Aaryavardhan's POV

The marble was cold beneath my bare feet. I remember that — the chill seeping into my skin, grounding me in a reality I didn't want to exist.

She stood at the end of the hallway, bathed in moonlight streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows. My mother. The world's beloved songbird. India's darling. The woman whose voice could make millions weep.

She was wearing white silk. Always white. Pure. Angelic.

Her hair fell in perfect waves down her back, and her lips curved into that smile — the one she gave to cameras, to crowds, to the world that worshipped her.

"Aaryavardhan, beta," she said softly, her voice lilting like a lullaby.

I was thirteen. Old enough to understand. Too young to stop what was coming.

But I saw it in her eyes. That faraway look. The one that meant she was already gone, already somewhere we couldn't reach.

She raised her hand. The gun glinted silver in the moonlight.

"I love you both," she whispered, still smiling. "Remember that."

The barrel pressed against her temple.

Time fractured.

I should have moved. Screamed. Done something.

But I stood frozen, my feet rooted to that cold marble, watching her finger curl around the trigger.

The smile never faltered.

Click.

BANG.

The sound shattered the silence like glass breaking. Blood bloomed across white silk, spreading like watercolor on canvas. Her body crumpled with the same grace she brought to every stage, every performance.

Perfect. Even in death.

"NO!" My father's roar split the air as he lunged forward, collapsing beside her, his hands shaking as they hovered over her body — afraid to touch, afraid to accept what was already true.

I didn't move.

I couldn't.

The smell of gunpowder mixed with her perfume — jasmine and something darker, something rotting beneath the sweetness.

"She's gone," I heard myself say. My voice was flat. Empty. "She's been gone for years."

My father looked up at me, his face twisted in anguish, tears streaming down his cheeks. "How can you just stand there? She was your mother!"

Was.

Past tense already.

Because I understood something in that moment he never would. She hadn't left us tonight. She'd been leaving us in pieces for years — her mind fracturing, her smiles becoming masks, her love turning into something unstable and dangerous.

He'd refused to see it. Refused to admit that the woman he loved was sick. That love wasn't enough to save her.

Love had blinded him.

Love had destroyed her.

Love had killed the boy I used to be.

I stared down at her body, at the blood pooling beneath her head, at the smile still frozen on her lips even in death.

Something inside me snapped — not with sound, but with silence. A deep, consuming silence that swallowed every emotion I'd ever felt.

In that moment, I made a vow.

Emotions are poison.

Love is destruction.

Control is the only god I will ever serve.

I turned away from my father's sobs, from my mother's corpse, from the boy who would have cried.

That boy died tonight.

The man who walked away from that hallway would never lose control again.

Never feel too much.

Never love.

Because I had seen what love did. I had watched it smile while pulling the trigger.

And I would rather be cold, calculated, and alone than ever become that weak.