❀✿❤︎˚ ||𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐮𝐞 ~ 𝐋𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐎𝐫 𝐋𝐢𝐞𝐬||˚❤︎✿❀

00:00 a.m.
3rd January, 2025.

To the future Mrs. Sehgal,

You have 20 hours.

Ask your fiancé where he spent tonight.

If he lies... Run.

If he tells the truth... Run faster.

Or tonight won't be the last night you writhe in pain.

They paid five thousand crores to buy you a husband.

They forgot to buy you a future.

-----------------------------------------------

1 hour ago

10.55PM | JANHVI'S BEDROOM | 2ND FLOOR | JADEJA MANSION |

The laughter refused to follow her upstairs.

It remained trapped somewhere below-

Beneath chandeliers, inside crystal glasses, between orchestras and congratulations.

The mansion swallowed the silence that followed.

Janhvi climbed the staircase alone.

One step. Then another.

Every floor felt colder than the last.

By the time she reached her suite, the house had already gone to sleep.

Or perhaps it was only pretending to.

She closed the bedroom door behind her.

The click echoed far louder than it should have.

Her reflection greeted her from the antique mirror.

White silk. Diamond earrings. Perfectly pinned updo. Pearls.

A bride in everything except in her heart.

For a long moment, she simply looked at herself.

Trying- and failing-

to recognise the woman looking back.

She didn't bother removing the jewellery.

Didn't bother changing.

Didn't bother washing away the 2000 dollar makeup someone had spent two hours perfecting.

None of it mattered.

The room smelled faintly of roses. Of expensive perfume. Of exhaustion.

She sat on the edge of the bed.

Her feet ached. Her smile ached more.

Her phone lit up.

Thirty-seven unread messages.

Congratulations. Perfect couple. So happy for you.

She switched the screen off without opening a single one.

Silence returned.

It should have been comforting.

Instead- It reminded her of hospitals.

Of machines. Of waiting rooms.

Of people praying for miracles they already knew weren't coming.

She leaned back against the headboard.

Just for a minute.

Just until the pounding behind her eyes settled.

Her eyelids drifted shut.

...

The scream came first.

Not hers. Her mother's.

Then shattered glass.

Rain.

Neighbours shouting.

Police lights staining wet roads blue and red.

Her little hands, so impossibly small, trying to reach a woman who never again reached back.

"Aai..."

The word caught inside her throat.

Her father's face blurred behind strangers holding him down.

Her father kept trying, struggling to say something. Her tiny little self crying. Her brothers kept asking questions.

And how she-

Couldn't hear anything except her own heartbeat.

Loud. Violent. Relentless.

"AAAAAAAIIIIIIIIII!!"

Janhvi jerked awake.

A screech tore from her lungs.

Darkness. Only darkness.

For one terrible second she didn't know where she was.

Her breath was shattered. Her pulse was scattered.

Then the grandfather clock chimed.

Twelve.
Midnight.

Her breathing refused to slow.

Not again.

Please... Not tonight. Not tonight.

Her hand reached automatically towards the bedside drawer.

The familiar amber bottle waited exactly where she had left it.

She swallowed one tablet with shaking fingers.

No water.

She had done it enough times that she no longer needed any.

The medicine dissolved bitterly on her tongue.

She rubbed both palms against her face.

The curtains moved softly.

The balcony door was closed.

Locked.

Yet the sheer fabric shifted anyway.

Winter wind.

She frowned.

Something glowing rested near the threshold.

It hadn't been there earlier.

Her pulse slowed, then immediately climbed again.

A folded sheet of parchment paper.

No envelope. No seal. No sound.

Just...

there.

Impossible.

The balcony outside her room had been guarded all evening.

Security below. Security in the gardens. Security at the gates.

No one should have been able to get this far. No one.

She crossed the room carefully.

Bare feet against cold marble.

Each step seemed louder than the last.

She bent. Picked it up. Sat down.

Expensive paper. Folded once. Nothing written outside.

Her fingers shivered. Her lips quivered.

Then her eyes found the first line.

To the future Mrs. Sehgal,

The blood drained from her face.

She kept reading.

Once.

Then again.

By the time she reached the last sentence...

her hands had begun to tremble .

Not violently.

Just enough for the paper to whisper between her fingers.

Someone knew.

Someone knew something.

Or wanted her to believe they did.

And what was the strangest, was ~ This was exactly the kind of anonymous letters, She used to write herself, to people on the verge of slaughter, people in the mouth of inevetible death.

Her gaze lifted instinctively toward the dark balcony beyond the glass.

Nothing.

Only winter.

Only silence.

Only the reflection of a frightened bride staring back at herself.

She stared at the initials.

S.J.

Nothing. No face. No name. No memory.

But whoever hid behind those two letters...

Already knew more about her fiancé... ...than she did.

And that terrified her far more than the letter itself.

They knew about the 5000 crores.

They knew how to breach the security of the Chief Justice's mansion itself.

They knew where her fiance had spent tonight.

And they knew Janhvi didn't.

Fuck.

She looked at it again.

S.J.

Who was this S.J?

How the hell did they know?

And What else did they know?

There was no stamp.

No name.
No address.
No explanation.

Only a sheet of expensive ivory paper folded once, slipped beneath a balcony door guarded by security that was supposed to be impossible to breach.

Janhvi stared at it without blinking.

Her tears stopped before she realized they had.

The room was silent except for the grandfather clock outside her suite counting down another minute of a life that no longer felt like hers.

Twenty hours.

Tomorrow would be her engagement.

Tomorrow the country would celebrate the granddaughter of the Chief Justice accepting one of the most eligible men in Gulmohar Hills.

Tomorrow cameras would flash.
Diamonds would sparkle.
Families would smile.

Tomorrow, her life would become his.

& Tonight...

Someone wanted her to run.

Someone whose initials were SJ.

She closed her eyes.

Five thousand crores.

That number echoed louder than the words on the page.

The price her grandmother had paid to secure a husband before Janhvi turned twenty-five.

Not for love.

For legacy.
For inheritance.
For a dystopian aristocrat society that had survived generations by never allowing women the luxury of choosing too late.

Outside, fireworks burst across Gulmohar Hills.

Inside,
A hot tear burned silently down her cheek.

She brushed it away almost angrily.

Crying solved nothing.

It certainly couldn't save her mother. It certainly wouldn't save her father.

It wouldn't buy back her freedom.

It wouldn't erase the humiliating "purity medical clearances" & "fertility examinations" her future in-laws expected, as though she were a product requiring checking before purchase.

Her gaze drifted to the Gents engagement ring resting inside its velvet box.

Untouched. Cold. Perfect.

She had looked at it for hours.

It had never once looked like a future.

Only fear.

Her phone buzzed.

Nani Sa.

Three missed calls.

Another message.

Tomorrow would end your pain. Sleep.

Janhvi let out a hollow laugh that sounded nothing like amusement.

End your pain?
Or would tomorrow was the last day she didn't writhe in pain?

Her eyes lowered to the anonymous letter once more.

The words refused to blur.

Ask your fiancé where he spent tonight.

And For the first time since this engagement had been arranged...

Janhvi wasn't afraid of losing her life.

She was afraid someone already knew how her life would end.