The night outside was quiet, but inside the penthouse, the air was heavy with unspoken emotions.

Veeresh stood by the glass wall of his bedroom, cigarette between his fingers, the faint glow at its tip flickering like a dying star. Smoke curled lazily into the air, blurring the view of London’s skyline.

He took a slow drag, eyes distant, lost somewhere between memory and pain.

Sahana.

Her name alone was enough to stir the ache he had buried deep. The one he once loved… the one who had chosen his stepbrother instead.

And then, Poornima.

He exhaled a long breath, eyes narrowing slightly. “She did everything in love,” he murmured bitterly. “But the love wasn’t for me.”

He thought of her cruel laughter from school, the way she’d joined her friends to humiliate him — not out of hate, but out of obsession for Pavan. It stung even more knowing that her cruelty came from misplaced love, not genuine malice.

He pressed his thumb against the cigarette filter, extinguishing the light. “She did it for someone else… and I was just the casualty.”

His gaze drifted toward the closed guest room door across the hall. He knew she was inside, crying. He could almost hear her muffled sobs in the silence of the night — but he didn’t move.

A humorless smile curved on his lips. “Don’t I deserve love too?” he whispered to himself. “Someone who looks at me, not through me?”

But then his expression hardened again, the softness in his eyes fading as quickly as it came.

He turned away from the door, taking another cigarette from the box. “Love?” he scoffed under his breath. “The one I loved left me for another man… and the one I married?”

He gave a dry laugh, shaking his head. “I don’t even know what she feels. Maybe guilt. Maybe pity.”

Lighting another cigarette, he leaned against the wall, staring blankly into the night.

“Maybe I was never meant for love,” he said quietly, almost to himself. “Maybe pain is all I was ever supposed to have.”

The clock ticked softly in the background, marking each lonely second as the smoke lingered around him — thick, cold, and endless, just like the ache in his heart.

And across the hall, in the quiet of her room, Poornima whispered his name in her sleep.

But he never heard it.