Room 9C
1083 Words
She didn’t breathe at first.
Didn’t blink.
The woman standing in the low light of Room 9C wasn’t a ghost, but she might as well have been. Time hadn’t erased her completely, but it had carved enough distance between the girl Isha remembered and the woman who now stared at her like a mirror turned slightly off-center.
Amaya Singhania.
Her mother’s sister.
Gone since Isha was five.
Dead, they said.
Dead or disappeared.
Now here she was, standing beneath flickering red surveillance footage like it was normal. Like it hadn’t taken fifteen years and a thousand nightmares to even remember her face.
“Aunt… Amaya?”
The words felt dry on her tongue. Foreign.
The woman stepped forward slowly, her expression unreadable.
“I was wondering when you’d find this room,” she said softly. “Your mother lasted four months before she came here. You made it to week three.”
Isha’s knees almost buckled.
“You… knew her?”
Amaya’s smile was faint. Sad.
“She followed me into this place the way you followed her. Same spine. Same fire. Different outcome.”
Isha stared, unable to reconcile the past and present colliding in one body.
“Where have you been all this time?” she whispered. “Everyone thought you were—”
“Dead. I know.” A shrug. “Zayan helped them believe that.”
The air turned sharper.
The files. The footage. The silence around her mother’s death.
This woman was the missing link in everything that never made sense.
“Why are you here now?” Isha asked. “Why now—after everything?”
Amaya’s eyes flicked toward the screen displaying Isha’s bedroom.
“Because he let you in deeper than anyone else. That makes you dangerous.”
---
They sat in the back corner of Room 9C, surrounded by yellowed files and flickering monitors. The dim light painted everything in blurred shadows and crimson edges.
Amaya leaned back, arms crossed.
“Zayan doesn’t build relationships. He builds cages. Some have gold bars. Others, silver chains. But they all lock the same.”
Isha felt the weight of that truth pressing against her ribs.
“I know that,” she said. “I’ve lived it.”
“But you’re still here.”
“I can’t leave.”
Amaya’s brow lifted. “Why?”
Isha hesitated.
She thought of the kiss. The bracelet. The velvet wrapped around venom.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “Not yet.”
Amaya watched her closely. Then she stood and walked to the shelves, pulling down a thin black binder labeled with her mother’s name.
“You want to know the truth about your mother?” she asked, holding it out. “It’s not pretty.”
Isha took the binder, fingers trembling.
Inside were pages of transcripts. Reports. Security logs.
Most marked with the Valenkov family crest.
Zayan’s father’s company.
“He was grooming her,” Amaya said quietly. “Not just to keep her here—but to use her.”
Isha turned a page.
Photographs. Her mother, sitting at a table. Talking to a man with white hair.
Not Zayan.
His father.
The man who’d built the foundation for everything twisted about this family.
“He offered her money,” Amaya continued. “Power. Silence. All she had to do was say yes.”
“And she said no,” Isha whispered.
“She said no. Loudly. Repeatedly. Until she got pregnant.”
Isha’s head snapped up.
“What?”
Amaya nodded slowly.
“She didn’t know at first. But when she found out… she tried to run. That’s when things changed. That’s when he stepped in.”
“Zayan?”
“No. His father.”
Amaya closed the binder and looked Isha straight in the eye.
“The baby wasn’t your father’s, Isha. It was his.”
A long pause.
It didn’t land at first.
But when it did—
Her stomach dropped. The air thickened. Her skin went cold.
“You’re lying.”
“I wish I was.”
“That’s not possible. My mother—she wouldn’t—”
“She didn’t choose it,” Amaya cut in gently. “You were never her shame. You were her salvation. But that’s why she never told you the full story. She wanted to protect you from the blood you came from.”
Isha backed away.
Her mind felt like it was splitting in two.
“No. No, he wouldn’t—he couldn’t—”
“He did,” Amaya said. “And Zayan knew.”
---
The world tilted.
Her memories blurred. Her mother’s voice, once soft and safe, now rang with a warning she hadn’t understood as a child:
> "There are monsters in this house, Isha. Monsters who call themselves family."
All this time, she'd thought it meant Zayan.
But what if it had been something else?
Worse?
Older?
Deeper?
“What about you?” she asked, her voice trembling. “Why didn’t you stop it? Why didn’t you take me away?”
Amaya’s face twisted.
“I tried. But I was already in too deep. I signed their contracts. I drank their wine. I kept their secrets until I became one.”
Isha couldn’t breathe.
She turned toward the screen.
Her own face stared back at her, live-feed. Her bedroom. Empty. Neat. Innocent.
A lie.
The world she’d stepped into wasn’t Zayan’s alone.
It belonged to a dynasty built on power, blood, and buried women.
Her mother.
Her aunt.
Now her.
Isha's hands clenched at her sides.
“I’m not going to be another file in this room.”
Amaya nodded.
“I know.”
“Then help me burn it down.”
---
Back in her room, hours later, she lay awake under the weight of silence.
No guards had caught her sneaking back.
No alarms triggered.
Zayan hadn’t come looking.
But she knew now why.
He already knew everything.
He always had.
Her phone buzzed beside her pillow—silent, screen glowing.
A text. Untraceable.
> Do not confront him until you're ready.
He’s starting to love you. That makes him more dangerous.
Play your role. Make him bleed where it hurts the most.
Her fingers hovered over the screen.
Another buzz.
A photo.
Her mother. Younger. Smiling. In the garden.
Behind her—
Zayan’s father.
Hand on her waist.
Eyes staring straight into the camera.
And beside them, a child.
No older than five.
Zayan.
Watching.
Silent.
And smiling.
- Writer
