Raina's POV
The necklace lays inside the velvet box like a crime scene frozen in time.
I don't touch it again.
I walk away from the study, but the echo of the memory follows me like footsteps that don't belong to my present. December is always cruel, but today today it felt like it swallowed the entire room whole.
Gunshots.
It wasn't the sound that destroyed me back then, it was the fraction of silence after the sound. That moment where reality pauses, like even the universe needs a second to understand what just happened.
I press my palms against the cold polished counter in my kitchen just to feel something real. Something steady.
The apartment feels smaller.
The walls feel closer.
Breathing feels like a luxury I don't deserve.
My mind wants to stay strategic clinical rational, but my body is stuck in trauma mode.
Why this necklace?
Why now?
Why would someone deliver a piece of my past to my present door?
I'm Dr. Raina Mehta.
Top psychiatrist in Beverly Hills.
Known for my precision.
Known for my control.
Except right now,
I don't feel like the best psychiatrist in the city.
I feel like the woman who lost her life in a single moment years ago and has been pretending ever since.
I sit on the couch, not gracefully, I almost collapse onto it. My fingers are cold and my stomach feels tight, like the memory is trying to crawl up my throat and choke me.
I close my eyes.
His face.
My ex-husband's.
Warm.
Soft.
Ordinary.
Eyes full of hope, not power.
He didn't deserve what happened.
And in the aftermath, I didn't deserve to survive.
A shiver runs through my body so violently that I have to wrap my arms around myself. The air feels thick. My heartbeat is pounding in my ears like a drum that wants to break.
Who sent that necklace?
Was this random?
Was someone trying to blackmail me?
Was this a warning?
Or was this… part of something bigger?
I stand up again, too suddenly, dizziness slams into my head like a wave. I grip the corner of the table.
"No. Not again," I whisper.
I force slow breaths, inhaling through my nose, exhaling through my mouth, the same breathing technique I teach my patients.
Calm the amygdala.
Regulate the nervous system.
Ground the body.
It works — a little.
I walk toward the hall and check the lock again.
Twice.
It's secure.
Nothing is out of place.
Yet nothing feels safe.
I sit down at my study again, laptop screen open, the private folder still there like a wound waiting to open.
My finger hovers over the trackpad.
I want to click.
I want to know.
But I'm terrified that one single file, one single screenshot, one single document, will rip open a part of me that I spent two years sealing shut.
I pull my hand back.
Not now.
I need to function tomorrow.
I need to be myself in the clinic.
Betty already sensed something, I cannot let patients sense it too.
What would they think if the psychiatrist needs therapy more than they do?
I close the laptop gently, not slamming it this time, and breathe out.
I stand up and walk to the huge window facing the city. Beverly Hills at night is a painting, but tonight it feels like surveillance.
My fingers graze the glass.
People think wealthy areas mean safety.
No.
Wealthy areas mean secrets are more expensive.
I pull the blinds halfway closed — the same habitual angle I always do — and something hits me:
What if someone is watching me right now?
not paranoia.
not a delusion.
just instinct.
I step back from the window, slow, silent, as if sudden movement might alert something unseen.
I suddenly remember something I never want to remember, the same night after the gunshots, the metallic smell, my hands trembling on the phone, my knees weak, the December cold cutting into my bones, and the sudden realization:
life can change in one second.
I turn away from the window.
I walk toward my bedroom.
I lay down on the bed, but I don't sleep.
My eyes stay open in the dark.
I think of the necklace.
And the blood.
And the sound that followed.
I whisper one small sentence to myself barely audible like a secret prayer:
"Please… not again."
And somewhere in the back of my mind — another whisper crawls through:
someone knows my past.