Utsav
The car had broken down mid-route, somewhere on an isolated stretch of road I never intended to take twice. The silence outside was expected—no cars, no pedestrians, just the stillness of evening and a sky threatening rain.
I tapped the steering wheel in mild irritation, checking my phone again. Still no signal. The engine had died, the power cut off, and with it, the auto-lock had sealed the doors shut like a metal coffin. I wasn’t concerned—we’d get out eventually. I had people. I always did. Someone would notice if I didn’t show up.
My focus drifted to the girl beside me.
Maya.
She sat motionless, but her fingers trembled slightly over the bottle in her hands. Her knuckles were pale from how tightly she held it. Her chest rose and fell at an erratic rhythm. If I hadn’t seen signs like this before in trauma cases, I would’ve dismissed it as general nervousness.
She was having a panic attack. Mild—for now.
Her gaze was vacant. Her body stiffened. Yet she was trying to pretend everything was normal. How stupid.
I watched her in silence, unwilling to intervene. Not because I didn’t care—caring had nothing to do with it. I simply didn’t trust the intention behind her presence in my life. Every step she took seemed rehearsed. Every excuse to be near me calculated. Even now, she’d manipulated her way into this car ride with some half-baked story about kimchi and Anvi.
Her fear, however, wasn’t rehearsed.
That wasn’t acting. No one could fake that kind of haunted expression. She looked like a little girl again—like someone who had been locked in a room with no windows, nowhere to breathe.
Claustrophobia. Classic.
I didn’t speak. Words wouldn’t help her. Besides, it wasn’t my job to comfort anyone. My job was to stay in control, to remain unreadable—even when chaos whispered from the passenger seat.
I pressed the horn once, then twice. The car lights flickered slightly but didn’t start. Nothing but dead silence again.
Her breath hitched. Her hand shook as she tried to drink more water. I didn’t acknowledge her state aloud. Instead, I adjusted my seat, leaning back with a calmness that only made her tension more visible.
Her fear wasn’t my responsibility.
But I didn’t look away either.
Not because I wanted to help.
But because I wanted to understand what the hell could break someone like that… and why, despite everything, a girl with that kind of past would still chase a man like me.
She shifted again, blinking too fast now, trying to blink away tears she didn’t want seen. I could hear her whisper to herself—soft, desperate repetitions of a name.
“Breathe, Maya,” she was saying.
No.
That was wrong.
She was repeating, “Breathe, Baccha... I’ve got you... I’m not going anywhere.”
Not her words. Her father’s. A memory.
A locked car. Flashing lights. Screams outside. A child unable to move.
The realization hit sharply. She wasn’t here—not fully. She was child again. Caged in fear.
Still, I said nothing.
Just watched.
She didn’t need softness. She needed silence. Space to fall apart where no one could use her brokenness against her.
The storm outside hadn’t started, but inside the car—she was already drowning.
And I?
I just sat there, unmoved.
Not indifferent. Not concerned.
Just... observant.
She wanted to be close to me.
She didn’t realize the cost of breathing near fire.
Let her stay.
Eventually, the flames always teach people why they shouldn’t play with matches.
I pressed the horn again—this time louder, longer. The jarring sound pierced the heavy silence of the stalled car, and finally, her eyes snapped back into focus. She blinked rapidly, as if dragging herself out of a nightmare. A moment passed. Then another.
"Any problem?" I asked—flat, detached, the way I always spoke when I didn't want to be bothered with emotional theatrics.
She gave a quick nod and didn’t say a word. Just kept sipping water, over and over again. Her fingers trembled around the bottle, lips slightly parted as she struggled to regulate her breathing. The act she usually wore—graceful, flirty, calculated—was nowhere to be seen. This wasn’t drama. This wasn’t one of her schemes to get under my skin.
This was fear. Raw, unfiltered fear.
The kind that comes from a place no one talks about. A place that leaves people silent and shaking years after the moment has passed.
I knew that place too well.
