The heavy scent of jasmine and marigolds didn't smell like a wedding to Aarohi. It smelled like the bleach her mother used to scrub away the "shame" of Aarohi’s existence whenever she spoke too loudly or asked for a book instead of a ladle.

​She sat before the vanity, a mannequin draped in red silk. The gold maang tikka felt like a lead weight pressing into her skull. For twenty-one years, she had been a ghost in her own home a shadow that served tea, a silence that occupied a corner.

​"You should be grateful someone is taking you," her mother had hissed earlier, pinning the veil with practiced aggression. "After the way you wasted your father’s money on those twelve years of school. Your brother, Rohan... he needed that tuition for his engineering. But we gave you an education because the groom’s family asked for it. Don’t embarrass us now."

​An education as a dowry ornament, Aarohi thought, her throat tight. Not for me. Never for me.

​In the Tripathi household, her brother was a god, and she was the sacrificial lamb. Her father’s word was law; his silence was a threat. She had been raised in a house where her only value was her utility to men. And now, she was being handed over to a man twice her age, a stranger who had bought her with a promise of "stability."

​The roar of the baarat outside the drums, the laughter, the arrogance of men celebrating a transaction vibrated in her chest.

​She looked at the small, high window of the dressing room. Her father had stopped her education at eighteen, claiming "too much knowledge makes a woman bitter," but he hadn't been able to stop her from reading in the dark. She knew what lay beyond these walls. It was terrifying, yes. But could it be worse than a slow death in a house that didn't want her?

​With shaking hands, she unlatched the window.

​She didn't take the jewelry. She didn't want a single link of the chains they’d bought for her. She grabbed the small bag hidden behind the curtain containing her 12th-grade certificate, a worn-out hoodie, and a few crumpled notes she’d saved by skipping lunch for a year.

​She climbed. For a girl who was told she was weak, she pulled herself through that frame with the strength of a woman who had nothing left to lose.

​She hit the ground running.

​The highway was a black void. Aarohi’s feet were shredded by the gravel, her breath coming in ragged, sobbing hitches. The trauma of twenty years the "shush" of her mother, the dismissive hand-waves of her father, the mocking laughter of her brother chased her like hounds.

​I am nothing, the voices whispered. You are a girl. You are a burden. Go back.

​"No," she gasped, her lungs burning. "No."

​She didn't see the car until the white light blinded her. The scream of brakes tore through the night, a sound of metal protesting its own momentum.

​The black sedan stopped inches from her. Aarohi collapsed, her body finally giving up, her bridal finery dragging in the mud.

​The man who stepped out didn't look like the men she knew. He didn't look angry, and he didn't look like he was about to lecture her. He looked... cold. Absolute.

​Devansh Oberoi looked down at the shivering girl. He saw the red silk, the mud, and the look in her eyes. It wasn't just fear. It was the haunted, hollowed-out look of someone who had been erased long before she decided to run.

​“Are you trying to die?,” he asked. His voice wasn't loud, but it had the weight of a mountain.

​Aarohi looked up at him. To her, every man was a predator or a judge. She waited for the scolding. She waited for him to tell her she was being hysterical.

​“Please,” she choked out, her voice a thin thread. “Please... they’ll kill me if I go back. Not my body. My... me.”

​Devansh studied her. He had built an empire by ignoring distractions, by cutting out anything that didn't yield a return. But there was something in her desperation—a raw, jagged edge of survival—that mirrored the boy he had once been, standing in the rain with nothing but a grudge against the world.

​He didn't ask who "they" were. He didn't need to. He saw the marks of a patriarchal cage written in the way she flinched when he moved his hand.

​He opened the back door.

​“Get in,” he commanded.

​It wasn't a request, but it wasn't a threat either. It was an opening.

​Aarohi scrambled inside, the warmth of the car hitting her like a physical blow. She huddled on the floorboards, not even daring to sit on the seat.

​Devansh got back behind the wheel. He looked at her through the rearview mirror a mess of red silk and trauma.

​“I don’t play hero,” he said, his voice level as he shifted the car into gear. “And I don’t handle 'delicate' things well. If you stay in this car, you stop crying. Do you understand?”

​Aarohi swallowed a sob, wiping her face with the back of a bruised hand. "Yes."

​"I'm taking you to the city," he continued, his eyes back on the road. "Once we're there, you're a stranger again. I don't give handouts, and I don't fix broken people."

​Aarohi looked at the back of his head. He was harsh. He was arrogant. But for the first time in her life, a man wasn't looking at her as a daughter to be married off or a sister to be silenced.

