"Happy Married Life, Shivya Pathak" I weakly smiled seeing my condition, mangalsutra dangling in my neck, vermilion in hair and both hands filled with gold bangles.
"Come out quickly or do you want me to break the gate," my husband knocked again...
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"Shivi-" Shivya stood frozen when she saw her younger brother, Angad. He stood in front of her, equally shocked to see her, holding a suitcase in one hand and a bag slung over his shoulder. She remained rooted to the spot like a statue, unable to process that he was truly standing in front of her after all this time.
Setting his things down on the ground, he rushed to her and pulled her into a bone-crushing hug which nearly knocked the breath out of her. Still holding her, he asked, "What are you doing here?"
Shivya, finally coming to her senses, slowly wrapped her arms around him. He had gotten muscular, her baby brother wasn't so little anymore after training as an NDA cadet.
"I thought you'd be at your flat," he said, pulling back just enough to look at her face while keeping his hands on her shoulders, unwilling to let her go. "How many days are you here for? And more importantly-why are you here, Shivi?"
How could he let her go so easily when he was seeing his sister after two whole years? "Angad, I..." She was suddenly at a loss for words.
At the same moment, he noticed an unknown man descending the stairs while talking on the phone, but the man stopped speaking the second he looked at him.
"Who's he?" Angad asked, pulling away from her. Shivya turned to see who he was talking about, only to find Vedant glaring at her brother.
Before she could utter a word, Angad's eyes dropped to the nuptial chain around her neck. With fingers, he grabbed the chain lightly, staring at it as if hoping his eyes were deceiving him "What is this? Did you...."
"I got married," she blurted out in a single breath, then, forcing herself to meet his shattered gaze, she added, "And... he's my husband."
For a moment, Angad simply stared at her as if he had stopped understanding the language she was speaking, his face draining of color.
He let out a humorless laugh and shook his head again and again, taking several steps backward as though distance alone could somehow make her words untrue.
"You have got to be kidding me," he almost shouted "Because there is no way in hell that the same girl who used to panic if a man stood too close to her for two minutes is suddenly standing here telling me she got married."
Angad, still reeling from the revelation, began striding toward her with frantic anger written all over his face, but before he could reach her, Vedant stepped in front of Shivya and pressed a firm hand against his chest, stopping him where he stood.
He looked Angad dead in the eye and warned, "Watch your tone when you speak to her."
The warning only seemed to fuel Angad's fury further, and he glared at Vedant with hatred only "You are no one to tell me how to talk to my sister," he growled through clenched teeth.