Past and trauma—people throw these words around like they’re poetic, like pain is somehow beautiful. But they’re not just words. They’re a damn storm. A storm wrapped in silence that hits you like a brick wall in your chest when you're least prepared. They break you before anyone else gets the chance to.
I didn’t speak again. Not because I cared—but because I knew that no words in this universe could reshape a person once the cracks were already there. Words don’t save people. Actions don’t either. You survive because you decide to, alone, in a room no one else knows you’re trapped in.
"Mumma... please... don’t! Don’t take my mumma.... Please, I’m begging—don’t!"
The scream echoed from some buried part of me. A memory. My own voice—smaller, weaker, desperate. Tears streaming down my cheeks like a flood that no one stopped to notice. No one heard me. No one cared.
I opened my eyes.
Even now, that memory wrapped around my throat like a noose, reminding me exactly why I didn’t believe in saving anyone. Why I didn’t try.
Because no one saved me.
The world didn’t care then, and it sure as hell didn’t now.
I turned my face to the window, jaw tight. Help wasn’t coming. Not soon enough. I’d already sent a signal through Aarav, and a second team was en route, but the roads here were narrow and unpredictable. A foolish detour—my mistake.
Beside me, she had started trembling again. The slight shake in her shoulders grew more visible now, despite the fact that she was trying like hell to hold it together. I didn’t react. My face remained impassive, unreadable. But I was watching. Calculating.
I wasn’t the kind of man who gave sympathy. Sympathy was a lie people told when they wanted to pretend they cared—sweet words dressed in pretty fabric but dripping with mockery underneath. I hated it. Always have.
So I didn’t offer comfort. I observed.
The way she gripped that bottle like it was the last thing anchoring her. The way her chest rose and fell—shallow and sharp. The way her eyes darted toward the window, desperate for air, for space, for anything but this metal box.
Claustrophobia.
Sweat clung to her dress now, soaking the fabric across her back and chest. Her hair stuck to her temple, her lips pressed tight as if even opening her mouth might unleash a scream she didn’t want me to hear. And still, she didn’t ask for help.
Not even a single word.
Good.
I wasn’t the man who’d soothe her with soft reassurances. I wasn’t the hero from her songs. I wasn’t the knight who rides in when the princess cries. If she wanted to break, she could do it in silence. That’s how real pain works—it doesn’t need an audience.
Everyone has demons.
You either fight them, or you get consumed.
She was clearly trying to fight.
So I let her.
And I waited.
Because storms like these either pass…
Or they burn everything in their path.
“Water.”
A single word broke the suffocating silence that had hung between us for nearly half an hour.
Her voice was low—dry and brittle—like her throat had been lined with sandpaper. My gaze flicked toward the bottle in her hand. Empty. Of course. I clenched my jaw before replying, tone clipped.
“We had only one bottle.”
She nodded. But this wasn’t the calm, calculated Maya Shekhawat I was used to. No elegance, no attitude, no fire. Just a desperate, frantic bob of the head—quick, jerky. Her hands were trembling now, fingers wrapped so tightly around the bottle it looked like she might snap it in two.
I watched her as she fidgeted, over and over again—crossing and uncrossing her legs, curling her toes, tapping her fingers. Nervous movements. Subconscious. The kind you don’t do unless your body is screaming at you to run, to escape.
“Relax,” I said finally, the word tasting foreign in my mouth.
I didn’t say it because I cared. I said it because I hated chaos in my space—and right now, this woman was chaos personified.
She nodded again. Mechanical. Hollow.
But despite the attempt, the fidgeting worsened. Her breath quickened, chest rising and falling with uneven rhythm. She kept pressing her palms to her thighs, as if grounding herself. And then, finally—
“Help.”
One word. Barely a whisper.
Her voice cracked this time. A sound I never expected from her.
“Please help, Mr. Mehrotra,” she begged, her voice high and thin like a child lost in a crowd. “Do something… anything. Just help me. I need air—I can’t breathe—I can’t… please…”
Her panic was now unmistakable.
