Ishq hua (Duet 1)

Chapter 45: Adpoted

Aira:

I didn't sleep.

Not even close.

I lay on the bed staring at the ceiling, the darkness pressing in around me, my mind refusing to shut down no matter how desperately I wanted it to. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the ring. That gold ring, sitting in Arsh's cabinet like evidence, like a verdict, like something I couldn't unsee no matter how hard I tried.

My father's ring.

I turned onto my side, pulling the blanket tighter around me even though I wasn't cold.

There had to be an explanation. There was always an explanation. Rings got stolen. Rings got lost and found by the wrong people. Rings were replicated, duplicated, faked. Arsh had resources and money and motive to plant evidence that pointed to my father specifically.

I had a hundred explanations.

None of them felt convincing enough.

Around three in the morning, I gave up pretending I was going to sleep and sat up. The room was quiet, the house settled into the deep stillness of the late night. Arsh hadn't come to bed, which meant he was either still in his study or he'd taken one of the guest rooms. Either way, I was alone.

I reached for my phone on the bedside table.

Nineteen notifications. Most from Armaan checking in, three from my mother, and a missed call from a number I didn't recognize.

I stared at the ceiling for another minute.

Then I got up, walked to the walk-in closet, and stood in front of Arsh's side for a long moment.

I shouldn't.

I absolutely shouldn't.

But Varya had shown me something was in here. Something that had apparently been sitting in this cabinet for so many days, waiting for me to find it.

I opened the drawer carefully, my fingers moving slowly, my heart hammering so loudly I was certain it could be heard through the walls.

The ring was there exactly where Varya had replaced it. Sitting in the corner of the drawer, half-wrapped in a small cloth like it had been handled carefully, preserved deliberately.

I picked it up.

Turned it over in my palm.

The design was unmistakable. I had spent half my life watching this ring on my father's hand. The intricate pattern, the softest scribble of Mom's name on the lower left which he had done all by himself saying it made the ring worth wearing otherwise he wouldn't keep it around his finger, family heirloom or not.

This was not a replica.

This was not some coincidence.

This was my father's ring. The real one. The one he had stopped wearing years ago, saying he had lost it.

Around the same time Noor Raisinghania was killed.

I put it back exactly as I had found it, closed the drawer, and walked back to the bed on legs that didn't feel entirely like mine.

I sat on the edge of the mattress and breathed.

In. Out. In. Out.

The ring being here didn't mean my father pulled the trigger. It didn't mean he was there. It meant someone from the Agnihotri family was there, someone who had access to that ring, someone who had either stolen it or borrowed it or...

I stopped that thought before it could finish itself.

What I needed was information. Not Arsh's version. Not the hollow reassurances my parents had given me yesterday. Something real, something I could hold up against everything else and see clearly.