The sun was high, but Abir's heart was heavy — full of shadows long overdue for confrontation.
He stood before the towering glass doors of the Basu estate — once called home, now a museum of unsaid things and undone love. The staff paused when they saw him. No cameras. No entourage. Just a man — barefaced and burning.
Inside, his father sat in the same armchair Abir remembered from boyhood — sipping tea, posture stiff, eyes unreadable.
"Abir," he said, nodding. "I heard the news."
"You heard everything?" Abir's voice was calm — too calm. The kind of calm that forms before something breaks.
His father placed the cup down with care.
"I saw the press conference. The footage. And your eyes."
A pause.
"Just like your mother's… when she used to protect you."
Abir flinched.
"My mother protected me from the world," he said. "You handed me to it. You dismissed me. You let her — Sulekha — raise me like a stain on your suit."
"I didn't know what she'd done—"
"You didn't want to know," Abir cut in. "You looked away. Again and again. When I cried. When she mocked me. When she took my mother's last belongings and threw them away like garbage. You knew. You just closed your eyes."
His father turned — toward the window, the garden, as if the truth might be softer somewhere out there.
"I was weak," he whispered. "And scared."
Abir stepped closer. His words didn't shout — they ached.
"I needed a father. You gave me silence. I grew up learning manhood through rage and distance.You didn't lose me because of her.You lost me the moment you stopped choosing me."
His father blinked — and in that small gesture, Abir saw it.
Regret.Raw.Real.
"I lost more than a son," the older man said. "I lost the only person who ever looked at me like I could be better."
Abir's jaw tightened.
"I didn't come here for your apology.I came to say — I remember now. Everything.You were once friends with Maholi's father. You stood beside him once.And then… you didn't.You let him die alone — buried beneath your silence."
His father's breath caught — a silent, crumbling sound.
"What happens now?" he asked. Not with defiance. But with quiet surrender.
Abir breathed deep — the kind of breath that ends one story and begins another.
"I don't want revenge.I have truth now.That's enough.The rest… I'll build with her."
And with that, he turned and walked away.
That night, the garden of their small rented cottage glowed under fairy lights. Maholi stood barefoot, light dancing in her hair, a tiny chocolate cake cradled in her hands — one candle flickering on top.
"What's this?" Abir asked, voice rough from the day.
"A celebration," she smiled. "For justice. For love.For the man who finally chose both."
He stepped forward, brow raised gently.
"Did I get a gift?"
Her eyes twinkled.
"You did."
She tugged him inside.On their bed lay a weathered leather notebook.
"My father's journal," she said softly. "I found it in an old trunk.His last page said — 'The man who protects her will be the one worthy of her. I pray she finds him.'"
Abir couldn't speak.His throat closed.
"And she did," Maholi whispered.
He kissed her then — not with hunger, not with urgency, but with reverence.
Like a prayer answered after years of silence.
That night, they came together not to escape, but to arrive.
They undressed slowly — not as lovers lost in lust, but as survivors peeling off old armor.
She giggled when he kissed her ankle.
He sighed when her fingers traced the scar beneath his collarbone.
She whispered dreams into the hollow of his throat.
He painted a future along her spine with the tips of his fingers.
And when their bodies finally intertwined, it wasn't about need or forgetting.
It was about becoming.
Two stories.One page.The past burning far behind them.
And the future —warm, waiting, and finally —theirs.