YAHVI RAO

The rain hit like a warning.

It lashed against the windows of the black SUV in angry, repetitive bursts, drowning the city behind her as the car wound its way into Udaipur's old hills — toward that house, toward him. Every kilometer closer made her pulse hammer harder against her throat, not out of fear, but rage. Cold, controlled, beautifully sharpened rage.

The kind of rage you hold onto for five years because it's the only thing that keeps you from falling apart.

Outside, the sky cracked open in streaks of violent silver, and the gates of Rathore Haveli began to rise from the rain and the fog like a myth you thought you'd left behind. It stood exactly as she remembered — monstrous and magnificent. A palace built not just from stone and gold, but from buried secrets, dead men's names, and the silence of women like her.

And her father.

She pressed her nails into her palm and reminded herself: You are not here to beg. You are not here to cry.

You are here to burn it all down.

Rathore Haveli was a fortress in every sense of the word. Intricate lattice windows that didn't let in a single truth. Terraces that overlooked the city like it was something to be ruled, not loved. And that door — towering, ancient wood inlaid with brass and arrogance. She had once looked at this house as an outsider, trying to make sense of its grandeur through the lens of a journalist.

Now, she walked in through the front door as a bride.

Not by choice.

Not out of love.

Because five years ago, Yahvi Rao published a story about the Rathore family's empire — money laundering, land deals, whispered bribes hidden in linen-covered ledgers — and for twenty-four glorious hours, the world believed her. And then everything went silent.

Websites wiped clean. Editors replaced. Witnesses retracted. And her name — her name — dragged through every filthy tabloid in the country. Liar. Homewrecker. Ambitious slut.

She lost everything.

And two weeks later, her father, an accountant in the company she exposed, was found hanging from the ceiling fan in his office.

They said it was suicide.

They lied.

The Haveli doors groaned as they opened, and the scent hit her like memory: sandalwood, jasmine, something metallic beneath. Decay masked in devotion. She stepped onto the cool marble floor, her heels echoing in the silence of a home that had once sent her fleeing in disgrace.

Now she returned as their daughter-in-law.

The irony was poetic. It also made her sick.

She wasn't wearing red. She refused. Her deep green kurta clung to her rain-damp skin, and her hair had come loose from the careful bun she'd twisted in Mumbai that morning. But she held her head high. She would not look small here. Not after what they'd taken from her.

And then — there he was.

Darsh Singh Rathore.

Standing in the archway like a statue sculpted by a man who hated softness. Slate grey kurta, storm in his eyes, that same unreadable mouth that once told her she didn't have the power to win.

He looked the same. Not older. Not tired. Just... colder.

As if he had frozen the day her world ended, while she had burned every day since.

She hated how her stomach tightened when she saw him.

She hated more that he didn't look surprised.

Of course he wasn't. This was his game. His house. His rules. Even this marriage — a contract shoved into her hands by his lawyer last week — was a move on his chessboard. Not a gesture. Not an apology. A solution. To the body they found last week on Rathore land. A man linked to her father's old company.

She wasn't here for romance. She was here for vengeance. For answers.

And now, legally, she was his wife.

She wanted to scream. To claw at the perfection of the marble walls, the quiet servants who refused to meet her eyes, the smiling portrait of his father above the staircase — the same man who once offered her a bribe to kill her own story.

Her fingers curled into fists.

The storm inside her chest was worse than the one outside.

She thought of her sister, Inaya, begging her not to do this. Of her father's last voicemail — "Don't trust anyone, beti. Not even yourself." — of how the case file was sealed, the funeral rushed, the bank account mysteriously closed.

She had nothing left to lose.

But they did.

Darsh watched her like he was already calculating her next three moves. Like he already knew she'd burn the whole place down just to find out what lay buried beneath it.

Fine.

Let him watch.

She had returned.

And this time, Yahvi Rao wasn't leaving until the truth screamed from these walls.