The slam of a car door downstairs jolted Dakshin from a fitful sleep. He hadn't meant to doze off. The heavy silence after his parents left for Anaya's house had been a physical weight, pressing him into the sofa. He rushed to the window, his heart a frantic drum against his ribs.
His father, David, emerged first, his face a mask of grim satisfaction. His mother, Clara, followed, her steps slower, her expression unreadable but pale. They had done it. The property was divided. The threat of violence was gone.
But as Dakshin watched them approach the front door, all he could feel was a cold, sinking dread. What had they cost him?
He met them in the hallway. "What happened? Is everyone... okay?"
David didn't break stride, hanging his coat with deliberate calm. "It's handled. The property will be divided. It was ugly, but it's done."
"Anaya's mother..." Clara began, her voice thin. "She was hysterical. She threatened to... to kill herself if we went through with it."
Dakshin's blood ran cold. "What?"
David shot his wife a sharp look before turning to Dakshin. "It was a bluff. A desperate play. I had to call it. There was no other path forward." He placed a firm hand on Dakshin's shoulder. The weight felt like an anchor. "This is what it means to lead a family, son. You make the hard choices. You stand firm. Remember that."
Dakshin stood frozen as his parents retreated into the kitchen, already speaking in low tones about legal papers and next steps. He was a statue in the hallway, the ghost of Anaya's mother's scream echoing in the silence they left behind. He had chosen duty, and his father had just defined it for him: cold, hard, and unyielding.
---
Across town, in a house that now felt both too large and horribly divided, Anaya sat on the floor of her room, her back against the door. She had heard everything. The screaming, the crying, the cold, final voice of David that had sliced through her father's pride and her mother's despair.
A soft knock came. "Anaya?" It was her father, Ben. His voice was hollow, stripped bare.
She didn't answer, couldn't answer. The tears were a hot, silent flood down her cheeks.
"Anaya, please."
She slowly pushed herself up and opened the door. Her father looked decades older. The fire of defiance in his eyes was gone, replaced by a deep, shameful defeat.
He looked at her, his gaze filled with a pain so profound it stole her breath. "It's over," he whispered. "They broke us."
He reached out, his hand trembling slightly as he brushed a tear from her cheek. The gesture was so fragile it shattered the last of her composure.
"Listen to me," he said, his voice gaining a sliver of its old strength, forged now from a new resolve. "The Park family... what they did today... it was not just business. It was a humiliation. It was a declaration of war."
He took her face in his hands, forcing her to meet his eyes.
"That boy," he said, and the words were like shards of glass. "Dakshin. His father did this. His family stood by and let it happen. They are all the same."
Anaya wanted to protest, to say that Dakshin wasn't like that, that he was different. But the memory of his rejection in the library—"I have to do this the right way"—collided with the sound of his father's voice dismantling her family. Duty. Principle. They were the same cold currency.
"I don't want you to see him again," Ben said, his voice final, absolute. "No calls. No texts. You will not speak to him. From this moment on, he is a stranger. Do you understand me?"
Anaya looked into her father's broken eyes and saw the ruins of her own world reflected in them. The path that had been so clear in the library was now buried under the rubble of a family feud. Her pride, already wounded by Dakshin's hesitation, now fused with her loyalty to her shattered family.
She nodded slowly, the movement feeling like a surrender.
"Yes, Father," she whispered, her voice barely audible. "I understand."
She closed the door and slid back to the floor. Pulling out her phone, her thumb hovered over Dakshin's name in her contacts. For a moment, she considered sending one last, furious text. But the words wouldn't come. There was nothing left to say.
With a quiet, definitive click, she blocked his number. Then she deleted every text, every photo, every trace of him. It was a small, desperate act of control in a world that had spun violently off its axis.
It was the first wall, built not just by her father's command, but by her own hand. And she knew, with a certainty that chilled her to the bone, that it would not be the last.