Dassani Brides

Chapter 14

The drive back to the mansion was uneventful.

That, more than anything else, unsettled Geetanjali.

There were no sharp turns. No raised voices. No lectures disguised as concern. Shiv drove as he always did, one hand steady on the wheel and the other resting loosely near the gear, his eyes fixed on the road ahead. The city passed by in orderly segments: traffic lights, shuttered storefronts, early pedestrians carrying their own private urgencies. In the back seat, Komal leaned forward now and then to point out things she had missed in the months away. Sudha stayed silent, her posture stiff, her eyes alert.

No one spoke about the morning.

The gates opened without pause.

The mansion received them the way it always did, with cool marble and filtered light and the quiet efficiency of staff who had long ago learned not to ask questions. Bags were unloaded. Instructions were given in low voices.

"Your rooms are ready," Shiv told the girls calmly. "Unpack. Join me for breakfast later."

Komal nodded, visibly relieved. Sudha hesitated. Her gaze flicked toward Geetanjali, then back to Shiv, and she said nothing at all.

Geetanjali followed Shiv upstairs.

Her legs moved on instinct. Her mind lagged several steps behind her body, as though it were still sitting on that hostel bench, staring at the floor. She climbed the stairs and waited for the outburst. For the controlled fury. For the long, cold accounting of her failure.

It did not come.

Inside their room, Shiv took off his watch and set it carefully on the dresser.

"You will set up the table for breakfast," he said, as if he were continuing a thought from the day before.

That was all.

He did not mention the hostel. He did not mention the bus, or the fifteen minutes, or the money folded into her waist. He did not ask what she had been thinking.

He did not punish her.

He normalized her.

Geetanjali stood there, unsure whether she had heard him correctly.

"Yes," she said finally. Her voice was slow to arrive.

---

In the kitchen she waited for the tremor to come.

It did not.

That frightened her more than if her hands had shaken. It meant that something in her had gone quiet and flat, like a pond after a stone has sunk.

Breakfast was served in the dining room with its usual symmetry. Shiv sat at the head of the table and scanned his newspaper briefly before setting it aside. Komal chattered about hostel food with great and animated disdain. Sudha ate quietly, her fork clinking faintly against the plate, her eyes lifting now and then to Shiv with something that looked like appraisal.

Geetanjali poured tea. She refilled plates. She did not sit.

Somewhere in the middle of it, she noticed that Meera was not there.

The absence struck her harder than she expected.

Meera was usually the quiet buffer at these meals. She was the one who noticed when Geetanjali's hands shook, who asked small, neutral questions that gave her room to breathe. Without her, the room felt louder, though no one was speaking.

No one asked Geetanjali how she was.

No one needed to.

When the meal ended, Shiv stood and left without looking at her.

She remained by the table, staring at the half-finished cup of tea he had left behind. The surface of the liquid was perfectly still. She wondered, distantly, what it would take to disturb it.

Komal reached for her hand. "Didi, come and sit with us. You look tired."

She let herself be guided to the sofa in the sitting room. She sat where Komal placed her, hands folded in her lap and spine straight, her eyes fixed on a point just above the opposite wall.

Sudha watched her closely.

"You don't look okay," Sudha said.

Geetanjali did not answer.

The silence stretched.

She did not feel as though she were choosing it. It felt imposed, like gravity, like a weight pressing on her chest and keeping the words from rising. The house went on around them. Staff moved quietly through distant rooms. Doors opened and closed. A breeze hummed faintly through the windows. Normalcy wrapped itself around her like a shroud.

And somewhere deep beneath it, fear waited.

---

They sat together in the sitting room before lunch.

Komal had kicked off her sandals and curled up on the cushions with a book. Sudha sat upright with her arms crossed and her eyes sharp with purpose. Geetanjali sat between them, unmoving, her hands still folded in her lap as though someone had placed them there deliberately.

Sudha broke the silence first.

"This place is a prison," she said bluntly.

Komal looked up, startled. "What?"

"I said it is a prison," Sudha repeated. "Just because it has marble floors does not change that."

Komal frowned. "Don't start, Sudha. We are safe here. Look around you."

"Safe from whom?" Sudha shot back. "From men like Shiv?"

Geetanjali did not react.

Sudha leaned forward. "Didi, you do not have to live like this. You know that, don't you? You have rights. This," and she waved a hand at the room, the chandeliers, the polished floor, "is only patriarchy dressed up as comfort."

Komal scoffed. "You sound ridiculous. He gave us everything. Education. This house. Security. Do you think that comes from slogans?"

"She is scared of him," Sudha said, her voice sharp. "That is not respect. That is control."

Komal turned toward Geetanjali. "That is not true, is it, Didi? He does not scare you?"

Geetanjali's eyes did not move.

"Didi," Komal pressed. "Say something."

Nothing.

Sudha's jaw tightened. "You see? This is what he has done to her. She cannot even speak."

Komal stood up. "Or maybe she does not want to fight your battles. Maybe she is thankful."

"Grateful?" Sudha laughed bitterly. "For what? For being trapped?"

Both of them turned toward Geetanjali now.

"Tell her," Sudha said urgently. "Tell her what it is really like."

Komal shook her head. "Don't poison her mind. She is lucky. Do you know how many girls would trade places with her?"

The words collided in the air between them.

Geetanjali felt them strike her without ever quite going in.

She was not choosing between them. She could not.

To choose Sudha would be to shake the safety Komal still believed in. To choose Komal would be to betray the clarity Sudha had fought for. And to choose neither would confirm everything Shiv had already decided about her.

Her body stayed still.

Her mind felt very far away.

The door opened abruptly.

Madhu came in and took in the scene in a single glance: the sisters mid-argument, Geetanjali seated like a statue between them.

"What are you doing sitting here?" Madhu snapped. "Lunch preparation has started."

Geetanjali stood at once.

Her movements were slow and mechanical, as if each joint had to be instructed separately. She did not look at her sisters. She did not apologize. She turned and walked toward the kitchen, and she went like a corpse that had been taught to walk.

---

In the kitchen she chopped vegetables with precise, practiced strokes. The knife rose and fell. Onions, then tomatoes, then coriander, each cut in the same measured rhythm. Her thoughts circled one thing and one thing only.

*Night.*

It was no longer theoretical.

Her escape had failed. Her sisters were here, under this roof, in rooms Shiv had chosen for them. Everything had consequences now, and they would not fall on her alone.

Resistance had weight. She had not understood that before. She had thought that defiance was a thing a person could carry by herself, like a bundle on her back. Now she saw that it was a rope, and that other people were tied to the far end of it.

By dinner the argument had started again.

Sudha questioned everything: the hierarchy, the rules, the unspoken expectations that hung over every meal. Komal defended stability, gratitude, and survival. Their voices rose and overlapped, both of them sharp with conviction, each one sure she was protecting the other.

Geetanjali sat between them again, her food untouched.

Shiv was late.

For the first time in her life, she wanted him to arrive. When he did, the uncertainty would end. Whatever he had decided in the long, quiet hours of the day would finally be spoken. Tonight, he would write her fate.

The chair at the head of the table stayed empty.

The clock ticked.

And Geetanjali waited, silent and distant and fully aware that the cage was no longer hers alone.

It belonged to everyone now.