I clenched my jaw tighter. My knuckles whitened as I rested my hand on the steering wheel, staring ahead. Every fiber in me screamed to stay detached. But I was no fool. Her body was slipping into survival mode—shoulders drooped, her limbs twitching before slowly going limp. She was breaking down. Losing consciousness.
And still—something in me wouldn’t let her fall.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked, my voice flat, emotionless. But my mind was already assessing, calculating, seeking the fastest solution.
“Anything,” she whispered again, “Anything, Mr. Mehrotra.”
I looked at her then—really looked.
She was wearing a tight, fitted blue top. No buttons. No zip. Nothing I could loosen to help her breathe. Her hair clung to her face, damp with sweat. Her eyes were glassy, those striking green irises dulled by panic, shimmering with unshed tears. Her chest heaved in rapid bursts, and her lips—once always glossed and flirtatiously parted—now looked chapped, cracked, open in gasps.
And in that moment, I hated this.
I hated that this woman—my enemy, my game—was unraveling before me. She was supposed to be fire. Unshakable. But here she was… begging for her life. And I couldn’t let fate take her. Not like this.
She was mine. Even as an adversary. Even if only as a pawn on my board—I wouldn’t let her die like this.
I leaned closer, closing the distance between us in the cramped, overheating car. Our breaths mingled in the thick, still air. I could feel the fine tremble running through her bones.
“Don’t move,” I commanded, voice low, firm, laced with absolute authority.
She stilled instantly.
“I’m going to remove your top,” I said without emotion.
She didn’t protest. She nodded—frantic, desperate. Her fear had silenced every ounce of pride.
Her emerald eyes—usually playful and defiant—were brimming with tears now, wide and pleading. She wasn’t Maya Shekhawat in that moment. Not the singer, not the seductress, not the storm. Just a girl, terrified, gasping, barely clinging to consciousness. Her vulnerability hit me like a slap—not because I cared, but because it was real. Raw.
I moved slowly, deliberately, closing in on her without haste, peeling the top over her head with precision. She didn’t resist. Couldn’t. Her body was too far gone into survival mode. She sat slumped, shivering, in nothing but a black padded bra, her skin slick with sweat, her breathing shallow—but a flicker of relief crossed her face.
I wasted no time.
Stripping off my own T-shirt, I leaned in again and dressed her in it. My shirt hung loose on her small frame, practically drowning her figure. Her shoulders disappeared beneath the folds. She looked fragile. Delicate.
A sharp contrast to the bold woman who had once stood in front of me and declared the roads didn’t belong to kings.
Now? She couldn’t even sit upright.
And I was shirtless—sitting in the driver's seat of a broken car beside a woman I was never supposed to touch, never supposed to see like this.
She didn’t care. For once, she wasn’t eyeing my chest, wasn’t making clever remarks or lingering stares. Her focus was singular—survive.
And that—somehow—shifted something in the atmosphere.
She wasn’t Maya Shekhawat right now.
She was just a soul trying not to drown.
And I was the only one in the damn car.
We waited. Another half an hour passed in thick, tense silence broken only by the soft hum of her uneven breathing and the occasional jolt of my own thoughts.
Maya had drifted somewhere between consciousness and exhaustion—eyes half-closed, her face pallid. Her fragile body was slumped against the door now, still dressed in my oversized T-shirt, her pulse faint but steady beneath the curve of her neck. I kept glancing at her without meaning to. She didn’t speak again—not even a whisper. She’d given up trying to fill the silence.
And then, finally, the sound of tires crunching against gravel. Help.
A familiar black SUV pulled up, followed by a smaller vehicle. The first to emerge was Aarav—with that infuriatingly cocky grin plastered on his face like he’d just come back from a beach vacation rather than finding his best friend stranded in the middle of nowhere. He was followed by his driver and a few of my guards.
“About time,” I muttered under my breath.
The car door creaked open and a blast of fresh air swept inside. Maya stirred but didn’t lift her head.
I didn’t wait.
