𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃 & 𝐁𝐎𝐔𝐐𝐔𝐄𝐓𝐒 ( mafia love story ).

THE COUSINS WHO WOULDN'T LEAVE

CHAPTER 23: THE COUSINS WHO WOULDN'T LEAVES

JODHPUR — SHEKHAWAT HAVELI — INNER COURTYARD
MONDAY — 2:00 AM

The first game appeared in the form of a massive silver thali filled with milk.

Karan carried it with the ceremonial gravity of a priest performing a sacred ritual, while Rehan trailed behind with a velvet pouch containing two gold rings. Meher brought up the rear, holding a stopwatch and an expression of pure, unfiltered delight.

"THE FIRST GAME," Karan announced to the dwindling but still substantial crowd of family members. "The ring in the milk. Both brides' hands enter the thali simultaneously. Whoever finds their ring first wins. The winner has control of the household."

"That's not what the game means," Priya corrected from her position near the pillar, where she had set up a photography station.

"It is now. We're modernizing tradition."

"You can't just MODERNIZE tradition."

"My generation can and will." Karan placed the thali on the low table before Aarna and Zoya. "RULES: both rings are dropped at the same time. The milk is dyed with turmeric so you can't see through it. First to retrieve their ring wins. Cheating results in disqualification and public humiliation."

Aarna looked at the thali.

The milk was pale gold, opaque with turmeric, and she could already tell this was going to be a disaster for one simple reason: her hands were trained for surgical precision, and Zoya's hands were trained for signing billion-dollar contracts.

Neither of them had experience fishing for rings in opaque liquid.

"This is unfair," Aarna said.

"Why?"

"I have longer fingers."

"That's an ADVANTAGE, Doctor sahiba."

"I don't want advantages. I want to lose."

The entire family turned to stare at her.

"You want to LOSE?" Zoya asked, her amber eyes narrowing.

"I want YOU to win. You should have control of the household."

"That's not— that's not the POINT of the GAME, Aarna."

"It should be."

Zoya looked at her wife — this impossible, chivalrous, deeply weird woman she had just married — and felt approximately forty percent exasperated and sixty percent so in love she could barely breathe.

"We're both going to try our best," Zoya announced firmly. "And whoever wins, wins."

"But—"

"NO BUTS, DOCTOR SAHIBA." Meher held up the stopwatch. "On your marks."

Aarna and Zoya positioned their hennaed hands above the thali.

"Get set."

They flexed their fingers.

"GO."

Both hands plunged into the milk.

What followed was approximately twenty-three seconds of absolute chaos.

The thali was deeper than it looked. The milk was warmer than expected. Their rings were slippery with the kind of enchanted elusiveness that items only developed when being searched for under pressure.

Aarna's surgeon's fingers moved methodically, systematically mapping the bottom of the thali in a grid pattern.

Zoya's hands moved in frantic circles, abandoning strategy for pure chaotic energy.