"I don't need your advice! I know exactly how to break her. None of you—not a single soul—is to set foot in my room!"
Rajveer's voice was a violent tremor that shook the very foundations of the hallway. He didn't wait for a response from his brother or Shevin. With a brutal kick of his heavy boot, he sent the massive oak door of his bedroom flying open. Still carrying Savandi's limp, shivering body, he stepped inside and slammed the door shut with a finality that echoed like a death knell.
He moved toward the large, king-sized bed and dropped her onto the silk sheets. He didn't do it gently; he let her fall, her body bouncing slightly against the mattress. Savandi was slipping in and out of consciousness, her mind a blurred haze of pain and terror. The soft moans escaping her parched lips were like a haunting rhythm, a melody of suffering that seemed to vibrate through the silent air of the room. Rajveer stood over her for a moment, his chest heaving, before he turned and grabbed the first-aid kit from a nearby cabinet.
He sat on the edge of the bed, his presence looming like a dark mountain. Without a word, he reached out and grabbed her mangled, bleeding hands. His touch was rough, his large hands gripping her wrists with a strength that brooked no resistance.
"Ah... it hurts... Rajveer... please... let go of me..."
The sheer agony of his touch sent a jolt through Savandi's entire being. Her body jerked, her muscles tensing as she tried to pull away from the source of her pain. Her voice was broken, a ragged plea for mercy that went unanswered.
"Stop screaming, Savandi! Keep your mouth shut!" Rajveer barked, his teeth gritted in a snarl. "Every bit of this pain, every drop of blood—you brought this on yourself. You chose to defy me, and now you pay the price. Don't you dare cry out!"
He didn't wait for her to calm down. He took a piece of cotton soaked in stinging antiseptic and pressed it hard against the raw, open wounds on her palms—wounds earned from the jagged stones of the quarry.
For a split second, Rajveer's eyes flickered toward her face. He saw the way her features were contorted in agony, the way her skin had turned a ghostly shade of pale. But he quickly suppressed any inkling of pity. He forced his expression to remain a mask of cold, unfeeling stone. He worked with a clinical, almost robotic detachment, ignoring the way her fingers twitched in his grasp.
Savandi, her eyes half-closed and clouded with tears, looked up at Rajveer's rugged, shadowed face. Through the blur of her weeping, she saw a man who had completely surrendered to his own darkness. A single, crystalline tear rolled down the side of her temple, disappearing into her matted hair. It was a tear of pure innocence, a silent witness to the injustice being done to her. But Rajveer saw it and hardened his heart even further. To him, her tears were a weapon he refused to be wounded by.
"Endure the pain, Savandi! Feel every bit of it!" he hissed, leaning closer until his cold breath fanned her cheek. "This is nothing compared to the agony I felt the day my mother died. This sting is a fraction of the hole left in my life. From this moment on, you are forbidden from leaving this room. You are not a guest; you are a prisoner. You are a slave bound only to my commands!"
Once he finished dressing her wounds with rough bandages, he didn't offer her a place to rest. Instead, with a sudden, cruel shove, he pushed her off the bed. Savandi, caught off guard and too weak to find her footing, tumbled onto the floor. Her body hit the cold, hard tiles with a sickening thud.
She lay there, curled in a ball, the freezing cold of the floor seeping into her skin. The impact had caused her wounds to throb with renewed intensity, and as she looked down, she saw fresh crimson stains beginning to bloom through the white bandages. The humiliation was even sharper than the physical pain. She looked up at him from her position on the floor, her eyes flashing with a sudden, desperate fire.
"Are you happy now, Rajveer? Does it make you feel like a real man to drag me down like a dog?" her voice trembled, but she forced the words out. "Does your 'manhood' overflow when you see me bleeding on the floor?"
Rajveer didn't answer. He stood up, slowly unbuttoning his heavy coat and tossing it onto a chair. His movements were deliberate, chillingly calm. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it. He walked toward the large window that overlooked the darkened estate, his massive frame silhouetted against the moonlight. He stood there, exhaling a thick cloud of smoke, looking out at the world as if she didn't even exist.
"Why are you keeping me like this? If you want your revenge so badly, then just kill me! Take my life and be done with it, Rajveer!" Savandi screamed from the floor, her voice cracking with emotion. "But don't treat me like an animal. You aren't a human being... you're just a stone. A heartless, cold stone!"
The words 'heartless stone' seemed to strike a chord deep within him. For a fleeting second, the hand holding his cigarette trembled. A flicker of something—regret? guilt? memory?—passed through his chest, but he crushed it instantly. He remained standing with his back to her, staring into the abyss of the night, refusing to let her see that her words had even touched him.
