The air in the living room felt sucked out, replaced by a vacuum of guilt that choked me.

I looked at her wet eyes—eyes that held a mirror to my own soul—and I felt small. I had accused her of taking revenge. I had accused her of not knowing pain. But she was standing there, a survivor of the same shipwreck I was drowning in.

"I... I am sorry, Katha," I stammered, my voice barely a whisper. The grip on the photo frame loosened. "I didn't mean it. I forgot... I forgot you were..."

"You don't need to be sorry," she cut me off. Her voice wasn't soft anymore. It was hard, forged in a fire I hadn't bothered to see.

She stepped back, wiping her cheeks with the back of her hand.

"You said I am interfering in your life?" she asked, her gaze piercing. "You think I am destroying your peace? Right?"

I opened my mouth to deny it, to take back the harsh words, but she didn't let me speak.

"But you know who is actually destroying your life, Dhruv?" she whispered, stepping closer again. "It's not me. It's not even your father. It's not Rohini Mom or the board or the media. There is only one person. Only one."

She tilted her head, her eyes challenging me.

"You want to see him, Dhruv?"

I frowned, confusion clouding my grief. "Katha... what do you mean?"

"Answer me," she demanded, her voice rising. "Do you want to see him? Do you have the courage to face him, Mr. Dhruv Rathore?"

Before I could answer, she grabbed my hand. Her grip was surprisingly strong. She dragged me away from the porch, pulling me down the hallway of the house I had avoided for two decades.

"Katha, stop," I protested weakly, stumbling after her.

She didn't stop. She kicked open the door to the master bedroom—my mother's old room.

It was empty, save for a large, dusty wardrobe with a full-length mirror attached to the door.

She shoved me in front of it.

"Look," she commanded.

I looked at the floor. I looked at the bed. I looked anywhere but at the glass.

"Look at him!" she screamed, pointing a shaking finger at the mirror. "There he is! He is standing right there!"

I slowly lifted my eyes.

I saw a man in a white satin shirt stained with dust. His hair was disheveled. His eyes were red-rimmed and hollow. He looked like a ghost haunting his own life.

"You," Katha whispered, standing behind me, her eyes meeting mine in the reflection. "You are the reason for your condition."

I stared at myself. The "Shark." The CEO. The Billionaire.

I looked pathetic.

I didn't say anything. I couldn't. The truth was a stone lodged in my throat.

Katha spun me around. She grabbed both my shoulders and shook me hard.

"Look at me!" she ordered.

I forced myself to meet her gaze.

"You told me I act like a child," she said, her voice trembling with emotion. "You scold me for laughing, for dancing, for wanting to live. But the real child is you, Dhruv. Right now."

Her fingers dug into my shoulders.

"You are running away from everything!" she cried. "You act like you are ruthless. You act like you are cold, like you don't care about anything or anyone. But from inside? From inside, you care too much. You care so much it burns you."

She shook me again, trying to rattle the armor off my body.

"After all, you are also a human, Dhruv! You are not a machine made of money!"

I stood there, taking her words like lashes.

"You said that I always cry," she continued, tears streaming down her face again. "Yes. You are right. I cry. I cry when I am sad. I cry when I am hurt."

She stepped closer, her chest heaving against mine.

"But I don't run away from my problems like you," she hissed. "I face them. I am not a coward who pretends to be okay while bleeding out from the inside."

"I am not a coward," I rasped, the denial weak even to my own ears.

"You are!" she shouted. "I smile, Dhruv. I laugh. That doesn't mean I am not broken. That doesn't mean I don't remember every single thing I lost."

She let go of my shoulders and took a step back. She looked at me with a profound, aching sadness.

"I have also gone through many things, Dhruv. I should hate you for what you did. For buying me. For forcing this marriage."

She let out a shaky breath.

"But you know... the life with you is far better than my previous life."

I blinked, stunned. "What?"

"You think you are the villain?" she laughed bitterly. "You think you are the monster?"

She reached for the top button of her dress.

"Katha, what are you—"

She pulled the collar of her floral dress down, exposing her left shoulder and the skin just above her collarbone.

I stopped breathing.

There, marred against her fair skin, was a scar. It was old, jagged, and raised. It looked like a burn mark mixed with a lashing. It was ugly. It was violent.

"Look at it," she whispered.

I stared at the mark. My stomach churned with nausea.

"You told me when we first met that you were taking me to hell," she said softly, covering the scar again. "You warned me. You thought you were saving me from a simple, happy life to drag me into your darkness."

She looked me dead in the eye.

"No, Dhruv. You were wrong."

She walked up to me, placing a hand on my chest, right over my beating heart.

"I was already living in hell even before meeting you," she confessed. "My uncle... that same uncle who sold you my life, who sold you my soul for a check..."

She choked on a sob.

"He did this, Dhruv. He beat me when I asked to go to college. He burned me when I didn't cook the rice properly. I lived in fear every single second of every single day."

My knees nearly gave out.

I thought I had bought a girl from a simple, poor family. I thought I was the big, bad wolf disrupting her peace.

I didn't know I had bought her from a butcher.

"You think you are destroying me?" she asked, wiping her tears. "Dhruv, you gave me a room. You gave me food. You gave me clothes. You gave me safety. Even when you are angry, you have never raised a hand on me."

She grabbed my face again, forcing me to see the truth.

"So don't you dare call yourself a monster. And don't you dare run away from this house. Because if I can survive my hell and still stand here smiling... then you can survive yours too."

