They said it was a perfect match.
Aanya, a fierce investigative journalist with a soft smile and sharp questions.
Dev, a respected officer in the Ministry of Home Affairs—steady and principled.
Their love story unfolded in headlines and social media posts—an engagement in Goa, a wedding in Udaipur, a honeymoon in Italy. Everyone envied them. Their life sparkled with power and promise, a fairy tale that seemed to promise a happily ever after.
But behind the photos, Aanya was living with ghosts.
Her sister Zara had vanished three years before the wedding. Aanya was the only one who kept fighting, kept questioning, while the world moved on.
Then, one year after the wedding, Zara’s body was discovered, dumped in a back alley of a Mumbai red-light district—charred beyond recognition, wrapped in a blood-soaked bedsheet like discarded meat. Her fingernails were torn, two fingers broken. Teeth missing. There were signs of restraint. Repeated assault. A rusted chain still clung to one ankle.
They had tried to erase her.
Burn the evidence. Burn her name. Burn the truth.
The autopsy was rushed. The file was sealed within a week. No arrest. No leads. Just a cold statement that read:
“Deceased. Cause: unknown injuries. Possibly self-inflicted fire.”
The system closed her like a forgotten case.
But Aanya never forgot.
She discovered the truth two months after their wedding.
It was raining outside. Dev was asleep. She was cleaning the study when she opened a locked drawer in his cabinet—one she had always respected until that night. Inside was a folder marked “Z. Case – 2019.”
She opened it.
Photos. Statements. A final report.
Case Closed: Victim unreliable. No substantial proof. Alleged trafficking route unverified.
And at the bottom:
Final signature – Dev Joshi (Special Task Officer).
Her hands trembled.
Her heart didn't break—it hardened.
He was the reason Zara’s truth never saw light. The same man who now kissed her goodnight, as if her sister’s blood wasn’t on his hands.
She stared at his face that night as he slept.
The man she loved. The man who had taken her last piece of family away.
Aanya didn’t leave. Not yet.
She planned.
Over the next two years, she hunted them all—the same eight men who had tortured and destroyed her sister, who was taken by the sex trafficking ring, and then buried the truth: cops, legal heads, informants, and politicians. She tracked them down across the country.
Goa. Chennai. Hyderabad. Mumbai. Kolkata. Ahmedabad. Delhi. Lucknow.
Each time, she picked a different blade—sharp, precise, ritualistic—and killed them.
After every kill, she wrapped the bloodied blade in plastic, labeled it with the man’s name, and whispered, “This is for Zara.”
Then she stored it in a locked wooden box hidden beneath their bedroom floor.
Dev never suspected a thing.
Now, only one name remained.
Dev Joshi.
She waited until their third wedding anniversary.
She made his favorite meal—paneer lababdar, garlic naan, and saffron kheer. She wore the red silk saree he loved. Candles lit the room. Soft music played.
He walked in late, apologizing for another "urgent meeting."
She smiled and kissed him. “I saved your favorite wine.”
They laughed, toasted, and ate.
He never noticed the faint bitterness in the wine.
Twenty minutes later, he stood up to fetch water—and his knees buckled.
“Aanya—what—what’s happening?”
He collapsed against the dining chair, limbs locking, mouth trembling. His voice slurred.
“It’s a paralytic,” she said gently. “You’ll be drowsy and unable to move for the next hour. After that, you’ll regain full consciousness, but the paralysis will become permanent—lasting for the rest of your life.”
Fear flooded his eyes. Tears streamed silently down his cheeks.
His lips trembled, forming a broken word that barely escaped—“Why?”
She didn’t answer.
Calm and composed, she rose to her feet, walked to the cupboard, and returned with the wooden box. Laid it on the table.
One by one, she removed eight wrapped blades. Lined them neatly like relics of a war no one knew she was fighting.
Dev watched, unable to speak.
“You signed off on her case and buried her in silence,” Aanya said, her voice shaking but never breaking. “You knew she was trafficked. You let them go. For what? A promotion? A favor?”
Tears ran down his cheeks.
“I trusted you,” she whispered. “I built my life with you. But you destroyed mine.”
She opened the final compartment.
Inside, a ninth blade. Clean. New. Gleaming under the candlelight.
“I won’t kill you,” she said. “But I’m not saving you either.”
She took the pristine knife—the ninth and final one—and placed it gently beside the open file on the table. The folder was marked “Zara.” Inside were copies of sealed reports, testimonies, and hidden files. Beside it, she laid a small black flash drive holding every piece of evidence she had gathered. Every name. Every death. Every sin they thought would stay buried.
Aanya’s voice was quiet, but it struck like thunder.
“By morning, someone will find you. You’ll talk. And the world will know.”
She stood beside Dev’s still body, his eyes wide, his limbs unmoving—paralyzed, but fully conscious. He couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. But he could hear her. See her. Feel the gravity of what she’d done. What he had done.
She bent down slowly and pressed a soft kiss to his forehead—tender, almost forgiving. But it wasn’t love.
It was a farewell.
A goodbye to the man she had once believed in. The husband she once thought was her forever.
Then she turned. Walked away.
The quiet thud of her heels on the floor was the only sound in the room. With every step, she shed the weight of the past. The lies. The love. The loss.
Outside, the city breathed in its usual rhythm—cars passing, lights flickering, people dreaming. It had no idea that justice had just been rewritten—not in a courtroom, not in a protest, but here… in a dimly lit room where a woman turned her pain into power.
And inside that apartment, Dev lay conscious and permanently paralyzed. The strike to his spine had been deliberate. He would live—but never walk again. Never escape what he had done.
His eyes fixed on the knife lying inches away. The knife that was meant for his throat.
But she hadn’t used it.
She’d spared him.
And somehow, that mercy cut deeper than death ever could.
***
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