Her Dangerous Obsession

Chap 53 - The Feeling of Regret

Author's POV

The whole room was steeped in sheer silence after Adhrit's vulnerable confession.

The atmosphere had never felt this heavy — not when they fought with each other, not when their arguments turned heated, not when Anaisha shrieked in rage, and not even when Adhrit flinched under her control.

Not even when, her forced love twisted into shackles.

But now, in this crushing stillness, in this pin drop silence, everything came crashing down.

Adhrit still sat on the floor — his body slumped, his breathing ragged, his hands trembling. Tears, hot and heavy, were leaving silent, scalding trails across his cheeks.

The emotional storm he had buried deep inside his heart for so long had finally erupted — not with retaliatory violence, but with the bare, broken truth.

His eyes, once fierce with resistance, now only carried a vacant silence and a profound pain, that defied proper description. He felt utterly exposed, the protective layers, he had meticulously built crumbling into dust.

Anaisha stood a few steps away from him, frozen, and utterly stunned. Her lips parted, a desperate need to speak visible on her face, but her voice failed her. Not a single sound escaped.

She wanted to talk, to apologize, to scream, but her words betrayed her. She hated watching him cry, yet the cruel, agonizing irony was that, she was the only reason for his tears. Her heartbeat thundered inside her chest, and her heart clenched painfully, mirroring his visible distress.

For the first time since their forced union, she didn't know what to do. She had exerted all her will to force him to stay. She had manipulated circumstances to make him hers. She had everything she claimed to want, but today, witnessing his pain and tears, it all felt utterly useless and wrong.

Adhrit finally looked up at her through his reddened eyes — not with the hatred she was expecting, but with something far worse — pain — raw and intense pain.

It was the kind of agonizing suffering, she was witnessing for the very first time. She hadn't seen this depth of pain, even when she demanded him to kneel and beg her to marry him. Not even when she forced him into the marriage itself, taking his family on gunpoint.  

But this time, everything was profoundly different. The source of the pain in his eyes was the crushing guilt of having fallen for the very woman who had orchestrated his family’s misery — and that realization was a dagger to her heart.

She could barely bear the weight of his sorrow — his silent suffering made it difficult even for her to breathe.

Today, for the first time, she felt a profound sense of remorse for her actions.

Today, she realized that, if she hadn’t inflicted so much emotional cruelty on Adhrit, and mental pain on his family, then state of their relationship might have been one of genuine, mutual affection.

She was regretting the moment, she dragged his family into the matter, acknowledging that the primary reason for his current despair was his love for a woman, who caused pain and problems for his beloved family.

She knew that, if the issue had only been about him — his life, his freedom — he might have eventually forgiven, and forgotten for the sake of their growing bond. But it was the involvement of his family, the people he loved most, that was keeping him tied up, and acting as a wall between them. 

Her heart raced, as she finally gathered every ounce of courage, before attempting to speak. "Love... don’t cry, please..." her voice was weak, barely above a whisper.