---

The world shrank to the steady thump of a tiny, impossible heartbeat.

Poornima cupped her belly like it was the most fragile treasure in existence. The hospital smell — antiseptic and stale coffee — had never smelled so sweet. She had insisted Veeresh come to every scan, every appointment, wanting him there for every flutter, every tiny miracle that made her both ache and glow.

Veeresh arrived like he always did now — late sometimes, but when it mattered, never absent. He hovered in the corner of the scan room, arms folded, jaw tense, but his eyes were soft in a way no one who feared him had ever seen. When the sonographer put the probe down and the black-and-white screen filled with a small, bright dot and the thunderous little drum of life, Veeresh’s breath hitched.

> “There,” Poornima whispered, tears bright. “Do you hear it? That’s ours.”

He stepped forward without being asked, placing one huge, careful hand over her small one. The enormity of the moment — responsibility folded into hope — landed on him like warm sunlight. For the first time, he felt the word father as something real, something wanted, not a title to be feared.

They celebrated in quiet ways: late-night milkshakes because the hospital cafeteria closed, arguments over baby names that dissolved into laughter, Veeresh practicing tying tiny knots in a gifted onesie with the awkward concentration of a man learning a new language. Poornima made sure he touched, felt, saw — wanted him present in every miracle so the idea of their children being his would already be rooted in his heart.

---

But peace never lasted long in their orbit.

Simon — cowardly, spiteful, and still dangerous — had not forgiven, and he had not changed. He planned from the shadows, the kind of man who would try to silence a future to punish the present. His bullet meant to erase the life that had humiliated him once before.

The ambush happened fast. Poornima stepped out of a clinic door into the perfume of rain and car fumes. A muffled shout, a flash at the corner of her vision — time slowed. Veeresh reacted like a beast smelling blood and threat: he moved as if cut from the same dark cloth as violence itself.

He threw himself between the shot and her.

Metal sang. Pain exploded across his shoulder where a bullet grazed him; another slashed his arm. But Poornima did not fall. Veeresh caught her, pressed her to his chest, and in the chaotic blur of sirens and cursed names, he answered with what he had promised himself never to give: a roar of rage.

He could have killed Simon on the spot. He could have let blood answer blood. His hands curled into fists; the world narrowed to the man who had tried to end the life beating against his ribs. The old Veeresh — the one who burned bridges and lives without a second thought — licked the wound of betrayal and bared teeth.

> “I am breaking your promise,” he hissed through clenched teeth as medics poured over them, his voice low and lethal. “If he breathes after this, I will make him beg to be forgotten.”

Poornima’s breath came in quick, frightened little bursts. The adrenaline cut through the tenderness of the day and filled his veins with an animal hunger. But Poornima — trembling, brave — reached up and pulled him down. She kissed him hard, not as a surrender but as a tether.

> “No, Veeresh,” she said between breaths, fingers digging at his collar to keep him from moving. “Please. Not like this. Not for the kids.”

Her eyes burned with a plea that made the steel in him wobble.

> “He has children, Veeresh. If you take him out, their father dies. Our babies will grow up with the echo of that. I can’t make our future from other children’s sorrow.” She swallowed, voice raw. “Warn him. Threaten him—make him know that if he ever comes near again, I will not be gentle. But don’t make his children fatherless. Not for us.”

Veeresh’s hands shook where they cradled her; fury warred with a new, softer ferocity born of the name father. He saw the truth in her — saw the moral gravity of creating a cycle of grief. For a heartbeat he wanted to shred the world, but then he watched Poornima’s trembling lips and the new life beneath her ribs and felt a different promise rising up.

He closed his eyes, the storm inside him settling into a hard, cold plan instead of a blind slaughter.

> “A warning,” he said finally, voice like gravel. “A very dark one. He’ll live long enough to know fear. He’ll know what could’ve been his end. And if he breathes after that — if he ever dares again — I will not warn next time.”

Poornima nodded, relief and sorrow braided together. She kissed his wounded cheek, tasting metal and rain, and for a moment they were two halves of the same vow: protection without needless blood, vengeance held back for a child’s sake.

---

That night, as Veeresh sat awake, bandaged and furious, he drafted a message that carried his new cruelty — precise, surgical:

> “This is your only warning. Stay away from Poornima Chowdary and her world. Cross the line again and the world you know will be erased, piece by piece. V.D.”

It was a promise wrapped in ice. He would watch. He would titrate pain instead of delivering a sudden death. He had learned the hard lesson that some victories cost more than they’re worth.

Poornima slept with her hand over his heart as the city hummed outside. Veeresh watched the tiny rise and fall of her chest, the swelling that promised a future full of noise and diapers and chaos — a future he suddenly wanted to defend with everything he had, yet without staining their home with the blood of innocent children.

He vowed, silently and utterly, to be the monster who would stand between harm and their joy — for their little ones, for Ruby, for a future he was still learning to believe in.