7 years later since Harshita ran away from Vedant,
The party was alive. Laughter spilled like champagne. Lights flickered like fireflies. Music pulsed like a heartbeat that didn't belong to him. I, Vedant Malhotra, stood at the center of it all — untouched, untouchable. I was in black from head to toe, sharp lines and sharper silences. A walking graveyard dressed in designer.
The air shifted when I entered — it always did. Women turned. Men took notice. Not out of friendliness, but fear. Because Vedant Malhotra didn't smile. I didn't nod. I didn't pretend. I moved through the world like a man who had buried his soul and forgotten where. The glass in my hand was full. I hadn't touched it. Not tonight. Not since her.
I was surrounded, yet exiled. Every laugh, every cheer, every glittering surface only reminded me of the emptiness that echoed louder than the music. I didn't come here to feel alive. I came to remember what it felt like before I stopped feeling at all- She ruined that for me.
She was the chaos I never saw coming — sunlight with a dagger smile. She loved like a storm: fierce, wild, unstoppable. And I? I was the fool who thought he could stand in the rain and not get wet. Thought I could have her and keep the walls up. I thought I could be the man she needed without ever bleeding. But she wanted pieces I'd long since buried. Pieces I wasn't sure existed anymore.
Now, I wear grief like a signature scent. Custom-fitted. Permanent. Every pulse of music felt like a memory I didn't ask for. Every clink of glass, a whisper of her laughter. I could still hear her voice in my head — soft, mocking, too real. I missed her in ways I couldn't articulate. And worse, in ways I didn't want to admit.
The drink stayed in my hand, untouched. Like the promises I never made. Like the apologies I never gave. Because what's the point of drowning, when you're already at the bottom?
My oldest friends had gathered in a loose circle near the bar, half-buzzed and fully determined.
"Thirty-five, Vedant. Thirty-freaking-five," Arjun had said, slinging an arm around my shoulder like a man on a mission. "You're not getting any younger, bro. You need a woman. A real one. Not the ghosts you keep dancing with."
I didn't flinch. I never did. But my jaw tightened — the kind of tension only visible to those who knew me before the silence became my second skin. Before heartbreak made me a stranger to joy.
Rohan, already two drinks deep and deep into mischief, grinned like a devil with a plan. "We've shortlisted some options. All classy. All gorgeous. All alive."
Everyone laughed. The sound was loud, warm, alive.I stayed silent — a glacier among bonfires.
Priya, the only woman in the group brave enough to challenge him waved her phone like a magician about to conjure miracles. "There's Alisha — investment banker, yoga freak, looks like sin and can quote Rumi. There's Samaira, the architect with a laugh like summer rain. And oh—don't forget Naina. She's trouble in silk and heels, just your type."
"I don't have a type," I said quietly, my voice low and laced with something darker. "Not anymore."
It wasn't a refusal. It was a gravestone. A quiet declaration that the man who once had a type, once believed in sparks and smiles and futures — had long been buried under the weight of his own regrets.
"Exactly why you need one," Arjun insisted, pouring him a drink he wouldn't touch. "You can't keep living like this, man. Ghosts don't keep you warm at night."
My eyes met his — slow, heavy, and haunted. "They keep you awake."
And just like that, the mood cracked. The laughter faltered, like a song skipping mid-note.
Even Rohan, usually unbothered and bulletproof, didn't know what to say. Because they all knew. They had seen it — the way I unraveled in silence, stitched myself back together with cold detachment, only to bleed memory every time I heard her name in passing.
"C'mon," Priya tried, her voice softer now. Not teasing. Just... human. "We're not saying forget her. We're just saying—don't forget yourself."
But I wasn't listening anymore. Or maybe I was listening too much.
Because I had already begun to drift —Into that silent sanctuary where her memory lived, untouched. Into that cursed chapel of 'what ifs' and 'almosts' — where her name was both a prayer and a punishment. Where I could still feel the ghost of her fingers tracing the edge of my jaw, the echo of her laugh in my ribs, the burn of her goodbye still fresh like it happened yesterday.
Where I could still see the moment she walked away — and the part of him that went with her. They wanted me to move on. But how do you outrun a shadow that lives inside your chest? How do you touch another soul when you're still holding onto ashes?
