Aaryan Mehta
I've only lost control once in my life.
I was twenty—young enough to believe justice was more than a word carved into a courtroom wall. Old enough to watch that illusion crack like glass under Viraj Khanna's heel. In a single afternoon, he took everything that still tethered me to a sense of safety—
my company, my credibility, my mother's house, and the last of the promises I'd made to her.
That day, as I stood bleeding metaphorically and almost literally before a judge who looked through me like I was already a ghost, I swore an oath:
Never again.
Never again would I be caught unprepared.
Never again would I hand someone the power to destroy me.
Never again would I lose control.
Yet tonight—
in this penthouse suspended above a city that never sleeps—
I feel that same old helplessness curling around my throat like smoke.
Her perfume still lingers in the air. It clings to the leather sofa, the collar of my shirt, even the cold edges of the marble countertop. A scent too soft for a world as harsh as mine. A scent that has no business in a place built on secrets and vengeance.
Her glass is still on the table. Half a fingerprint. Half a sip. Half a goodbye.
She didn't yell. Didn't throw things. Didn't accuse me of being the monster I've always known I am.
She simply walked away.
Not with fury—
but with finality.
And that quiet…
that damned gentle closing of the door behind her…
It's the loudest sound I've ever heard.
I pick up a cigarette. I don't need it—I haven't for years. Quitting was the one good decision I made in a decade filled with questionable ones. But tonight, old vices crawl out of the corners like shadows with my name etched into their backs.
Smoke fills my lungs, heavy and familiar, and with it come memories I've spent years barricading behind steel and discipline.
She was supposed to be nothing.
A tool.
A pawn.
A means to an end.
Not a person I'd find myself looking for in crowded rooms.
Not a voice I'd wait to hear.
Not a pair of eyes that could stop my entire world mid-breath.
And definitely not someone whose absence feels like a bullet lodged beneath my skin.
The worst part?
She wasn't supposed to matter.
And she did.
I take a sip of whisky, the burn sliding down my throat like a punishment I deserve, then slam the glass down harder than I intend to. It shatters—crystalline pieces scattering across the floor, each shard catching the city lights like tiny, mocking stars.
Just like this plan.
Broken.
Unraveling.
Falling apart the moment she learned the truth.
I drag open the drawer built into the wall—my real weapons vault. Not guns. Not knives. Information. Files. Leverage.
Control.
There it is.
A thick folder stamped with one word:
KHANNA – PHASE TWO.
The next step in the slow execution of Viraj Khanna's empire.
His financial collapse has already been engineered.
The scandal drafted, ready to explode.
The leaks scheduled.
His allies bribed or broken.
His downfall—inevitable.
I could stop it.
Right now.
With one phone call.
With one command.
But my fingers don't move.
Because love—whatever twisted version of it I'm capable of—doesn't undo a lifetime carved out of war.
She may despise me now.
She may never forgive me.
She may never come back.
But revenge doesn't pause for heartbreak.
And when Viraj Khanna falls, when he finally tastes the ruin he fed me years ago… maybe she'll understand. Maybe she'll see why I had to set everything on fire. Why I had to burn down every bridge that connected me to the boy I once was.
The flames were never meant for her.
She simply wandered too close.
And that—
that is the price of getting entangled with a man like me.
A man who doesn't merely want revenge.
He breathes because of it.