The way every instinct had screamedminewhen he’d seen her trying to disappear.
The PR statement had been necessary. Professional. The right move.
It was also a lie.
And lies, Vikram was learning, had a way of feeling worse than scandals.
Chapter 10
One Month Later
The set didn’t quiet down.
It sealed shut.
Not the ordinary pause between takes. This silence carried weight. It pressed into ears and settled into bones. Even the lights seemed to hum softer.
At the far edge of the set, Vikram sat alone in a metal folding chair. The expensive suit still clung to him, collar open, tie hanging loose. His body curved inward, elbows on his knees, fingers locked together until the knuckles blanched.
No one crossed the invisible circle around him.
Crew members moved along the walls with measured footsteps. Voices thinned to whispers. Equipment was adjusted without clatter. The air felt brittle.
Behind the monitor, Director Farhan Mirza, known for his intense romance movies, pressing actors for the best of their performance, watched the scene they had just shot, the moment a man reads his wife’s diagnosis and understands his life has split in two.
Vikram had not shouted. He had gone quiet. And that quiet had cracked something open. The cameraman had wiped his face. The sound engineer had missed her cue.
Now Vikram remained suspended in that fracture, eyes fixed somewhere beyond the painted hospital set.
“Give him space,” Farhan murmured to an assistant who approached with a question. “We don’t touch him when he’s like this.”
Method acting. Beautiful for the camera. Hell for production schedules.
Farhan’s gaze shifted, catching movement across the set.
Divya.
She moved with purpose, a water bottle in one hand, notebook tucked under her arm. She cut a straight line through the frozen space.
An assistant director stepped forward to stop her, but Farhan raised his hand slightly.
He’d seen this before. Three times in the past two weeks. Each time after Vikram’s most devastating scenes.
She approached without hesitation.
Vikram didn’t look up. His shoulders remained hunched, hands clasped tight, breathing shallow and uneven. He sat there, hollowed out, the role still wearing him like a second skin.
Divya stopped beside him. Close enough that the fabric of her kurta grazed his shoulder.
She didn’t rush to speak. She extended the water bottle and waited.
From behind the monitor, Farhan could see her profile, still, composed. The charged silence that kept everyone else at bay seemed not to touch her.
She bent slightly, close enough to whisper something.
Then she straightened.
The shift in Vikram was gradual.