My friends dispersed slowly, reluctantly, one by one. The laughter that once cushioned the circle around me faded into the static of the party's chaos. Rohan clapped me on the back with a half-hearted joke. Priya gave me one last look — soft, sad, the kind that knew better than to push further. Arjun hesitated, drink still in hand, but I didn't meet his eyes.
Eventually, even the most loyal ghosts give up trying to resurrect the dead. And then, I was alone again. Exactly where I belonged.
The music surged, the lights danced — sharp, dizzying flashes of color across cold glass and warmer bodies. And then she appeared. Not her, never her. Just another stranger with too much perfume and not enough sense.
She sauntered over, hips swaying to the beat, a smile like static electricity — all teeth, red lipstick, and bad intentions. She leaned in too close, her presence a performance of seduction wrapped in sequins and cheap mystery.
"You always this quiet, Mr. Malhotra?" she asked, her voice dipped in flirtation, playful as a dare. "Or are you just waiting for someone special?"
My eyes cut to her. Cold. Unflinching. A glacier staring down a matchstick.
"I buried my love seven years ago," I said, voice like frost.
She froze. Her smile faltered, not sure if she'd heard right. "Excuse me?"
I turned to her fully now — tall, imposing, dressed in sin and sorrow. Magnetic in the kind of way that made people mistake danger for desire.
"You want a story?" I asked, softly, like the calm before a hurricane.
"I had a woman once. She loved me. With every broken, bleeding part of her. Gave me the pieces no one else had ever been brave enough to hold. And I..."
A breath. A memory. A knife twisting deeper.
"I ruined her. Lied. Betrayed. Watched her fall apart in silence. Watched her drown — while I stood on the shore. And what I did to her... it's not something you do to someone you adore."
My words landed like violence. The kind you don't see coming until it's already inside you. The woman blinked, unsettled. Her flirtation retreated into something smaller. People nearby had gone quiet. They were watching now — pretending not to, but listening too hard. Eavesdropping on a confession that wasn't meant to be whispered. I didn't care. Let them hear. Let the world know what kind of man Vedant Malhotra truly was.
"Every day since," I continued, my voice thick with the weight of it all, "I've lived in the coffin I built for her. So no— I'm not quiet. I'm mourning."
I stepped back, away from her, away from all of them. My gaze swept over the glittering, stunned crowd — people dressed like dreams, drunk on illusions.
"You all want a piece of me?" I said, louder now. "Of the monster?"
A bitter laugh escaped me — hollow and sharp.
"Trust me... I'm not what you're looking for. I'm what you survive."
And with that, I raised the untouched glass in my hand — the drink that had waited all night for a version of me that no longer existed — and smashed it against the marble floor. The sound rang out, violent and final. Like a gunshot at a masquerade.
Shards scattered like pieces of who I used to be. No one stopped me. No one could.
And as I walked out — shoulders straight, heart bleeding, past the music, the heat, the eyes that would never understand — I didn't look back. Because the only thing behind me... was ruin. Because in that moment, Vedant malhotra wasn't a man. I was a storm wrapped in a suit, haunted by the woman who once called him home.
Vedant at his office at 4:53 am,
The city lay sprawled beneath me like a broken promise, lights flickering in the distance, mocking me with their persistence. I stood by the floor-to-ceiling window in my private office, high above Mumbai — a king in a crumbling kingdom of guilt. The silence up here wasn't peaceful. It was too loud. It had teeth. The world below partied. Laughed. Lived.
I stood in stillness, sleeves rolled up to my forearms, tie loosened and forgotten, a glass of aged scotch cradled in my hand like an apology I would never get to deliver.
My phone buzzed.
A single message.
"Still no trace. She's not in Mumbai. Not in India. No immigration records. No medical. It's like she disappeared."
I read it once. Then again. My knuckles whitened around the phone.
I had hired everyone. Spared no expense. Dozens of private investigators. Hackers. Ex-police officers. Surveillance experts. From Dubai's skylines to New York's alleys. From Himalayan villages to Delhi slums.I had bribed, threatened, begged. Every CCTV frame. Every hospital intake. Every anonymous Jane Doe. Every grave.
Nothing. Not a footprint. Not a fingerprint. Not a death certificate to close the wound.
Just absence.
Not even a whisper of Harshita.
I poured himself another drink, the sound of the amber liquid hitting glass like distant thunder. Not because I wanted it. But because not drinking meant feeling and feeling was unbearable. I stared into the drink — my own reflection trembling inside it like a ghost unsure of its place in the world.
