commander, not a jailer," I whispered, placing a hand on his chest. I felt his heart hammering against his ribs—pure, unfiltered adrenaline. "If you report this to the Intelligence Bureau, you aren't just 'defending the nation.' You are destroying your sister's life over a piece of paper."
Rahul's POV
My wife was looking at me with a mixture of pity and defiance. It stung.
"She is talking to a Pakistani soldier, Shruti! Do you have any idea what that means? In the eyes of the law, she's a collaborator. In the eyes of our father, she's a traitor."
I looked at Isha. She looked so small. "Who is he? Tell me the truth, or I swear, I'll hand this over to the Colaba Provost tonight."
Isha looked up, her tears finally spilling over. "He saved a life, Rahul. While you were at sea and Papa was at the base, he stood in a river and caught a child. He didn't ask for her passport. He didn't check her religion. He just... he just was a human being. Is that a crime now?"
I felt a flicker of doubt. I thought of the rules of engagement and the automated threat detection systems that had flagged this. The machine saw a threat. My sister saw a man.
"I can't just delete this, Isha," I said, my voice cracking. "The system has already logged the 'anomaly.' If I don't provide an explanation, the Counter-Intelligence team will come knocking on our front door in the morning."
Isha's POV
I looked at Shruti, my "to-be-bhabhi" who was now my only shield. She reached back and squeezed my hand.
"Then give them an explanation," Shruti said, her eyes locked on Rahul. "Tell them it was a follow-up on a medical case from the flood. Tell them it was part of an informal 'Confidence Building Measure.' You have the rank, Rahul. Use it to protect her, not to break her."
I held my breath. My brother was a man of the book. He lived by the Standard Operating Procedures. To lie for me was to betray everything he stood for.
"If I do this," Rahul whispered, looking at me with a gaze that was colder than any winter, "you never speak to him again. No notes. No signals. No 'Blue Poppies.' You treat him like he's dead. Because if I catch even a whisper of his name near you again, I won't be able to save you. Not even for Shruti."
I closed my eyes. Across the border, Adil was probably staring at the same moon I was. I wanted to scream that I couldn't forget him, but I looked at my brother's pained face and Shruti's desperate eyes.
"I promise," I lied. And in that moment, I felt the border move from the mountains straight into my soul.