Carefully, I gathered her limp body into my arms. She didn’t resist—barely reacted, her head falling softly against my chest, as light as a feather. Her skin was warm, her breath shallow. A few tendrils of her damp hair stuck to my bare shoulder. She looked nothing like the firebrand who had challenged me on the road days ago.
“She okay?” Aarav asked casually, strolling over with his usual lazy swagger.
“It was an adventure, wasn’t it, Utsav?” he added, throwing a grin my way.
I didn’t respond.
“Shut up,” I snapped, voice cold, calm. “Just drive.”
He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Alright, alright. No sarcasm, I promise. But you two look like you had quite the romantic time back there,” he said, clearly amused as he opened the backseat.
I didn’t rise to the bait. I simply gave him a dry smirk and nodded toward the girl in my arms. “See for yourself.”
I laid Maya down gently in the backseat, resting her head against the cool leather. Her chest rose and fell, but her eyes didn’t open. The exhaustion had swallowed her whole. For once, she wasn’t dressed in designer clothing or drowning in confidence. She looked... human.
And I hated how much that disarmed me.
I climbed into the front passenger seat beside Aarav. He started the engine, still throwing sideways glances like he was dying to comment. But thankfully, he stayed quiet.
That was rare.
Silence filled the car again, but it wasn’t the suffocating silence from earlier. It was heavier somehow—weighted with things unspoken. I sat shirtless, arms crossed, staring out the window, but my thoughts didn’t follow the road ahead.
They were with her.
Maya Shekhawat.
The bold, fearless singer who had dared to manipulate me, dared to step into my world with her confidence and theatrics. She had tried to corner me, to twist the game in her favor with her staged drama and those fake tears. But today, what I saw was something else entirely.
Today, I saw a crack in her armor.
Not a performance. Not an act.
Real panic. Real weakness. A real past clawing at the edges of her carefully painted exterior.
It wasn’t just the heat or the suffocation. There was something deeper. The way her voice had broken, the way her eyes pleaded, the way her body gave up all at once—it wasn’t ordinary fear. It was trauma. Years old, maybe. A memory she couldn’t shake. Something rooted so deeply inside her that even she didn’t know when it would strike.
And now… now I had that knowledge.
That nerve.
That soft, exposed wound.
People spend years trying to understand the weaknesses of others. I find them instinctively. It’s what makes me a good surgeon—and an even better enemy.
Maya Shekhawat had tried to blackmail me into taking her out on a date. She had tried to challenge me with childish tricks, thinking she could manipulate the devil.
But the devil doesn’t play games.
He writes the rules.
And now, I had the one thing no enemy should ever give away—leverage.
I glanced back once more. She was still asleep, curled in my shirt, her breathing a little more stable. She looked small. Vulnerable. Like someone who had carried the weight of survival for far too long.
And I—cold-hearted, ruthless, vengeful—I should have felt nothing.
But I didn’t.
I felt curious.
That, in my world, is dangerous.
You see, I don’t get emotionally involved. I don’t form attachments. Feelings blur decisions, and blurred decisions get people killed.
But now that I knew her weakness… now that I had a glimpse of the truth behind her fire… the game had changed.
No longer was she just a distraction. Or a pawn.
Now she was a player.
But what she didn’t know was this—Utsav Mehrotra always plays to win.
And the game?
It had only just begun.
“In every move, I calculate. In every weakness, I dominate. And Maya Shekhawat? She just gave me both.”
-----------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------
"Do let me know your thoughts about this chapter in the comments section. If you liked it, please don't forget to vote. Your single vote is enough to give me the courage to keep writing more.
And please, don't judge the characters solely based on the starting chapters. There's so much yet to unfold. Especially Utsav - I know his personality might seem negative at times, but trust me, he's about to go through a powerful journey of transformation.
Let the story breathe a little before forming opinions. Big twists are coming."
---
Your thoughts mean the world to me, even a short 'I liked it' comment makes my day.
Follow me on Instagram .. atishukla__
.
Till then take care 🎀🥀
Write a comment ...