“Excellent,” Amar responded, satisfaction clear. “Transfer can begin next week. After the wedding festivities.”
The pen moved again. Another page. Another signature. Another piece gone.
Meera stared at the thin strip of light under the door.
Knock.
The urge rose at once.
Walk in. Ask him. Demand an answer. Tell him she stood outside while he signed away the Haveli where he had held her and promised her a future.
Her body did not obey.
What if there was no explanation? What if he looked at her with the same calm and repeated the same words to her face? What if the man who had kissed her in the dark and the man signing those papers had the same intention all along?
That possibility hollowed her out so completely she couldn’t force herself to touch the door.
Inside, papers moved. Voices continued. Business went on.
She stepped back. Then another step.
Her feet carried her away through corridors and archways that had witnessed generations pass. Walls her family had guarded with loyalty and years of devotion.
She passed the fountain where she had splashed in summer afternoons as a child. Passed the place where a lamp burned for Kul Devi, untouched by what unfolded around it.
The wedding songs followed her. Songs of brides crossing into forever.
They sounded cruel now.
But the most unbearable part… Her body still remembered him. Her skin carried the memory of his mouth. His hands at her waist. His voice, low and claiming.
Mine.
The word echoed through her with brutal clarity. And over it came the scratch of pen against paper.
She did not recall choosing a direction. At some point, she reached the old wing where sound thinned and the air felt older.
She lowered herself against the stone wall, her legs folding beneath her.
Her eyes fixed ahead without focus.
In five days, she would stand beside him before the sacred fire. Bridal red and gold. A smile for everyone watching. A future beginning inside a Haveli he had already chosen to give away.
A week later, strangers would walk these corridors. Strangers would claim the courtyard where he had first touched her. Strangers would take charge of the place her family had served for generations.
She tried to hold both versions of him together.
The man who had looked at her like she was his world. And the man seated behind that desk, signing her home away.
They refused to become one person.
The emptiness inside her did not feel loud enough to be heartbreak. It felt deeper than that. Far more dangerous.
A hollow space where certainty had lived only minutes ago.
???
Abhinav read through the contract summary one last time before replying to Kishore. His fingers moved across the keyboard, outlining the boundaries agreed upon with Rajveer and fixing the payment schedule.
