𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐃𝐇𝐈: 𝐇𝐈𝐒 𝐍𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐑-𝐄𝐍𝐃𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐈𝐑𝐄 ♡

【69】 Hit and Run?

The morning had that fake calmness about it—the kind that makes you trust silence, until it betrays you.

I was seated at my usual seat of the dining table, still wearing Ruvit’s shirt, my hair tied in a braid.

Everything about the scene screamed normal. Comfortable.

Mum was in the kitchen humming, Papa flipping through the paper, and Ruvit scrolling his phone beside me.

Vinayak bhaiya sat across from me, still half-asleep, cradling a cup of tea and blinking at the ceiling like the fan owed him answers.

It was quiet.

Until it wasn’t.

Until it didn’t feel normal.

My phone buzzed once. Then again. Again. And fucking again.

Then Papa’s. Then Ruvit’s.

I looked down at my phone.

First instinct? A spam notification. Or maybe some new dumb trend.

But what blinked on my lock screen stopped my breath in its throat.

The silence of the house had never felt so heavy, so suffocating.

It was calm before the storm, the one I had always known was coming.

It was the one that had been a festering wound in the back of my mind for years.

And suddenly his words from yesterday echoed, a chilling whisper. “If you don’t leave him, I will release it all.”

My phone vibrated again on the polished glass table, demanding my attention.

With trembling hands, I picked my phone.

It was a news alert, one of many, but this one felt different. Personal.

BREAKING NEWS:
EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE OF WAR, GRANDFATHER OF BUSINESS HEIRESS, ARIDHI AGARWAL.

I blinked as the words blurred, my heart hammering against my ribs.

I didn’t need to open the link to know. This was his warning, a threat, after all.

The air grew thick, the walls of my sanctuary closing in.

My fingers worked on the video—the accident, the crash—Ruvit’s car colliding straight into my grandfather’s.

The frame shook, the sound of metal-on-metal, and the gut-wrenching silence after.

I wanted to scream when my eyes drawn to the wall-mounted television screen. It was a mosaic of chaos.

Every channel, every news anchor, screamed the same story.

The low hum of the television quickly escalated into a cacophony of panicked voices and flashing images. It was everywhere.

The grainy footage flickered on screen, a ghost from my past.