𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐑𝐄𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐂𝐄𝐃 𝐆𝐑𝐎𝐎𝐌 (on-hold)

38: See-saw of demise

"Tell them, Nischay." Shefali says, barely able to speak. "Tell them I am pregnant with your child. Tell them whatever happened between us in Paris." Shefali announces, and a jolt of unbearable pain hits Zoya, straight in the chest. It felt like a bullet to her heart, the pain so excruciating that she grasps upon the table behind.

"When you got to know about our baby, you forced me to abort it." Shefali continues, looking straight at Nischay. Her eyes falling tears, her voice cracking as if she couldn't speak.

"Stop your idiotic prank now, sister." Nischay says, hard and rough. "Before I kill you with my bare hands."

"Yeah," Shefali breaks into cries. "That is exactly what he said to me when he got to know about my baby. He said he'll kill both of us. And when I denied, look what he did to me." 

To the worse, she searched Zoya for support, the woman barely able to breathe.

"Zoya," Shefali shakes her slowly. 

"Take your hands off my wife before I kill you, Sister." Nischay resists the anger, clenching his fists hard.

She ignores him, while Zoya felt so numb to even react to anything.

"You tell them, Zoya." Shefali persists, "You saw my baby, too. Tell them how small it was."

Zoya, too numb to even sense what's right or wrong. She doesn't feel anything. Not even a spare of emotion. It's a weird feeling, like nothingness. As if her mind has lost the smallest touch of sense to decipher between reality and delusion.

It's a fucking nightmare.

"Zoya." Nischay calls out desperately, his voice breathless, searching a spark of trust in his wife's eyes, but Zoya stood clueless, barely breathing, unable to think. 

Tears pooled in her eyes but refused to fall.

Love was blind. But the people around weren't.

They saw how Nischay walked, steps shuddering as he stumbled to his wife, his hands cupping her face and body shielding her cold one. The world stopped in itself, witnessing the intimacy between fate and desperation, air cackling with deceit, and the knot tied to destiny.  "Zoya?" Nischay breathes, eyes wandering between hers. "Do you love me?" He uttered, hands firm around her face, eyes blazing. 

 "Do you—do you trust me?" The question was asked again, brokenly wrapped in a hopeless cape of trust. Nischay wasn't breathing; he was inhaling shards of betrayal, each jagged piece carving its way into his lungs, into his very soul. 

Zoya, her eyes a pool of unshed tears, mirroring the turmoil within her, a mock against Nischay's love, now, tainted. It pained her chest, the memory of their happier days was a shard of glass embedded in her soul, twisting with every beat of her guilt-ridden heart. 

The first "I love you" whispered under a starlit sky. The nervous excitement of their first shared kiss. The quiet joy of holding their newborn, tiny fingers wrapped around hers in a silent promise of forever. 

How has it ended?

Her Nischay, the man she'd worshipped, was a viper in silk, a web of deception spun with honeyed lies? Could he ever do this to her? The revelation felt like a shard of obsidian ripping through her heart, leaving behind a gaping wound, raw and pulsating.

"Zoya." A breath trembled against her lips, resting at the door of her heart. The words, guttural groan erupting from a cracked well of sanity. Fingers, rough yet smooth brushed against her cheeks, her lips quivering as she parts them, and a breath escapes her lips. Hope lit, but was snuffed out way before it could reach him.