This can’t be real. It can’t. I had begged for it. God, I had begged. Nights where I stared at the ceiling and whispered into the dark like a child again, asking for something I knew I wouldn’t get.
Bring him back.
Just once.
Just let me see him again.
And all this time—All this time he was alive. Breathing. Existing. Knowing exactly where I was. And he never came.
Something inside my chest cracks so loudly I swear I can hear it. I want to scream. I want to ask him why. I want to hit him, to shove him, to make him feel even a fraction of what I have lived with all these years. But I can’t move. I can’t speak. I can barely breathe.
Krishna laughs. The sound feels obscene in the middle of this. “See?” he says, glancing at me with that same twisted amusement. “I told you he’d come.”
I don’t look at him. I can’t. My eyes are locked on the man in the doorway. On my father. My father. The word doesn’t fit in my head anymore. Not after everything. His gaze shifts from me to Krishna, and whatever softness had flickered there vanishes completely.
He becomes…something else.
Cold.
Controlled.
Dangerous.
“Let her go,” he says again, quieter this time—but there’s an edge to it now, something that curls underneath the words like a threat. “You wanted me,” he adds. “I’m here.”
I swallow hard. My throat burns.
What is happening?
Why is he here?
Why does Krishna want him?
“I need the information, Kaal.”
The name lands wrong. My brows knit together, confusion slicing through everything else.
Kaal?
Who—My gaze snaps back to my father. His jaw tightens. Enough to tell me that name means something. “No,” I whisper, shaking my head instinctively. “No, that’s not—”
My voice sounds small.
Lost.
“My father is Dheer,” I say, louder now, like I can anchor him back to who he was, who he’s supposed to be. “What are you talking about?”
No one answers me. Krishna just smirks. And my father—He doesn’t deny it. The silence is worse than anything he could have said.
“What is going on?” I finally ask, my voice breaking under the weight of it.
Krishna exhales like he’s bored. “Your father,” he says casually, like he’s discussing something mundane, “was an assassin.”
The word hits me like a slap. I stare at him. Then at my father. Then back at Krishna.
“No.” It comes out automatically. “That’s bullshit,” I say, shaking my head harder now. “My father was a salesman.”
He sold things. He traveled. He came home with stories and tired smiles and hands that smelled faintly of paper and dust. He—“Was he?” Krishna raises a brow.
