FIVE YEARS AGO — KABIR’S POV

The night I left her, the sky didn’t cry.

It should have.

It should’ve torn itself apart, bled stars, shattered moons — anything to mirror the wreckage inside me.

But no.

It was just quiet.

Too quiet.

The world kept turning while I stood still, dying in silence.

I watched her from the shadows of the corridor, just beyond the reach of the golden lamplight spilling from her room. She sat on the edge of her bed, eyes wide, lips trembling, clutching that stupid little box I had left behind.

My ring.

It was supposed to promise forever.

Instead, it delivered nothing but an ending.

I could see the exact moment her heart broke — not with a scream, but with that unbearable stillness. That ache you only recognize if you've broken the one thing you swore to protect.

And I was the one who did it.

I turned away before she saw me. Coward that I was.

But I didn’t leave right then.

I stood outside the penthouse the entire night just to see her waiting for me at the door the entire time.

It broke me.

It broke me in ways I could never tell.

Watching. Waiting. Bleeding in ways no bullet could ever make me.

My men tried calling — my brother Rohit, even Sameer. But I silenced them all. I didn't want anyone else’s voice in my head. Just hers.

Just that echo of her saying, “I trust you, Kabir.”

God, what had I done?

---

HOURS LATER.

The black SUV pulled up quietly at dawn.

My bags were already packed. I didn’t take much — just what I needed to disappear. My penthouse, my power, my name — I left it all behind that morning.

I left her behind.

“Sir,” my driver whispered, unsure whether to speak.

I didn’t respond. Just climbed in, slammed the door, and let the silence settle again.

As the car drove away, I turned my head just once.

Just once.

She had come outside.

Wrapped in my hoodie.

Barefoot.

Hair a mess. Eyes hollow.

She stood there, staring at the road.

Not moving. Not blinking.

Like her soul had followed mine and now neither of us knew how to breathe without the other.

My hand clenched so tight it bled.

I wanted to run back. Fall to my knees. Tell her the truth:

That this wasn’t goodbye — it was survival.

That I loved her more than I ever thought I could love anything.

But I didn’t.

I just let her shatter.

Because I thought I was saving her.

And maybe that’s the worst kind of villain you can be —

the one who breaks the person they love in the name of love.

------

THIRD PERSON POV

By dawn, he was in his underground bunker—the one no one knew about except Rohit and kartik.

The place he built when he first began losing control of his empire… and himself.

He stared at the mirror above the sink, hands braced on the marble counter, jaw clenched so hard it ached.

His reflection looked nothing like him.

Bloodshot eyes.

A cut on his lip from smashing his fist into a wall.

Dried rain on his black shirt.

But worse than all of it was the hollowness.

The space where she used to live inside him.

---

He had walked away to protect her.

He had lied, silenced the truth, swallowed his own damn heart—because keeping her away was the only way to keep her safe.

That’s what he told himself.

That’s what he repeated like a prayer.

But the ache didn’t go away.

It roared. It tore.

And somewhere beneath all the fire… he wondered if he had just destroyed the only thing that ever made him human.

---

By the third day, Rohit barged in.

"You look like hell," he muttered, throwing a bag of food on the table.

Kabir didn’t respond.

"You think she’s okay?" Rohit asked, quieter this time.

Kabir closed his eyes.

“I don’t know.”

The truth was, he hadn’t slept.

Not because he was worried about the mafia, the empire, or the enemies circling like vultures.

But because every time he closed his eyes, he saw her.

The way her hands had trembled.

The tears she hadn’t let fall.

The betrayal in her silence.

He had ruined her.

And now he was paying the price.

---

That night, alone again in the bunker, Kabir sat with her journal—the one she had left behind months ago, when she first moved in with him.

He opened to a random page.

“He scares me. Not because he’s dangerous. But because he sees through me. And sometimes… I want him to.”

His fingers tightened around the paper.

He didn’t deserve her words.

He didn’t deserve anything.

But still, he clung to them like oxygen.

Because that’s all he had left.

Her memory.

