Page 7 of Mrs. Pandey
But even as I tried to dismiss it, a sense of unease settled deep in my stomach. Dreams, they said, were windows to the subconscious. And what my subconscious had just shown me was a raw, undeniable truth I had tried so hard to bury.
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Chapter 3
IRA
I stared at my phone, stunned, as Aryan’s words sank in. He said he couldn’t marry me. Just like that, he was calling off our wedding.
Why? Because he hit a woman on the road? And now that random woman was demanding to marry my fiancé, like this was some kind of twisted fairytale? What the hell was that?
How could she demand to marry a stranger? Maybe she heard how rich and royal the Rathores were. Maybe she was just a gold digger who saw her jackpot in Aryan. She had snatched my place. My place!
I was the one who was supposed to wear that damn dress, the one I had been trying to fit into for two months. Yes, I had been stuck on duty most of the time, but I had planned that wedding. Every little detail. Every flower, every guest, everything. For what? So he could just cancel it all like it meant nothing? No. No, this couldn’t be real.
I had to talk to Aryan. I had to make him come to his senses. He couldn’t just abandon me like this. Not for a stranger. Was he really going to break my heart?
I laughed at the thought, harsh and bitter. Break my heart? If only he knew how many times I had broken his. If only he knew how many times I had cheated on him.
Maybe God did know. Maybe this was punishment. Maybe this was the universe’s way of reminding me that I didn’t deserve the only man I had ever truly cared about. But if I truly cared… would I have ever betrayed him?
Aryan. He never even looked at another woman in ten years. Ten years. He had been loyal to me, blind to everyone else, even when girls lined up for him. He rejected them for me. Only me. And now he was rejecting me? For some girl who just barged into his life and decided she wanted a wedding?
I gripped my hair, letting out a frustrated scream. My body trembled with rage and disbelief. I felt like crawling out of my own skin. Sometimes I hated being me. Sometimes I wanted to disappear, to escape the chaos in my mind.
My life had never been simple. It had always been a damn mess.
I looked around at my spacious room, decorated with expensive taste and the finest furniture money could buy. People would kill to live in my place. They had no idea how cursed it was to be rich, to be born a rich man’s daughter.
My parents never loved me. Not really. All they did was fight, scream, threaten divorce. But my mother, she stayed. Not for love, but for status, for image. And me? They just wanted me to be perfect. They wanted me to score high, get a decent job, and avoid friends. They always wanted me to look flawless and as perfect as a statue. But what about me? What about what I wanted?
I cleared the CDS exam just to get close to Aryan, but instead, I ended up in someone else’s arms. A man who was poor, cruel, and completely wrong for me. But he was also the only one whosaw through me. Who looked into my chaos and didn’t flinch. Who understood me, who felt my pain.
Prashant Pandey.
And maybe, in the moments when Aryan drifted away, Prashant was the only one who made me feel real. He was the only one who made me feel like I could be the main character of his story.
"Cold bitch." That was what they called me. And the worst part? I didn’t mind it. I liked being seen as the villain who was untouchable and intimidating. Because if I was the villain, no one dared ask why I built these walls in the first place.
But what they never guessed was this: Almost everyone in my life was a villain too.
It started when I was twelve. My father’s best friend, Mr. Patel, flew in from the US. The moment his eyes landed on me, they didn’t leave. He smiled at me like I was something to admire, not a child. He said I had grown up so beautifully, and I smiled back, stupidly believing he meant it like a father figure would. I had no idea what he really meant. He touched me, not once, not casually. He touched me in places no one should. He ran his hands over my body like he had a right to it. He was a doctor.
One night, I fell sick, something like food poisoning. My mother panicked and rushed me to him. It was the middle of the night. He told her to leave me with him. I remembered telling her I didn’t feel safe with him. I said I didn’t want to be alone with him. She laughed. She actually laughed and called me silly and theatrical. That night, my mother became the first villain in my story. Because she left me with a man who stripped me nakedand ran his hands all over me. But before he could do more, I screamed loudly. I screamed, terrified.
Just then, my father came rushing in. By then, I was dressed, which meant the evidence was gone. I told him everything, every disgusting detail that his bastard of a doctor did to me, and he slapped me. That was the day my father, too, became a villain.
Then came my brother. He didn’t ask if I was okay. It seemed like he didn’t really care, as he was like my father’s pet. Ivaan, my brother, just looked at me with disgust and said, "You’re such a fool. How could you speak about Mr. Patel like that?” He became another villain in my broken fairy tale.
But the one I never saw coming, the one I believed in, the one I thought I admired was Aryan. And he became the sharpest betrayal of them all.
I shook my head, as if that would shake him out of my thoughts. But his name kept echoing in my skull, like a wound that wouldn’t stop bleeding.
And then there was Prashant. He was a different kind of cruel. He tortured me without ever laying a hand. His silence was the sharpest knife, and his gaze was the fire.
Everything with him seemed fine until he vanished. I knew what he had been through in those three months. And I also knew he was broken so deeply, and so permanently fractured, that being near him felt like walking barefoot over glass. Every shard of his soul pierced straight into me whenever I dared to get close. He was drowning in a darkness I was too afraid to enter. Because what if I drowned with him?
He was perfect on the outside: charming, composed, and the golden boy. But I saw the version of him the world didn’t see. The version he only showed behind closed doors. It was the haunted version. And I still craved this version of him.