​He was looking at her as a problem to be dealt with. And in his coldness, Aarohi found the first spark of her own fire.

​"I don't need a handout," she whispered, her voice gaining a tiny, trembling strength. "I just need a head start."

​Devansh’s grip on the steering wheel didn't change, but he didn't tell her to be quiet. He simply drove, leaving the marigolds and the misery far behind in the dust.

The car glided through the darkness, the engine a low, predatory hum that felt safer than the home she’d just abandoned.

​Aarohi sat on the edge of the seat, her body tense, waiting for the interrogation. In her house, every action required an explanation, every breath was scrutinized for signs of rebellion. But Devansh Oberoi remained a statue of indifference. He didn't ask her why she was in bridal clothes. He didn't ask who her father was.

​His silence was a strange kind of mercy.

​She looked down at her hands. Her knuckles were raw from the climb. She thought of Rohan, her brother, who was likely at this very moment being served sweets while her mother wept not out of grief for her daughter, but out of fear of what the neighbors would say.

​“A girl is a guest in her own home, Aarohi,” her father’s voice echoed in her mind, a cold, repetitive ghost. “Your only job is to be easy to keep. Don’t be a burden.”

​A sob threatened to break through her throat. She bit her lip until she tasted copper. She had to be "easy to keep" for Devansh, or he would throw her out.

​“Stop it.”

​Devansh’s voice cut through her spiraling thoughts. He wasn’t looking at her, but he could hear her jagged breathing.

​“Stop doing that,” he said, his tone clipped. “The shaking. The self-pity. It’s noise. I don't like noise.”

​Aarohi flinched, the old instinct to apologize, to grovel, to shrink into the floorboards rising up. “I’m... I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—”

​“Don’t apologize for existing,” he interrupted, his eyes shifting to the rearview mirror. For a fleeting second, his gaze met hers. It wasn't the look of a man who wanted to control her. It was the look of a man who was irritated by her weakness. “Apologies are for people who intend to change their behavior. You’re apologizing because you’re afraid. It’s a waste of my time.”

​Aarohi stared at him, stunned. No one had ever told her not to apologize. In her world, a woman’s life was a long, winding apology for taking up space.

​She took a slow, trembling breath, forcing her hands to go still in her lap. She watched the speedometer. 100... 120. They were putting miles between her and the cage.

​“My father said I was a burden,” she whispered, almost to herself. “He said I was lucky to be educated at all because I was just... a liability.”

​Devansh turned a sharp corner, his hands moving with fluid, arrogant grace. “Education isn’t a favor someone does for you. It’s a tool. If you didn’t use it to build a way out before tonight, that’s on you. But calling a human being a liability is just poor math. Everyone has a value. Some people are just too stupid to figure out how to extract it.”

​It was the most cold-blooded thing she had ever heard, yet it felt like a lifeline. He wasn’t talking about her heart or her "duty." He was talking about value.

​“What is my value?” she asked, her voice barely audible.

​Devansh pulled the car to a stop in front of a sleek, glass-fronted building that pierced the night sky like a needle. He turned off the engine and finally looked at her fully. His face was a mask of shadows and sharp angles.

​“Right now? Zero,” he said bluntly. “You’re a runaway in a stained dress with no plan. You’re a deficit.”

​Aarohi felt the sting of tears, but she refused to let them fall. She hadn't run through thorns to be told she was nothing by a stranger.

​“But,” Devansh continued, his voice dropping an octave, “a deficit can be turned into a profit. If and only if you stop looking for someone to tell you where to stand.”

​He reached over and pressed a button. The doors unlocked with a soft, decisive thud.

​“I have a guest suite on the 42nd floor. There is food. There is a shower. There is a lock on the door.” He handed her a key card. It was cold and heavy.

“Tomorrow morning, I leave for the office at 7:00 AM. You can be gone by then, or you can have a plan ready to present to me. If it’s a good plan, I might listen. If it’s a plea for charity, the elevators work both ways.”

​He stepped out of the car, leaving her to follow.

​Aarohi stood on the pavement, the cool night air swirling around her torn red silk. She looked at the key card, then at the man walking toward the entrance without looking back.

​She had spent her life being told she was a ghost. Tonight, in the shadow of this steel giant, she realized that ghosts didn't have to stay in the houses that haunted them. They could haunt the world instead.

​She tightened her grip on her small bag, the one containing her 12th-grade certificate her only proof that she had a mind and followed him into the light.

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To be continued..