Aarya Malhotra died at the age of eighty-six.
There was no one beside her bed.
The room was vast, elegant, and silent—much like the life she had built for herself after destroying everything else. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, Mumbai glimmered with indifferent lights. Inside, the machines hummed softly, measuring the final moments of a woman the world once feared.
Aarya stared at the ceiling, her breath shallow, uneven.
Power. Wealth. Control.
She had owned all of it.
Yet in her last moments, none of it followed her into death.
Her mind drifted, unbidden, to a name she had buried decades ago.
Rudra Singhania.
Her husband.
Her obsession.
Her greatest mistake.
She had loved him with a devotion so absolute that it erased her own existence. She remembered bending herself into silence, swallowing humiliation with a practiced smile, convincing herself that patience was love and endurance was loyalty.
He had never looked back.
His eyes had always passed over her, lingering on another woman—fragile, untouchable, forever protected.
The white moonlight.
Aarya's fingers trembled weakly against the blanket.
She remembered the day the doctor spoke gently, carefully, as if afraid she might shatter.
The pregnancy couldn't be saved.
The stress was too much.
There would be no second chance.
That was the day something inside her died long before her body ever would.
Love rotted into resentment.
Devotion sharpened into calculation.
She stopped begging.
She started planning.
With the quiet assistance of one man—steady, powerful, unwavering—she dismantled everything that had destroyed
her. Devraj Khanna never asked her to forgive. Never pushed her toward mercy. He only gave her the means to choose.
And she chose blood.
Rudra Singhania died.
So did the woman he protected.
The world whispered about karma.
Aarya called it balance.
After that, she lived a long life.
She ruled boardrooms, crushed rivals, and adopted a child she raised to be cold and brilliant—because warmth had once nearly killed her. She taught him strength, discipline, and silence. She never taught him how to love.
In doing so, she created a mirror of herself.
Aarya exhaled slowly.
"If I had been loved," she murmured into the empty room, her voice barely a breath, "would I have chosen a different ending?"
No one answered.
The machines began to slow.
Darkness crept in gently, like an old companion.
And then—
Pain exploded through her body.
Aarya gasped.
Her eyes flew open.
Light blinded her. Voices surrounded her.
The smell of antiseptic filled her lungs as her heart thundered wildly in her chest.
"She's awake!"
"Get the doctor!"
Her body felt wrong—too light, too alive.
She lifted her hands.
Smooth skin. No age. No scars.
Her breath hitched.
"No…" she whispered.
A familiar voice broke through the chaos, shaking.
"Aarya!"
She turned her head.
Standing beside the bed was a man she had mourned for decades.
Her father.
Vikram Malhotra.
Alive. Younger. His eyes filled with fear instead of regret as he clutched her hand tightly.
"You collapsed at the office," he said urgently. "You scared me."
Office.
Her mind snapped together.
This was before the engagement.
Before the marriage.
Before the love that killed her.
Aarya closed her eyes.
This life… she would not beg.
She would not obsess.
She would not die for love.
Her fingers tightened around her father's hand.
She loved him until she died twice.
This time—
She would live.