"Where are you, Harshita?" I whispered into the quiet. "I broke you... but you broke me too. And I deserve every second of this hell."
My chest ached — not with longing, but with weight. The weight of all the things left unsaid. The truths withheld. The love I only learned to name when it was too late.
I hadn't known real sleep in years. Just collapsed hours between dusk and dawn, where memories flickered behind my eyes like dying film reels. Her voice. Her laughter. The way she smiled when she was trying not to cry. The last time she said my name like it meant everything. The last time she looked at me like I was hers — before I reminded her that I wasn't.
My fingers trembled slightly as I poured another drink. Expensive. Rare. Tasteless. Not because I wanted to forget. But because remembering meant reopening the grave I'd buried his heart in and remembering was suicide in slow motion.
I looked into the glass again — a mirror that told the truth. Hollow eyes. Sleepless skin. A face she used to kiss. A face that didn't deserve her memory anymore.
And yet, I chased her still — across continents, through shadows, into madness. Because somewhere out there, she was alive. I knew it. Felt it. Like a splinter under my ribs that I couldn't dig out.
I would never stop looking. Not until my lungs gave out. Not until the last wall of my empire fell. Not until my name meant nothing and my wealth turned to ash.
Because this wasn't about redemption. This wasn't about closure. This wasn't even about love anymore. This was obsession — sacred and savage. Because Harshita wasn't just the girl I lost. She was the moment everything before her became meaningless and everything after her became unbearable.
I didn't want forgiveness. Forgiveness is for mistakes. What I did to her wasn't a mistake — it was a goddamn war crime against a heart that loved me without armor. I wanted her — with utter madness. With a fever that burned in my bones and a rage that clawed under my skin every time I pictured her walking away.
I needed to know she was breathing. I needed to know someone hadn't taken her light and buried it six feet under some nameless earth. Because if she was alive... if she was still out there, somewhere under the same sky, even once — I'd find her.
I'd walk into the belly of warzones. I'd dig through dirt and blood and silence. I'd trade my legacy, my empire, my soul — all of it — just for a whisper of her name in the wind.
I was a man stitched together by guilt, wired with desperation. She was in my dreams. In my waking thoughts. In the silence between seconds. I tasted her in the alcohol. Heard her in the dead hum of my phone.
I was building skyscrapers by day and drowning in her ghost by night. And the madness?
It wasn't the kind that makes you scream. It was the kind that makes you silent. Cold. Focused. Dangerous. Because when you've loved someone the way I loved her — when you've destroyed her, and yourself in the process — you don't move on.
You burn.
And I was still burning. Every damn day. They called me ruthless. Cutthroat. Unforgiving. They didn't know — I had nothing left to forgive. Nothing left to give. Except the promise I made to myself the day she disappeared:
"I will find you, Harshita. Even if it kills me."
Because some souls aren't meant to be loved gently. Some loves aren't meant to fade. Some are meant to haunt you until the end of time.
And mine? Mine had her name carved into every heartbeat.
And if I had to rip heaven from its hinges and drag hell up by the roots to find her—I would.
My phone buzzed again. A name blinked on screen:
"Daadu calling..."
I froze. I hadn't spoken to my grandfather in weeks. Not because I didn't care — but because caring cracked open parts of him I'd nailed shut long ago.
The phone rang once.
Twice.
I answered.
"Daadu," I said, voice low, raw.
The old man's voice was warm. Worn. Full of concern.
"Ved... beta, are you sleeping at all these days?"
Silence.
A sigh from the other end. "You don't have to lie to me. I can hear it in your voice. You sound like a man running from his own shadow."
Vedant turned to the window again, gaze drifting to the skyline. "I'm managing."
"That's not living," Daadu replied. "That's surviving."
Another beat of silence.
"Come to Manali, beta. Just for a few days. The house is the same. The river still sings in the mornings. The apple orchard just bloomed. You used to love it there."
"I have meetings," I said finally after a long silence, slipping my mask back on. "Clients flying in from Zurich."
A sigh. Deep. Tired. Familiar.
"Your father made the same mistake. Dying for legacy. Don't be him, Ved."
"I'm not."
"No... you're worse. Because you know better."
The line was quiet for a moment. Then softer: "When you're ready to stop chasing ghosts... come home. Even if it's just for a night."
I said nothing. By the time I looked back down, the call had ended.