Unbroken Vows

Chapter 4

Life is not as happy for Mew also even after being at his home he don't feel complete he gets drunk every night to forget the voices nosing his head every passing minute and one such drunk night was taken advantage off.

Mew sat on the edge of his bed, his hands running through his hair in frustration. It had been weeks since the news broke—Youngest Billionaire Set to Marry—and the headlines continued to follow him wherever he went. His engagement to Lilly, a union built on the consequences of a single night, had turned his life upside down. The country’s fascination with their impending wedding only added pressure, and now, with the twins on the way, there was no turning back.

He had tried to make sense of it, tried to convince himself that this was the right choice. But every night, as he lay in bed next to Lilly, he felt the emptiness gnaw at him. It was as though something deep inside was broken, something he couldn’t quite name or understand.

His dreams hadn’t helped.

Night after night, Mew dreamed of that man—the man from the party—with the sad eyes and soft voice. He couldn’t remember the details, but his heart ached for him, like they were bound by something greater than chance. Mew couldn’t shake the feeling that his life had taken a wrong turn somewhere, that the memories locked away in his mind were calling out to him, begging to be remembered. But the weight of responsibility kept him tethered to the present.

Now, Lilly was carrying his children—his daughters—and Mew had to be the man everyone expected him to be. He had proposed, done what was right by societal standards, but there was no escaping the hollow ache inside him and like two years passed in the spectrum of light.

Across town, in a dark and suffocating apartment, Tul had retreated further into his own despair. The past two years had blurred into an endless cycle of abuse and silence. Max had become Tul’s captor in more ways than one—his presence looming over him like a shadow, his anger a constant threat. But it wasn’t just Max’s violence that broke him; it was the addiction.

Max’s new obsession had taken its toll on Tul’s body and mind. Night after night, he was used, drugged, and discarded, left to pick up the pieces of himself in the early morning light. The pain had long since become a familiar companion, but the shame—the overwhelming sense of worthlessness—was something Tul couldn’t escape. He had stopped fighting, stopped resisting, because there was no fight left in him.

Max’s control over him was absolute, and Tul’s only means of survival was silence. If he remained quiet, obedient, and pliant, then Max’s wrath would be tempered, and the punishments would be bearable. The drugs kept him numb most nights, and in those brief moments of clarity, Tul wondered if this was what life had been reduced to—surviving, existing without hope, without love.

And then there were the dreams.

Tul had convinced himself they were nothing more than trauma responses—phantom memories conjured by his mind in an attempt to escape the brutal reality of his life. The dream of standing in a white tuxedo, holding another man’s hand, hearing the soft vows of love and devotion—it was a cruel joke played by his subconscious. A life he could never have.

Every time the memory surfaced, it was accompanied by the sound of Mew’s voice, gentle and warm, but Tul had long since buried the hope that such a life was real. The headline of Mew’s engagement had only solidified it. The man he thought he had once known—if he had ever truly known him—was marrying someone else. He was starting a family, living a life Tul had only glimpsed in dreams.

Tul sat on the floor of his bedroom, his arms wrapped around his knees, staring blankly ahead. The TV was on in the background, playing yet another news segment about Mew’s upcoming wedding, the screen filled with images of Mew and Lilly at public events, hand in hand, their perfect smiles plastered across every channel.

Tul’s heart clenched as he watched the broadcast, his chest tightening with a familiar, aching sadness. It’s not real, he told himself. The man in his dreams wasn’t real. He was just another ghost haunting his mind, another figment of a life he could never have.

Max came home that night, calmer than usual, but his eyes were glazed over. The drugs had taken hold of him again, and Tul knew what that meant. As Max approached him, there was a flicker of anticipation in his eyes, a dark hunger that Tul had learned to recognize. Tul didn’t resist as Max dragged him to the bed, his hands rough and insistent. His mind had already begun to detach, retreating into the cold safety of numbness.

Two years had passed like this, with Tul’s silence becoming his shield. The pain, the abuse, the drugs—they were all constants in his life now, and Tul had forgotten what it meant to hope for anything more.

For Mew, fatherhood came with its own complications.

Two beautiful daughters—perfect in every way—had been born into his world, and he found himself falling in love with them more every day. But the joy of parenthood couldn’t erase the lingering emptiness in his heart. Each time he held them, kissed their foreheads, or watched them sleep, a quiet voice inside him whispered that something was missing.

Lilly was ecstatic, always doting on the twins, her smile radiant as she played the role of the perfect mother. Their life together was picture-perfect—at least, from the outside. But when Mew looked into the mirror, he saw the cracks forming, widening with each passing day. He saw the man he had become—a father, a husband-to-be—but he didn’t recognize himself anymore.

The media had christened them the country’s golden family. Mew, the youngest billionaire, now a proud father of two, set to marry his long-time partner, Lilly. But beneath the surface, Mew was unraveling.

His thoughts kept returning to the man with the sad eyes, the man whose name he couldn’t remember but whose presence haunted him. Each night, as he lay next to Lilly, Mew’s mind drifted back to those fleeting moments at the party, the way his heart had skipped a beat when they spoke. It was a connection he couldn’t explain, one that made him question everything about the life he was living.

For Tul, two years had passed in silence. The memory of that brief interaction with Mew at the gala had faded into the background, buried beneath the weight of Max’s abuse and the crushing loneliness of his existence. Tul had become a ghost in his own life, his body moving through the motions, but his spirit long gone.

The only thing that mattered to him now was surviving. Keeping Max’s temper in check, avoiding the worst of the beatings, numbing himself with the drugs Max provided. It was a bleak existence, one where hope had no place.

Yet, despite it all, every so often, Tul would dream of that white tuxedo, of the man who had once held him with such tenderness. And even though he told himself it was just a dream, some part of him still clung to the memory.

But with each passing day, that part of him grew weaker, as though it, too, was fading into the darkness.

To Be Continued...