I looked at her.

She wasn't just a contract.

She was the strongest person I had ever met. And for the first time in my life, standing in the wreckage of my past, I felt completely and utterly unworthy of her.

Katha's Pov

The silence in the room wasn't peaceful; it was heavy, suffocating, like the air before a thunderstorm.

Dhruv stared at the scar on my shoulder, his face pale, his eyes wide with a horror that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with me. For the first time, the Shark looked toothless. He looked like he wanted to bleed just to make it even.

"I didn't know," he rasped, his voice sounding like it was dragged over broken glass. "Katha, I... I treated you like a transaction. I thought I was taking something precious from a good home. I didn't know I was buying you from a butcher."

"You couldn't have known," I whispered. "I learned to hide it well. Just like you hide this house."

I pulled the fabric of my dress back up, covering the mark.

"You think you are poison, Dhruv," I said, stepping closer until the toes of my shoes touched his. "You think you destroy everything you touch. That’s why you pushed me away. That’s why you keep telling me to run."

"You should run," he choked out, looking down at me, his body trembling with the effort to not fall apart. "Look at me. I am a mess. I am a bastard son dragging his trauma around like a corpse. You deserve better than a man who can’t even look at a yellow house without losing his mind."

"Better?" I let out a dry, incredulous laugh. "What is better, Dhruv? A man who pretends to be perfect? A man who smiles while hiding a knife?"

I shook my head slowly.

"I don't want better. I want real."

I looked into his dark, tortured eyes, and the realization hit me so hard it knocked the wind out of me. It wasn't gratitude. It wasn't Stockholm syndrome. It was recognition. I looked at him and I saw the only other person in the world who understood what it meant to be unwanted.

"I hated you in the beginning," I confessed, my voice barely above a whisper. "You were arrogant. You were cold. You bought me like a piece of furniture."

Dhruv flinched, his jaw tightening, accepting the verdict.

"But you never lied to me," I continued, taking a step into his personal space. "My uncle smiled while he hurt me. My aunt called me 'daughter' while she starved me. But you? You told me you were a villain. You showed me your darkness from day one."

I reached out, my fingers hovering over his chest.

"I don't fear your darkness, Dhruv," I whispered. "Because it matches mine."

"Katha, stop," he pleaded, his voice cracking. "Don't say it. Please don't say it."

"I love you."

The words hung in the stale air of the abandoned room. They weren't sweet. They weren't flowery. They were heavy, like an anchor dropping into the sea.

Dhruv stopped breathing. He looked at me with panic, shaking his head slightly.

"No," he gasped. "You don't. You can't. You are confused. It's just the moment, it's—"

"I love you," I repeated, firmer this time. "Not because you saved me. But because you are the only person who sees me. You saw the scar, and you didn't look away in disgust. You looked angry for me."

I reached up. I wanted to touch him. I needed to bridge the gap between his guilt and my acceptance.

I leaned in.

Dhruv froze. He saw what I was about to do.

"No," he whispered, his lips trembling violently. "I will ruin you, Katha. I am not whole. I can't give you what you want."

He raised his hands to push me away. His palms pressed against my shoulders—weakly, hesitantly. He wanted to push me, to save me from himself, but his fingers curled into the fabric of my dress instead, clutching me like a drowning man clutching a lifeline.

"Then ruin me," I challenged softly.

I didn't look away from his eyes. I refused to let him hide.

I took his right hand—the one he was using to keep me at bay—and pulled it down. I guided it slowly, deliberately, until his palm rested on the curve of my waist.

He flinched at the contact, his breath hitching, but he didn't pull away. His thumb dug into my hip, an instinctive, possessive reaction he couldn't control.

"You are not the only one who is broken, Dhruv," I breathed, tilting my head back, my lips hovering inches from his. "We are both jagged edges. Maybe that’s why we fit."

Dhruv let out a sound that was half-sob, half-groan. The fight drained out of him. He stared at my mouth, his resistance crumbling under the weight of his own desperate need.

I closed the distance.

I kissed him.

It wasn't a tentative, shy peck. I pressed my lips against his with a force that demanded he acknowledge me.

For a second, he stood rigid, paralyzed by shock and fear.

Then, he broke.

With a low, guttural growl, Dhruv’s arm tightened around my waist, crushing me against his body. His other hand tangles into my hair, holding my head in place.

He kissed me back.

And God, it was devastating.

It wasn't gentle. It was messy and salty with our tears. It was the kiss of a man who had been starving for twenty years and just found his first meal. He devoured me, his mouth moving over mine with a frantic, rough urgency that made my knees buckle.

He tasted like grief. He tasted like a storm.

I opened my mouth, granting him access, and he took it, his tongue sweeping against mine, claiming me, owning me in a way no contract ever could.

We stumbled back. My back hit the dusty wardrobe, the mirror rattling with the impact. Dhruv pressed his body flush against mine, pinning me there, his hips grinding against me as if he wanted to merge our souls together just to stop the pain.

There was no romance here. There was only desperation. Two broken people trying to use each other to glue the pieces back together.

He broke the kiss for a split second, gasping for air, his forehead resting against mine. His eyes were squeezed shut, his lashes wet.

"I shouldn't," he panted, his voice wrecked. "Katha, I shouldn't..."

"Shut up," I whispered fiercely.

I pulled his head back down and kissed him again, silencing his doubts, silencing his demons, and sealing his fate to mine.