The air reeked of roses and restraint.

Anvi Verma sat beneath the weight of tradition—anklets chiming, silk whispering, and prayers droning like a lullaby for the unwilling. Around her, gold and crimson blurred in the heat; laughter and incense tangled in a haze she couldn’t breathe through.

Every blessing felt like a verdict, every ritual a reminder that survival often wore the same dress as surrender.

Across the mandap stood Vihaan Malhotra, still as stone.The heir to a name heavier than fate, he carried indifference like armor. His sherwani was immaculate, ivory against his tanned skin; his expression, unyielding.

Even the fire between them seemed to bend to his discipline. When his eyes did meet hers—once, fleetingly—they revealed nothing but the calculation of a man fulfilling obligation.

No love. Not even curiosity.

He tied the mangalsutra around her neck with the precision of a businessman signing a contract. The priest’s chant filled the silence between them, rhythmic and meaningless.

Anvi’s heart, however, beat in rebellion. A dull, steady protest against the quiet violence of it all.

She smiled when asked, bowed when required, nodded when spoken to. But inside, a storm scratched against her ribs. This was supposed to be a union of families—a merger of influence, reputation, power.

Yet sitting under sacred fire, she wondered why no one mentioned that love had been left bleeding outside the temple doors.

By the time the final vow was spoken, she knew this was less a marriage and more a beautifully dressed transaction.

Hours later, the celebration faded into whispers and exhaustion. Mumbai’s night loomed outside the tinted car windows as Vihaan’s driver guided them toward his penthouse—a fortress of glass and distance overlooking the restless city lights.

Neither spoke. The hum of the engine was the only sound between them, echoing the rhythm of unasked questions. Anvi’s bangles shifted against her wrist; Vihaan’s jaw tightened each time her presence disrupted his carefully maintained quiet.

When the elevator doors opened to the fifty-second floor, polished marble greeted her. Everything was pristine, symmetrical. Not a single object seemed personal. The home of a man who did not live—only existed.He gestured lightly toward the hall without a word.

“This way.”His voice was calm, smooth, impersonal. The kind of tone used to dismiss, not to invite.Anvi followed in silence, taking in the minimalism that stretched through every corner of the penthouse. Cold lighting. Clean lines. No photographs. No texture of life.

He stopped before a door. “This will be your room,” he said, opening it without stepping inside. “You’ll have everything you need here."

Anvi turned her gaze toward him. “And what about what I don’t need?”

For the first time that evening, his eyes flicked toward her, sharp as the edge of a blade. “Then don’t expect it,” he said quietly.

Her lips curved. Not in mockery, but in something dangerously close to defiance. “You make that sound easy.”

“It is,” he replied, his composure unbroken. “You’ll learn.”

“Maybe,” she said. Her tone was gentle, almost tender. “But maybe not everyone learns to live without wanting something more.”Something flickered in his expression—a shadow, a pulse of irritation, or perhaps recognition. But it vanished almost as soon as it appeared.

He straightened his cuffs, the gesture practiced, deliberate. “Anvi, this arrangement was never meant to be emotional. It serves our families, not our fantasies.”

“Of course,” she murmured. “You think I came here expecting affection?”

“Did you?”

She met his gaze and held it. “No. I came expecting truth.”

That earned her a pause, long enough for the silence to thicken. When he finally spoke again, his words were colder, quieter.

“Truth is overrated.”

“Maybe for someone who hides behind it.”

His eyes hardened just a fraction. “You don’t know me well enough to judge.”

“Not yet,” she said. Then, with unflinching calm: “But I will.”

He turned, as if the conversation had lost its worth, and started down the hall. “I’m not interested in being known,” came his voice, echoing back to her. “It complicates things.”

Anvi stood there a moment, watching his silhouette disappear into the dim corridor. A flicker of anger stirred beneath her ribs—not the kind that burns fast, but the kind that waits, patient and precise.She stepped into her room and closed the door quietly behind her.

The silence inside was absolute.A mirror hung opposite the bed, reflecting her wedding finery back at her: red silk, gold thread, eyes that looked serene but weren’t. She pulled the heavy necklace off first, then the earrings, then the bangles, one by one.

Metal clinked softly against the table as she stripped away the armor of celebration.

When her reflection stood bare, only the black thread of the mangalsutra resting against her collarbone, she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

The city glittered outside the tall window—thousands of lights burning within indifferent towers. Somewhere out there, people chose each other. Somewhere, love was a verb, not a performance.

But not here.

Not in this cage of glass and silence.Her phone buzzed on the table.

A message from Myra: You okay?Anvi typed back: Fine. Just learning to breathe in a smaller sky.She didn’t hit send. Not yet. She watched the blinking cursor, thinking of the man down the hall—the one who had married her without ever truly seeing her. The one whose silence felt like a challenge more than a boundary.

Somewhere in that cold quiet, something rebellious took root.She closed the message and opened her journal instead, pulling a pen from her purse—its silver body catching the city lights.

On the first blank page, she wrote in small, steady letters:

He believes silence is strength. I’ll show him that some storms do not need permission to be heard.

Then she smiled faintly, sealing her defiance in ink.Outside the closed door, Vihaan Malhotra sat alone in his study, tie loosened, gaze fixed on nothing. He had built a life on discipline, on careful choices and controlled emotions.

But tonight, for the first time in years, control felt fragile.He told himself it was fatigue. The day had been long, the rituals endless. Yet somewhere behind his thoughts, her voice echoed—soft, deliberate, unsettling.

You think I came here expecting affection? No. I came expecting truth.

He exhaled sharply, shutting the thought away like unwanted noise. Still, a strange unease followed him to the window, where he watched the city lights blur against the glass.In another room, a woman he barely knew was already rewriting the silence he had built.And though he didn’t know it yet, the first crack had already appeared.