Shadow of redemption

Rakshit wakes up in Hospital

After nearly 48 hours of drifting in and out of a dark, dreamless abyss, Rakshit’s eyelids fluttered, struggling against the weight of unconsciousness. The sterile smell of the hospital, the steady beeping of machines, and the faint hum of voices slowly filtered into his awareness. His body felt heavy, every inch of him aching as though he had been pulled back from the edge of death itself.

For a moment, his mind was blank—a deep, disorienting void where thoughts should have been. His chest rose and fell slowly, and his fingers twitched against the hospital sheets. Everything felt hazy, like he was caught between two worlds.   “Where am I?”   His brain stuttered over the question, unsure of reality. He blinked against the harsh light overhead, trying to ground himself, but the confusion thickened.

And then, like a sudden flash of memory crashing through his mind, it all came back. The fight with Vikram. The searing pain in his abdomen. Blood… so much blood. He remembered staggering through the streets, the world blurring as he felt his life slipping away. His body tensed involuntarily, the phantom pain of the injury rushing back to him. His hand instinctively moved toward his abdomen, where bandages now covered the wound.

But beyond the pain, something else surfaced in his memory—a fleeting vision of beauty in the darkness. An angel. He had seen her just before he blacked out. A girl, her features soft and kind, her presence like a balm that soothed his pain, even if just for a second. He struggled to reconcile that image in his head—had it been a hallucination? A trick his mind played on him in the final moments of consciousness? Or had she been real?

Rakshit blinked again, his throat dry as he turned his head slowly to take in his surroundings. The hospital room was quiet, sterile. The machines monitoring his vitals beeped steadily, but there was an unnatural calm in the air. He was alone, but the presence of that mysterious girl lingered in his mind.   “Who was she?”   The question echoed louder now.

His pulse quickened as he tried to sit up, wincing at the sharp pain still radiating from his abdomen. “Damn it,”he muttered through clenched teeth, his voice raspy from disuse. Memories of Vikram, the betrayal, the brutal fight—they all collided in his brain, and fury simmered beneath the surface of his disorientation. “I should’ve killed him…” But then, the image of the girl returned, her face pushing away the anger for a moment.

He exhaled slowly, his mind struggling to balance the chaos of the past with the calm he now found himself in. "Why hadn’t he died?" He should have bled out in the street, and yet here he was. Someone had saved him, brought him back from the brink of death. His heart skipped a beat as he realized it must have been her. The angel in his vision wasn’t just a dream. She had been real.

Rakshit’s gaze flickered to the door, half expecting her to walk in at any moment. His usually cold, hardened exterior softened slightly as he thought of her—this stranger who had saved his life. He felt something unfamiliar stir in his chest, something akin to gratitude mixed with curiosity. Who was she? Why had she helped him? In his world, people didn’t help without a price. But the look on her face—the gentleness in her eyes—it had been so pure, so genuine.

For a man like Rakshit, used to betrayal, violence, and power, the idea of someone selflessly saving him felt foreign. “Why would she care?” he whispered to himself, frowning. His world was brutal, unforgiving. People only acted out of self-interest, and yet this woman had risked something—her safety, her time—to pull him from death’s grip.

As his thoughts swirled, Rakshit’s heart thudded in his chest, a mixture of confusion and something deeper—something he wasn’t ready to acknowledge just yet. "I owe her..."he thought, his usual steel resolve melting for a brief moment as he lay there. But the unfamiliar vulnerability made him uncomfortable. His mind pushed back, already building walls again. Yet, despite his best efforts, he couldn’t forget the image of her—her soft, worried eyes, the warmth of her presence in his fading consciousness.

He ran a hand over his face, feeling the roughness of his unshaven jaw. The danger wasn’t over. Vikram was still out there. And now… whoever this girl was, she had unknowingly been drawn into his dangerous world. “I have to find her,” he thought. But even as that thought settled in his mind, there was a quiet voice, a whisper inside him that wasn’t just about protection—it was something more, something unspoken.

Rakshit closed his eyes for a moment, trying to gather his strength, but his heart wouldn’t still. She wasn’t just any stranger. This girl, whoever she was, had saved more than his life. She had reached something deep within him—something he didn’t even realize was still there. “Angel,” he murmured, the word escaping his lips without permission.

For the first time in years, the cold, calculated mafia boss felt a crack in the armor he had so carefully built around himself. And he wasn’t sure what to make of it.