Maya
At first, I didn’t understand why Utsav was doing all this.
Taking me to the mall? Letting me choose clothes to wear?
He hates shopping centers—I’ve seen it in his eyes, the subtle twitch in his jaw when passing by crowds or the calculated disinterest he carries in places that buzz with pointless chaos. Still, he drove me there. He let me walk into that space, barefoot in worry, wrapped in a nighty and oversized coat, and bought me something… decent.
He could’ve just taken me home.
He could’ve ignored me completely, the classic Utsav Mehrotra move: cold, dismissive, detached. But he didn’t.
And that was what terrified me.
Because when someone like Utsav does something out of character… it isn’t kindness.
It’s dangerous.
The entire ride back to the hospital was a tomb of silence. He didn’t speak. Of course, that wasn’t surprising—he rarely did when his mind was calculating a thousand things per second.
But this time, I didn’t either. I couldn’t. My thoughts were swirling, crashing over one another like a tidal wave inside my skull.
Aditi.
Is she okay?
Is she still fighting?
Is she…?
No.
No, she can’t die. Not my Aditi. Not the girl who cried when I fainted on stage.
Not the one who always brought extra snacks because she knew I never ate on time.
She can’t leave like this.
As the gates of the hospital appeared again—Utsav, of course, using the back entrance to avoid the paparazzi circus—I felt my stomach twist into knots.
The same knots that come right before something in you… breaks.
Aditya was talking to a doctor in hushed, intense tones.
Ishanvi was seated, her arms wrapped around herself, lost in a shell of grief. Her film awards and high heels now seemed like a universe away.
She looked so still. So small.
And that’s when my heart dropped.
Something was wrong.
Very wrong.
My feet naturally picked up pace, almost running now. Utsav didn’t rush—he never did. He walked behind me, his calm, cold demeanor entirely intact. His footsteps were slow, deliberate, precise—as if he owned time and didn’t need to chase it.
He wasn’t a man of temper. He was a man of calculated explosions.
And that alone scared me more than anger ever could.
Aditya turned when he saw us, his eyes bloodshot, barely holding it together.
“We lost her,” he said.
I felt the ground tilt.
No sound. No breath. Just the sudden, deafening absence of life.
My knees nearly gave way, and instinctively, Utsav stepped forward, steadying me with one firm hand. His face didn’t change—his jaw clenched, his eyes unreadable—but he held me just long enough to stop me from collapsing.
“Not really,” Aditya corrected himself, his voice breaking. “She’s… she’s hanging on by a thread. The trauma… it did something to her brain. The doctors said she’s slipped into a coma.”
Coma.
The word shattered me.
Aditi—my Aditi—was lying in that ICU room, her eyes shut, body unmoving, caught between life and death. I stumbled forward, reaching the small glass window beside the ICU doors, my hands shaking.
There she was.
So pale. So quiet.
Wires and monitors replaced her usual laughter.
The girl who once screamed in excitement at discount shoe sales was now silent. Still. Breath like a whisper.
“No. No, no, no… Aadi, you’re lying, right?” I whispered, my voice trembling. “Aditi can’t be… like this.”
The tears I had been holding back since morning came rushing down. I clutched my chest. I couldn’t hold it anymore.
I turned to Utsav, my hands trembling, vision blurred with grief.
“You’re a doctor, right?” I asked, almost choking on my words. “Do something! Save her! Please, Mr. Mehrotra, save Aditi!”
His eyes met mine—steady, cold, and infuriatingly calm.
“I’m a heart surgeon, Miss Shekhawat. Not a neurologist. I don’t treat trauma cases,” he replied. His voice wasn’t cruel—just completely devoid of emotion. Clinical. Detached. As if he were reading out a report, not talking about my best friend’s life.
“How can you say that so easily?” I said, voice cracking. “You’re a doctor—don’t you care? You can do something. You just won’t, right?”
His silence answered everything.
And suddenly… a thought pierced through the grief like a knife.
What if Utsav didn’t want to save her?
What if this was all his plan?
He had the means. The connections. The ruthlessness.
He was Utsav Mehrotra—the man who could destroy empires with one phone call.
Would it really be a stretch to imagine that he orchestrated an “accident” to stop Aditi from marrying Aditya? Would he go that far?
The thought made me stagger back.
I looked at him again—really looked.
He wasn’t sad. Not even concerned.
