The air inside the cabin felt as if it had frozen solid. Aarohi could hear her own heartbeat thumping in her ears like a war drum. She kept shaking her head frantically, as if doing so would make the horrific scene before her dissolve and disappear.
"No... I refuse to believe it! My Papa was never a quitter. He did not commit suicide!" Aarohi’s scream ripped through the heavy silence of the room.
Sanjay wiped his tear-streaked eyes and walked over to Aarohi, speaking in a voice weighed down by grave reality. "Aarohi... there is no point in running from the truth, beta. The police found a suicide note right next to your father’s body. It has his signature, and he wrote it with his own hands."
Aarohi stared at her uncle with wide, hollow eyes. Her body began to go numb.
Sanjay took a long, shaky breath and continued, "In that note, he wrote that he could no longer bear the crushing weight of the grief over his elder daughter... your sister, Akriti’s murder. The pain of Akriti's death had broken him from the inside, and in that state of regret and sorrow, he took this horrific step. It is all recorded in his suicide note, Aarohi."
"No...!" Aarohi’s throat constricted. "My Papa... he loved Didi more than anything, but he wasn't this weak. This is all a lie; this is all just a nightmare!"
"Beta... this is the bitter truth. We have to accept that your father is no longer in this world," Sanjay said, his voice cracking.
Aarohi’s legs finally gave out. She covered her face with her palms and sank to her knees on the floor. Clinging to the wall for support, she began to sob uncontrollably.
Her world, which had been whole just a few hours ago, had collapsed like a house of cards. Her weeping was more of a mournful wail—the lament of a daughter who had lost the strongest pillar of her life.
As she sat there crying, Aarohi’s eyes suddenly fell upon the dark corner directly beneath the desk. Something was glinting on the floor. Stopping her sobs for a moment, she leaned forward to get a closer look. Lying there was a locket.
It was a heavy, masculine locket, snapped in half. On the jagged edges of the broken piece, there were dried, deep-red bloodstains. Aarohi’s heart hammered against her ribs. This locket didn't belong to her father; she had never seen him wear anything like it. The fact that half of it was missing meant one thing—whoever possessed the other half was likely the killer.
Without saying a word to anyone, Aarohi swiftly reached out and clenched the locket in her fist. She carefully tucked it away into her coat pocket.
A cold realization washed over her: this wasn't a suicide, it was a cold-blooded, calculated murder. This broken locket was now her only link to the murderer.
Just then, an employee entered the room and whispered to Sanjay, "Sanjay sir... the ambulance is ready. We need to move the body for the final rites now. The police have completed the formalities."
Aarohi looked at her father’s lifeless body. Her eyes no longer held just sorrow; a cold, flickering fire of vengeance had ignited within them. She tightened her grip on the broken locket in her pocket.
The wheel of time kept turning, but for Aarohi and Saisha, that one year was nothing short of a relentless ordeal.
Akshay Malhotra's death hadn't just taken a man's life; it had completely obliterated the luxurious world the Malhotra family had built over decades of hard work.
Within weeks of Akshay's passing, the burden of heavy business debts, sudden financial losses, and the conspiracies of "trusted" associates caused everything to slip through their fingers.
The magnificent mansion where Aarohi spent her childhood, the sprawling properties, the luxury cars—everything was auctioned off. Even Sanjay, Akshay’s brother and partner, distanced himself when the tides turned, leaving them to fend for themselves.
One Year Later...
Aarohi's home:
The morning began in a small, cramped rented apartment in a middle-class neighborhood. The walls here weren't high like a palace, and there were no servants scuttling about.
Aarohi stood at a tiny kitchen platform, brewing tea. The innocence that once graced her face had transformed into a solemn maturity. The old sparkle in her eyes was gone, replaced by an eerie calm and a steely resolve.
She set her white doctor’s coat aside. She was still working at the hospital, but now, her modest salary was the only thing keeping the lights on and paying for her mother's medications.
"Mumma, I’ve put your medicines on the table. Please take them after breakfast," Aarohi called out.
Saisha stepped out of the room. The lines of time had deepened on her face, and the grief of losing her husband still lingered vividly in her eyes. She wore a simple cotton saree now; her hands, which once sparkled with diamonds, now bore the quiet fatigue of household chores.
"Beta, you work so hard... don't you ever get tired?" Saisha asked softly, placing a hand on Aarohi’s head.
Aarohi offered a faint, weary smile. "I lost the right to be tired a year ago, Mumma. Now, I just have to keep moving."
As she reached for her bag, Aarohi’s fingers instinctively brushed against a piece of cold metal in her pocket—the broken locket. In the last 365 days, not a single day had passed where she hadn't looked at it. To the world, her father had committed suicide, but to Aarohi, every jagged edge of that locket screamed that the truth was far more sinister.
She had made a silent vow to herself: she would rebuild their shattered lives, but she would never forgive the person who had stripped them of everything. Poverty hadn't broken her; it had forged her into someone much stronger.
To be continued...
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