Kabir's pov

The fight with my father had been a cold, surgical strike. He didn’t yell; he just used that quiet, razor-sharp voice that cut deeper than any shout. The topic, as always, was my marriage.

“Thirty years old, Kabir. It is time to start a family. Your mother and I will find you a suitable girl. A girl from a good family, a family that will respect our name,” he had said, his eyes hard and unyielding as he sat across from me at the dinner table.

My jaw had tightened. “I don’t want a 'suitable girl,' Father. I don’t want a marriage arranged like a business deal.”

He had simply looked at me, a silent, contemptuous assessment. “You were born into this business, son. Everything in your life is a deal. Don’t pretend otherwise.”

I had slammed my hand on the table, the crystal glasses rattling. “I will not be a pawn in your game.”

I had walked out of the house and straight into the night, the weight of his expectations pressing on my chest. The city lights were a blur as I drove, the engine’s roar a poor substitute for the anger boiling inside me. I wasn’t looking for a woman; I was looking for a way to feel something other than frustration. I was looking for an act of rebellion, something dirty and selfish that would be entirely mine.

My car had stopped outside a part of the city I usually only saw from a distance. The brothel—the kotha—stood like a garish monument to desperation. I had walked inside, the air thick with perfume and the cloying smell of human misery. The Madam’s eyes had raked over me, calculating my worth, and she had gestured toward the line of girls. They all had the same empty, practiced smile. I had looked at them, and all I could see were reflections of my father’s demands and my mother’s silent pleas.

And then I had seen her.

She was standing at the end, her back to the wall, trying to disappear. Her face was turned away, but I could see the line of her neck, the grace in her stance. She was a different color in this dreary room, a splash of something clean. When her eyes had finally met mine, there had been no practiced seduction. There was only a quiet terror, but beneath it, a defiant flicker. A fire. It was a look that screamed, I am not broken yet.

For a man who had grown up in a world where everything was bought and sold, she was a paradox. A jewel in the mud. I hadn't wanted her like the others; I had wanted to possess that fire, to own that defiance. My anger and frustration twisted into a new, more dangerous obsession.

I had paid the Madam and led Kavya to a room. She had flinched at my touch, a raw, honest reaction that had sobered me instantly. I had seen her body tremble, her eyes wide with a fear that was not for me, but for what was to come. I had watched her, and a strange disgust had curdled in my gut—not for her, but for myself. I had been about to do the same thing that my father and every other man had been doing my entire life: taking what I wanted, regardless of the cost to others. I couldn't be like them. Not here, not with her.

Instead of a moment of pleasure, I had found a moment of clarity. I told the Madam I wanted her. Not for a night. For forever. Her price was astronomical, an amount that would have bought a small building in this area, but to me, it was nothing. I paid the five crores, and she was mine.

I had brought her back to my world, and she had looked at me with an awe that was terrifying. She saw a savior. A hero. I saw a reminder of my own weakness. I hated the gratitude in her eyes, because it was a lie. I wasn’t a hero. I was a man who had bought a wife from a brothel to spite his parents.

That night, in the sterile luxury of my bedroom, I had watched her get ready for bed. She was so quiet, so careful. I had cornered her, my voice low and venomous.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I had hissed, her body tensing. “Like I’ve saved you. Like I’m some kind of knight. I’m not. I’m just a man who didn't want to bring home a girl from a ‘good family.’ I brought home a whore.”

Her face had crumpled, the hope in her eyes replaced by a shattering hurt that I had intended. I needed her to understand that this was not a fairy tale. That she was a reminder of my own moment of debasement. A constant, living stain on my pristine life.

Five months later, that’s all she was. A stain. Every time I looked at her, I didn’t see Kavya. I saw the kotha. I saw my own shame and the contempt I held for myself. I had hated that jade saree last night because it had tried to make her look clean, pure. It had dared to erase the very thing I had bought. And I couldn’t let that happen. Not yet. Not until I could figure out how to forg

ive myself first.