The Charade

9|𝕲𝖆𝖒𝖊 𝖔𝖋 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕮𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖆𝖉𝖊

ADHIKRIT'S POV

"Dad, don't," I warned my father, but he ignored me and kept dialling the number.

I groaned, my palm covering my face with frustration as I sat in the executive chair at his party office. The whole place had a calm air, but my dad seemed hell-bent on igniting a storm.

He was determined to label the accident as a murder and put all the blame on the Mirza. It was his way of turning a tragic loss into a political weapon.

I chuckled quietly to myself. No one ever said my father was subtle.

Dad wants everyone to believe that Dhir's accident was actually a murder.

It was a murder. I knew it.

But it wasn't the Mirzas who did it.

Dad killed Dhir himself.

My jaw clenched as the realisation hit me, I wanted to drain every single drop of his blood. But Dad already killed Dhir. Why? Because he broke a rule that had been in our family for generations.

It all started with our ancestors. Our great-great-great-grandfather, an ancient patriarch, committed a horrendous crime. He forced his wife into bed, which might have been forgivable until she became pregnant. But when he forced her again when she was about nine months pregnant, the child died. In her grief and rage, she cursed our family, declaring that no girl would ever be born to us. She died soon after.

Since then, not a single girl has been born in our lineage.

Our ancestors established a strict rule: every man must abide by it, with no exceptions. Dhir knew this rule, yet he broke it. He dared to harm his own wife, knowing the consequences.

"No," I muttered to myself, trying to push the thoughts away.

We were told to respect women, at least our wives. It was drilled into us from a young age. Respect them, protect them, and never lay a hand on them in anger or violence. It's a code that should be obvious to anyone, but in our family, it was a matter of life and death.

Dhir knew all this. He knew the history, the curse, and the consequences of breaking the rules. Yet he chose to ignore it all. He not only disrespected his wife, but he also abused her, treating her as if she had no worth. He betrayed everything our family stood for.

Respecting women wasn't just a moral guideline; it was a fundamental principle that had kept our family from unraveling over generations. We were to honor our wives, listen to them, and never raise our voices or our hands against them. Dhir's actions were a slap in the face to everything we believed in.

His violence against his wife went against the very core of our family's values. It was unthinkable, inexcusable.

And that's why my father, the strict enforcer of our family's code, couldn't let it slide. He made sure that Dhir paid the ultimate price for his unforgivable behavior.