He was just… calculating. Thinking. Processing something none of us could see.
Could the man standing next to me—the man I was falling for, God help me—be the same one who put my best friend in a coma?
And if he was…
What would that make me?
“I’m going home.”
The words sliced through the tension like a sudden clap of thunder. My gaze snapped away from Utsav and landed on Aditya.
He was standing a few feet away, his posture slightly slumped, his face pale and exhausted. Red-rimmed eyes told the story of a man who hadn’t slept, a man broken from the inside—but it wasn’t the grief in his voice that shook me.
It was the defeat.
“You what?” I asked, my voice rising sharply as I stepped toward him.
“How the hell can you say that, Aadi?” I snapped, anger bubbling to the surface. “Aditi—my best friend, your fiancée—is lying inside an ICU, and you’re saying you want to go home?”
The corridor echoed with the sharpness of my voice. Nurses turned briefly, startled, and even Ishanvi looked up from her seated grief. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t yelling for drama—I was yelling because someone had to speak for Aditi when she couldn’t.
My green eyes bore into his, demanding sense, demanding explanation, but what I saw there wasn’t arrogance or apathy.
It was surrender.
“What should I do here, Maya?” he asked softly.
That was it. Just a simple question.
And I had no answer.
I stared at him, stunned. What could he do? He couldn’t bring her out of coma. He couldn’t rewind time. And yet—he was her fiancé. He was supposed to be here. That alone should’ve been enough. Presence meant something. Support meant something.
But Aditya looked like a man whose entire foundation had been ripped from beneath him.
Not cold, like Utsav.
Not distant.
Just… broken.
And I hated that I didn’t have a response.
“You’re supposed to be her pillar,” Utsav’s voice cut in, steady and low, like thunder rumbling just before a storm. He took a step forward and stood before Aditya, not with rage—but with weight. The kind of weight only Utsav Mehrotra could carry.
“You’re her partner, Aadi. You don’t get to walk away in the middle of the storm. I know it’s hard. I know it feels helpless. But that doesn’t mean you run. A man doesn’t step away from his responsibilities.”
His words weren’t loud. But they carried power.
Even Aditya felt it. He dropped his gaze, jaw tightening.
“I’m grieving, bhai,” he whispered. “And grieving doesn’t bring Aditi back.”
Utsav’s expression didn’t shift. That cold, unreadable mask remained, but something behind his eyes flickered—just for a second. And then the mask snapped back into place.
“Then ask yourself what you can do that will,” he said.
His voice wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t dismissive.
It was the voice of a man who had lost too much in silence and learned that screaming didn’t bring anything back.
Aditya nodded slowly, turning away, rubbing his face with trembling hands. The rawness in him was visible now, no longer cloaked in anger. Just loss.
And I?
I turned back toward the ICU.
Toward the girl lying motionless behind the glass.
My Aditi.
And suddenly, nothing made sense anymore.
My mind became a labyrinth of confusion. Each thought twisted into another—each possibility as terrifying as the next. Was this a mere accident?
Or was it something planned?
Was this another ruthless move in the Mehrotra family’s twisted web of power?
Because if Utsav—my Utsav—had anything to do with this, if he had orchestrated this to sabotage the wedding or punish someone, then I had made a grave mistake.
I had fallen for the wrong man.
But what if he didn’t?
What if this truly was just fate, a cruel turn of events, a storm no one saw coming?
Who was behind this, then? Who would gain from silencing Aditi?
It was all a mess. A cruel, tangled mess.
And right now, Aditi was the one paying the price.
The same girl who used to hide behind me during press conferences, trembling at the idea of public speaking. The girl who cried when her dog got sick. The girl who rehearsed her lines five times in front of me because she thought she’d mess up otherwise.
A natural talent, with a soul so gentle it didn't belong in this ugly world.
And now, that same soul was caught in a war she never signed up for.
Somewhere between the silence of her hospital bed and the chaos of this family, something dark had been set in motion.
And for the first time, I wasn’t sure whom to trust.
Not even myself.
"What should we do now, Maya?” Ishanvi’s voice was barely a whisper—so fragile, so broken. Her tears were streaming silently, and yet they screamed louder than any cry could.
Without a second thought, I pulled her into a fierce hug. My arms wrapped tightly around her trembling frame, and I forced calmness into my voice, even though my insides were spiraling into chaos.
