My blood ran cold. “What? Who?“
“That is what we are going to find out,” Arnav said, his eyes narrowing. “But until I know exactly whose pawn you are—whether willing or unwilling—you play your part. To the maids, to the bodyguards, to my own family, I am a broken man who needs your help to do the simplest tasks. If you breathe a word of this to anyone, including your parents, the accident from five years ago will repeat itself. Only this time, there won’t be any survivors.“
I nodded dumbly, the sheer weight of my new reality crushing me. I hadn’t just married into wealth to save my family; I had walked straight into a den of international vipers, bound to a man who was fighting a silent war.
“Understood,” I whispered.
“Good,” Arnav replied coldly. He walked back to the wheelchair, sat down, and instantly, his posture changed. His shoulders slumped, his face grew pale and distant, and his legs went completely limp. The transformation was terrifyingly perfect. “Now, lift me onto the bed. We have an audience.“
Before I could ask what he meant, a faint, rhythmic scratching sound came from the hallway outside our bedroom door. Someone was testing the lock.
The mechanical scratching at the lock stopped, followed by the faint, distinctive metallic click of a skeleton key turning inside the mechanism.
Arnav’s eyes didn’t widen, but his entire body went rigid beneath his manufactured state of weakness. His gaze shot to mine, burning with a silent, ferocious intensity. He couldn’t move—not without breaking the illusion for whoever was watching through the wide courtyard windows or listening at the door. If he leaped up to fight, the five-year-old facade would shatter in an instant.
“Aarohi,” he hissed under his breath, his lips barely moving. “The lights. Kill the candles. Now.“
My legs felt like lead, but the raw authority in his voice propelled me forward. I rushed toward the bedside table, my heavy sari rustling loudly in the quiet room. With one swift breath, I blew out the cluster of candles. The room plunged into near-total darkness, illuminated only by the pale, silver moonlight filtering through the velvet curtains.
Click.
The heavy oak door creaked open, just a fraction of an inch. A sliver of light from the grand hallway cut through the darkness of our bedroom, reflecting off the polished floorboards.
Through the narrow gap, a shadow stretched into the room. It wasn’t the shape of a curious maid or a worried family member. The silhouette was wide, imposing, and clad in tactical gear. In the figure’s right hand, the distinct shape of a suppressed automatic pistol caught the moonlight.
They weren’t here to spy. They were here to execute.
My breath hitched, and a gasp threatened to escape my throat, but a sudden, iron grip clamped over my mouth from behind. Arnav had managed to slide off the wheelchair and onto the floor without making a single sound. He pulled me down into the shadow of the heavy mahogany bedframe, his chest pressed against my back. His heartbeat was steady, terrifyingly slow for a man facing an assassin.
“Stay down,” his voice breathed against my ear, so faint it was almost a thought. “Don’t move, no matter what you hear.“
He released me, and before I could even turn my head, he vanished into the darkness of the room. He didn’t walk; he moved like a phantom, shifting through the shadows with lethal grace, entirely invisible.
Three muffled shots tore through the silence, ripping into the mattress, and feathers exploded into the air, drifting like snow in the moonlight.
In that exact microsecond, before the assassin could realize the bed was empty, a shadow materialized directly behind them. Arnav rose from the darkness like a demon born from the night.
With blinding speed, his left hand shot forward, clamping around the assassin’s wrist and forcing the weapon upward. A muffled shot fired into the ceiling. Simultaneously, Arnav’s right elbow drove viciously into the attacker’s throat. A sickening gasp left the assassin as their windpipe collapsed.
But this wasn’t a common thief. The assassin recovered instantly, using their momentum to drive a heavy tactical boot into Arnav’s ribs. Arnav took the blow, grunting softly, but he didn’t break his grip. He twisted the assassin’s wrist with a sickening crack, forcing the gun to drop to the floor.
The two men engaged in a brutal, silent tango of death in the center of our bridal suite. No words were spoken. Only the heavy, ragged breathing and the dull thuds of flesh striking flesh echoed through the room. I pressed myself harder against the bedframe, my hands over my ears, watching the violent silhouettes dance in the moonlight.
Arnav was a master of close-quarters combat, but the assassin was heavy and wearing reinforced armor. The attacker managed to slip a hand into their tactical vest, pulling out a wicked, serrated combat knife. The blade caught the moonlight, flashing silver.
The assassin slashed wildly. Arnav dodged backward, but the tip of the blade tore through his white wedding shirt, leaving a dark, rapidly widening stain of crimson across his chest.
“Arnav!” the scream died in my throat.
Ignoring the wound, Arnav ducked under the next wild swing, grabbed the assassin by the tactical vest, and used the attacker’s own weight to slam them violently against the heavy oak wardrobe. The wood splintered with a loud crash.
Before the assassin could recover, Arnav locked his forearms around the man’s neck from behind, applying a lethal sleeper hold. The assassin thrashed wildly, their boots kicking against the floor, trying to find leverage, trying to reach the knife. But Arnav’s grip was an iron vice. Slowly, the attacker’s movements grew weaker, their limbs going limp, until finally, they slumped forward, completely unconscious or dead.
Arnav stood over the body, his chest heaving, his hand pressing against the bleeding gash on his ribs. The white silk of his attire was ruined, soaked in blood. He looked feral, dangerous, completely detached from the billionaire prince I was supposed to marry.
Suddenly, a loud, frantic pounding echoed from the hallway outside.
“Arnav sir! Aarohi ma’am! We heard a crash! Are you alright?!” It was the voice of Vikram, Arnav’s chief of personal security. Heavy footsteps were sprinting down the corridor toward our room.
Arnav’s eyes snapped to the door, then to the unconscious assassin on the floor, and finally to me. The panic in his eyes wasn’t for his life—it was for his secret. If his security team burst through that door right now and saw him standing over a dead assassin, his five-year-old deception was over. The trap he had built would spring on him.
“Aarohi,” Arnav rasped, his voice strained as he fought through the pain of his wound. He stumbled slightly, the blood loss catching up to him. He dragged himself back toward the empty wheelchair, but he was too weak to lift himself back into it. He collapsed onto the floor right next to it.
