Prologue
**The moment the gunshot rang out, Neha already knew—someone she loved was never getting back up.**
“Neha, please… put the gun down,” Veer Singh Roy said softly, his voice a trembling thread of desperation. “Just… listen to me once. Love, please.”
Neha’s hands were steady, but her heart was a storm. Her finger curled around the trigger of the pistol, aimed squarely at Denver Knight’s forehead—the man she once called her protector, her brother. Slowly, as if weighed down by every memory they’d ever shared, she lowered the gun.
She turned to Veer.
Her eyes, once soft with affection, now held a darkness that chilled the air around them. A tear traced the curve of her cheek, carving a path through her pain.
“I know Mr. Knight is everything to you,” she said, voice hoarse, “but the one I lost… he was everything to me. He was my world, Veer.”
She stepped forward. One trembling hand reached out to cup Veer’s face. She leaned in and kissed his forehead—a gesture full of love and grief, like a goodbye wrapped in a memory.
“I love you, Veer… so deeply that it aches,” she whispered. “But no love—not even yours—could survive the moment my baby died. That pain… it buried everything, even my heart.”
Her voice cracked.
“I didn’t ask life for much. Just your love. A family. A future. But now, all those dreams lie in pieces around me, and you…” she looked at him, her gaze hollow, “you stood with the one who crushed it all.”
Veer said nothing. He couldn’t. There were no words that could mend the fractures running through Neha’s soul.
Behind them, Rhea—Denver’s wife—stood frozen, horror etched across her face. Denver’s jaw was tight, but he stayed still, watching Neha like she was a flame about to devour everything.
Neha raised the gun again—back to Denver’s heart. Her hands no longer trembled. Her voice turned ice.
“So, Veer, here are your choices,” she said, each word falling like a stone in the silence.
“Today, you either watch your god die… or you shoot me yourself, before I count to ten.”
The air stilled. Everyone stopped breathing.
Rhea gasped. “No… No, please—” Her knees buckled, and she dropped to the floor, sobbing. “Neha, I beg you, don’t do this. Don’t let hate consume you. You and Denver… you both were my family too.”
Neha’s eyes flicked to Rhea. For a fleeting second, pain crossed her face—a tightening of the jaw, a flicker of sorrow—but it was quickly swallowed by fury.
She looked back at Denver. Her voice was steel.
“Ten.”
Veer stepped forward, his hands open, pleading. “Neha, don’t. Just hear me out. I didn’t mean for—”
“Nine.”
Denver stood defiant. “Don’t be a fool, Veer. She won’t shoot me. She can’t. I know her. She’s still in there. She’s my Neha. My baby sister. Put your damn gun down!”
But Neha let out a laugh—broken, bitter, and cold.
“Look into my eyes, Mr. Denver Knight.” Her voice rose like a scream buried in silence. “What do you see? Do you still see your baby sister?”
Her face twisted in grief and rage.
“I’m not that girl anymore. She died with her child. What stands before you now is a mother. A mother with nothing left to lose. And you—you are the reason I live in this hell.”
“Eight. Seven.”
Rhea, still kneeling, reached for Neha’s leg. “Please, Neha… I’m sorry. I’m sorry for all of it. Don’t let this be the end. Please...”
“Six. Five.”
Veer’s eyes welled with tears. His hands trembled. Slowly, with heavy regret, he reached for his own gun.
“Four.”
“Neha…” he whispered, choking on the word. “I still love you.”
She didn’t flinch.
“Three. Two—”
A gunshot shattered the silence.
The sound echoed like thunder, ripping through the hearts in the room.
And then—silence.
The kind of silence that doesn’t soothe, but strangles.
No one moved.
Somewhere in that stillness, someone’s heartbeat had stopped. And in that breathless pause, one question hung heavy, suffocating—
**Who had just paid the price?**
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