"You probably think I do this because I have no heart," Rajveer said, his voice dropping to a terrifyingly low, icy whisper. "Fine. Think that. Let that thought consume you, Savandi. Because my heart died years ago. It died the moment my mother's blood stained the asphalt, all because of your father's car! My heart died in that wreckage, and it won't ever beat again."
He turned slightly, looking at her over his shoulder through the haze of smoke. "There is a reason I'm keeping you in this room, and you would do well to remember that. But don't think for a second that I will stop torturing you just because you're close. This is Raj's world, and in this world, your suffering is the only currency that matters."
Savandi collapsed back onto the tiles, her sobs finally breaking through the wall of her defiance. The sound of her weeping filled the cavernous room, a lonely, desperate sound that broke the oppressive silence of the night. Rajveer glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. Seeing her shattered form on the floor, so small and fragile, caused a sharp, unwanted pang in his chest. He quickly looked away, fixing his gaze on the distant stars, trying to find solace in their cold, unblinking light.
"Stop that crying and go to sleep. Use the floor; it suits you," he said without emotion. He walked over to the sofa and stretched out, closing his eyes. "Tomorrow morning, I have a hell prepared for you that will make today look like a dream. Remember... you aren't in this room for comfort. You are here to pay for your father's sins, day by agonizing day."
Despite his words, sleep did not come to Rajveer. He lay on the sofa, his body rigid, his eyes staring into the darkness. His own heart was a storm of conflicting emotions—vengeance, duty, and a strange, growing ache he couldn't explain. The sound of Savandi's soft whimpers seemed to pierce through the silence, finding their way into the cracks of his armor.
He squeezed his eyes shut, his jaw tight. 'No... I will not stop. I cannot stop. For my mother, I must see this through to the very end,' he whispered to himself, a mantra to drown out the sound of her pain. But even as he said it, the memory of her tear-streaked face felt like a weight he couldn't lift.
The rest of the mansion was shrouded in a deathly, suffocating silence. It was well past midnight, but sleep was a stranger to Aryan. He stood on the balcony of his room, the cool night air biting at his skin. He stared out at the jagged silhouettes of the mountains, his mind trapped in a loop of the evening's horrors.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw the image of Rajveer carrying Savandi up those stairs. He saw the way her blood had turned his brother's white shirt into a gruesome canvas of red. The violence of it, the sheer cruelty, was more than he could bear.
"Why, brother? Why have you become this monster? My brother wasn't like this..." Aryan whispered to the wind, his heart heavy with grief.
He thought back to their childhood. He remembered a Rajveer who had been his protector, a brother who would have faced the world to keep him safe. Rajveer had been his hero. But the sudden, violent loss of their mother and the subsequent emotional collapse of their father had changed everything. Aryan knew that Rajveer's heart hadn't turned to stone out of malice; it had hardened as a defense mechanism against a world that had taken everything from him. But understanding the 'why' didn't make the 'what' any easier to witness.
"What did that girl ever do to deserve this? How is it fair to lock her in a living hell for a mistake her father made? How can justice be born from such injustice?"
Aryan's chest throbbed with a mixture of anger and deep pity. He couldn't stop thinking about Savandi's eyes—eyes that had arrived at this house filled with confusion and were now drowning in despair. She had been here only a few days, and already, she was a ghost of the person she once was.
"I have to stop him. I have to save her," he thought, his fists clenching at his sides. "But how? He won't listen to me. He won't listen to Shevin. If I push too hard, will he take his anger out on her even more?"
The silence of the night was broken by the distant, mournful hoot of an owl. Aryan turned his gaze toward the upper floor, toward Rajveer's room. A faint, dim blue light was still visible through the curtains. He wondered if she was awake. He wondered if she was safe.
"What is he doing to her now? Is he hurting her again? I should have done more... I should have fought harder."
A sudden, sharp resolve took hold of Aryan. A new, decisive feeling washed over him, drowning out his fear. He couldn't stand by and watch his brother destroy himself and an innocent life in the process. He couldn't let this madness continue.
"Tomorrow... tomorrow, I will find a way to see her. I don't care what Rajveer says or what he threatens. I am going to get her out of this hell. I want my brother back, and I want her freedom. Even if it costs me everything."
Aryan took a long, deep breath and stepped back into his room, but the fire of determination in his heart refused to dim. He lay in bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the first light of dawn.
But suddenly, something happened that no one could have anticipated. A sound, or perhaps a feeling, shifted the air of the mansion, signaling that the nightmare was about to take an even more unexpected turn...