“Shh... we’ll get through this,” I whispered, as much to her as to myself. I stroked her back gently, grounding her, even as I fought to keep my own emotions at bay.
“I don’t understand, Maya,” she sobbed, her voice choked and small. “Why Aditi? Why her?”
My jaw clenched. My fists curled so tightly at my sides that my nails dug deep into my palms, leaving little crescent-shaped indents. The pain was nothing compared to the rage brewing beneath my skin.
“I know, Ish...” I murmured, pressing my lips to her temple. “But we have to be strong—for us... for her. She needs us now more than ever.”
I was trying to hold her together while stitching my own heart in silence, when my phone suddenly buzzed in my coat pocket. I shifted, reaching for it quickly and answered in a falsely casual tone.
“Hey, Dad!”
I expected him to ask about Aditi, or maybe even scold me for being at the hospital in such a mess. But instead, his words shattered the ground beneath my feet.
“Maya beta... Ansh. He’s been arrested.”
Everything around me came to a standstill.
The corridor, the lights, the sounds—it all blurred into a single, ringing void.
Ansh? Arrested?
My baby brother? The boy I raised like a son? My Ansh?
I shot to my feet, my breath caught in my throat. “What?! When? Why?” I stammered, my voice rising in disbelief.
“It’s that old case, beta. It’s opened again,” my father replied, his voice trembling. “Your mother hasn’t stopped crying. Her health... it’s declining. We need you home. Please, Maya. Come home.”
My chest tightened, air barely making its way to my lungs. My family was crumbling—one in a coma, another in handcuffs.
“I’m coming, Dad. Hang on!” I didn’t wait for a response. I ended the call and turned on my heel, rushing toward the main exit.
I didn’t care about paparazzi, about cameras, about how I looked. All I cared about was Ansh. My Ansh. I had to get to him.
But just as I reached the hospital’s main gate, a hand grabbed my wrist and pulled me back.
Utsav.
His grip wasn’t violent, but it was commanding. His presence hit like a wave—calm on the surface, a tsunami underneath.
“Are you planning to serve yourself to the vultures?” he asked, voice dry, laced with a touch of mocking sarcasm. “Or are you relying on our little viral moment to grant you safe passage?”
I flinched.
His words stung, not because of the sarcasm—but because they were true. The media would eat me alive. Not out of concern, but for content.
“I’m going home,” I said with desperation lining my voice. I didn’t have the strength to argue or throw sass. I just wanted to leave.
He looked at me for a beat, eyes unreadable, then released my wrist.
“Go,” he said coolly, turning his back on me. “But from the back gate.”
Classic Utsav. Stoic, unreadable... but strategic. Always.
I didn’t have the luxury of time to thank him. I rushed toward the back entrance, and there, just as always, was Raghav—my assistant, my right hand.
“Ma’am, this way,” he said, gently placing a hand on my back to guide me toward the car. I didn’t protest. Raghav had been with me since my first reality show. If there was one man in the world I could trust in this moment, it was him.
The second I slid into the back seat, I barked, “Drive fast.”
He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t speak. Just nodded and pressed his foot to the pedal.
As the car cut through Mumbai’s roads, my mind spun like a whirlwind. What the hell was happening? Was this all coincidence? Or was this planned? First Aditi. Now Ansh.
It felt too calculated. Too perfectly timed.
Was someone trying to distract me? Lure me away from digging deeper into Aditi’s accident?
If this was part of someone’s larger game, then they made one mistake—they came for my family.
Ansh wasn’t just my brother. He was my world. He was only four when I found in playground covered in bruises, after stray dogs chased him near our locality. I fought those dogs off with my bare hands.
And I will fight again.
This time, not with sticks or screams—but with strategy, with fire, with everything I’ve got.
Whoever reopened this case—whoever thought they could break me by breaking my family—was about to see a version of Maya Shekhawat they were not prepared for.
I would not sit back. I would not stay silent.
I would tear through this system brick by brick. I would drag the truth out from the shadows, even if I had to claw it out with blood-stained nails.
I didn’t care if it was a man or woman behind it.
I didn’t care if it was someone from the film industry, the Mehrotras, or a ghost from my past.
If they thought I’d crumble—they didn’t know me at all.
Because Maya Shekhawat doesn’t crumble.
She rises.
Stronger. Louder. Deadlier.
And when it comes to my family or my friends?
I don't just fight.
I burn.
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"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."
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