"In Silence, I Waited"

The city moved on like nothing had happened. People walked. Cars passed. Rain tapped against the windows of a quiet apartment that had once been filled with laughter — her laughter. Ira Aarav Rathore. A name that once graced magazine covers and television interviews, the glamorous wife of business tycoon Aarav Singh Rathore. Now, just a shadow behind thick curtains. She had left without a word, retreating into a world of silence. And he let her. The betrayal had split their world. A misunderstanding so cruel, so sharp, it carved out everything warm between them. Ira didn’t cry when she packed her things. She didn’t shout or explain. She just left the keys on the table, walked out of their penthouse, and into a rented apartment two blocks away — still in his reach, but emotionally a thousand miles away. He didn’t follow her. But he didn’t let her go either. Two plain-clothed guards watched her apartment from afar. They reported her movements. When she left. When she returned. How she stopped at the liquor store more than once — never carrying groceries. How she walked slower each day, a little thinner, her hair unbrushed, her steps quieter. Still, they said nothing alarming. Until today. > “Sir,” the call came quietly. “Today… there was a bandage. On her wrist. She wore a hoodie, but it slipped. We saw.” That was all it took. Aarav froze in the middle of his office, his world tilting at a strange angle. A bandage. On her wrist. It shouldn't have meant anything — a scrape, a kitchen cut — but he knew her. He knew what she was like when her mind spiraled. When she became a prisoner inside her own thoughts. She hid her pain too well… but the body never lied. And Aarav — her Aarav — had stood on the sidelines, thinking giving her space was the noble thing to do. He hadn’t seen what was unraveling inside the walls he never dared to enter. She had stopped eating. Stopped sleeping. Stopped living. The smile that used to light up entire rooms was now buried under dark circles and bruises only a mirror could witness. And now… the bandage. He could picture it — her delicate wrist, once adorned in gold and love, now wrapped in gauze soaked in silent agony. And he had missed it. Because he thought watching from a distance was enough. But pain had crept in where love once lived. And it was screaming through a single bandage. ===================== *************