Her absence.

And the hope that maybe—just maybe—someday, he’d get the chance to tell her:

That he never stopped loving her.

Not even for a second.

-------

I had forgotten what silence sounded like.

Not the kind that wrapped around you in comfort. No. This was the kind that echoed, even when nothing moved. The kind that clung to your ribs like rust and scraped every breath out of your lungs.

It had been ninety-six hours since I left her in that room.

Ninety-six hours since I’d walked away from the only woman who ever made this cruel world feel like something close to home.

And every second since then had been agony.

The bunker was colder than usual tonight — a brutal, merciless kind of cold that matched the war inside me. My fists were bloodied from hours of practice against the concrete bag. My jaw clenched so tightly, it felt like my own teeth might shatter.

I didn’t even flinch when I took the glass of whiskey and threw it against the steel wall.

It shattered.

Like everything else.

Like us.

I picked up my phone before I could stop myself.

I didn’t know what I was expecting — maybe to hear she was okay. Maybe to hear she hated me. Both would’ve been easier than this silence.

I dialed Kartik.

The only man who’d always been her constant. The only one I had no right to call after what I did.

He picked up.

And he didn’t say anything.

Neither did I.

The silence bled into rage.

“Is she okay?” I finally asked.

My voice cracked. I hadn’t meant for it to.

Kartik’s voice came sharp, venomous.

“You’ve got some fucking nerve asking me that.”

“I need to know.”

“You need to burn in hell, Kabir.”

And then he lost it.

“You left her,” Kartik spat, “Just like that. After everything. After promising her safety. Love. A fucking life. Do you know what she looked like when she walked out that door? She didn’t even cry. She was so numb, I thought she’d forget how to speak.”

I swallowed. Hard.

“She asked me if she was too much for you. If she broke you.”

His voice cracked now, raw and brutal.

“And you know the worst part? She still tried to defend you.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” I said through my teeth.

It sounded pathetic even to me.

Kartik let out a cold laugh. “Don’t fucking say that. Don’t you dare pull that excuse. She’s been through enough men choosing power over her. You were supposed to be different.”

I sat down on the edge of the table, fists clenching again. “I left because I was protecting her.”

“Bullshit.”

The word hit me like a bullet.

“you left because you were scared. Because loving her meant being vulnerable. Because you, Kabir Singhania — the king of this goddamned underworld — couldn’t bear the idea of someone seeing your fucking scars.”

I didn’t speak. Couldn’t.

And then, the door slammed open suddenly but yet again I knew who it was and deserved everything that was coming my way.

Kartik walked in, furious, wild, broken.

And before I could even stand, his fist collided with my face.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

I didn’t stop him.

Not when blood filled my mouth.

Not when my knees hit the ground.

Because he was right.

I deserved every second of it.

“You don’t get to walk away,” he growled, grabbing me by the collar.

“Not after the hell she’s survived. Not after she trusted you with pieces of her no one else ever touched.”

His eyes were fire.

Mine? Just ash.

“Hit me again,” I whispered, voice hoarse. “I need to feel something.”

He didn’t.

Instead, he let me go.

He started to walk out.

“You want to feel something?” he added over his shoulder.

“Start by accepting that you were never her strength.”

“You were her weakness.”

And then the door slammed shut behind him.

Leaving me — bruised, bleeding, broken — to drown in the silence I chose.

Alone.

---

AUTHOR'S NOTE :

For the first time, we step into Kabir’s world—not the one cloaked in power and control, but the one stripped bare. The man who walked away, not because he stopped loving her, but because he loved her too much to let her drown in his darkness.

You’ve seen Shanaya’s heartbreak. But now you see his.

His silence wasn’t indifference. It was grief. His distance wasn’t abandonment. It was punishment.

This chapter is a reminder that sometimes, the strongest men are the ones who bleed in silence.

He left to protect her.

But in doing so, he shattered them both.

And as the storm brews again...

One thing is certain:

He was never hers halfway.

He was always all in.

Even when he wasn’t standing beside her.

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