(Ayesha’s POV)

The moment the door slammed shut, I crumbled.

My knees gave out, and I folded into myself right there on the cold marble floor, arms wrapped around my trembling body. My skin still bore the marks of his hands — bruises that screamed of possession, bites that mocked the love we once made. My lips were swollen, stained with the bitter taste of his hate.

I couldn’t cry properly. The tears came soundlessly, like they knew sobbing wouldn’t save me now. My body hurt, my throat was raw, and my heart… my heart felt like it had been gutted from my chest, leaving only an empty, hollow space where love used to live.

How did we end up here?

Once, his touch set my skin on fire. Now it left me cold.

Once, his voice made me shiver with need. Now it made me shake with fear.

My fingers curled into the sheet he tore from me last night — the scent of him still clinging to the fabric. Rudra. My Rudra. The boy who used to trace hearts on my wrist with his fingertip. The boy who made me tea at midnight when my period cramps kept me awake. The boy who held me so tightly, like I was the air he needed to breathe.

That boy was dead.

In his place stood this monster — cold, cruel, heartless. A man who hated me enough to destroy me piece by piece, yet still couldn’t stop touching me like I was the only drug strong enough to calm his demons.

He hates you. He wants to break you. So why… why does he look at you like he’s breaking, too?

That flicker I saw in his eyes — the guilt, the pain — it wasn’t my imagination. I knew Rudra’s eyes better than anyone, and for a split second, the mask slipped. The man who kissed me under the rain, who whispered "I’ll love you till my last breath" — he was still inside there. Buried beneath layers of rage and betrayal.

But I couldn’t reach him.

Not yet.

I stumbled to my feet, my body protesting every movement. My reflection in the mirror stopped me cold — tangled hair, bruised lips, red handprints staining my skin. I looked like someone’s mistress, not a bride. There was no light in my eyes anymore — just a woman shattered by the man who once promised to protect her from the world.

Why did you leave him, Ayesha? Why did you lie?

I pressed my hand to the glass, watching my reflection tremble. “Because I had no choice,” I whispered.

No one knew the truth — not Rudra, not my family, not even the mirror. Only I carried that secret, the one that ripped us apart and made me the villain in his eyes.

But his hate… it was heavier than I expected.

I thought revenge meant distance, cold indifference, maybe even exile. But this? This cruel, twisted obsession — forcing me to his bed, making me crawl for his touch, humiliating me until my pride turned to ash? This was something else entirely.

He’s not punishing me because he’s over me.

He’s punishing me because he still feels something.

That truth shook me almost as much as his cruelty.

I sank onto the bed, fingers tracing the indentation his body left beside me. My Rudra is still in there, drowning beneath the monster he’s become.

A bitter smile twisted my lips. “And I’m the storm that made him this way.”

I could break under this — let his hate destroy me. Or I could become something else. Not the naïve girl he once knew. Not the shattered woman he tried to make me.

Something sharper. Something unbreakable.

But before any of that, I needed to survive.

My fingers found my bruised wrist, tracing the mark like it was a scar from a war neither of us won. I closed my eyes, forcing my breath to slow.

He can break my body. But my soul? That’s still mine.

And maybe… maybe if I found a way to slip past his armor, if I made him see me — really see me — I could save both of us from drowning in this darkness.

Or I could drown with him.

Either way, I wouldn’t die silent.

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End of Chapter 6