Chapter 32 — Just Responsibility

The room remained dark except for the city lights slipping through the glass walls.

Veeresh stood near the minibar silently before pouring whiskey into a crystal glass. The ice clinked softly, but even that sound felt distant tonight.

His father’s words kept replaying inside his head.

“She has suffered enough.”

Veeresh closed his eyes briefly before drinking the whiskey in one go.

Everything was changing too fast.

That irritated him.

For years, revenge had been simple.

Find the truth behind Zoya’s death.

Destroy everyone responsible.

No emotions.

No hesitation.

But now Poornima stood in the middle of everything like a complication he never planned for.

He remembered the marks on her face.

The way she struggled to breathe during panic attacks.

The confusion in her eyes when memories disappeared midway.

And worst of all—

Her trust.

That trust bothered him deeply.

Because Salvatore Dreewan was not a safe man to trust.

Veeresh exhaled slowly, gripping the whiskey glass tighter.

Her pain shouldn’t matter to him.

Yet it did.

Too much.

And that was dangerous.

“She’s the only connection to everything,” he muttered quietly to himself.

The birthday incident.

Zoya.

Her uncle’s death.

The buried case.

Everything somehow led back to Poornima Rathore.

But the problem was—

She genuinely didn’t remember properly.

Or maybe her mind refused to remember.

Veeresh leaned back against the counter tiredly.

He should have hated her.

Should have used her.

Should have treated her like a pawn in his revenge.

Instead, he was worrying whether she had taken her medicine, whether she slept peacefully, whether she was safe inside that house.

Pathetic.

His jaw tightened instantly at the thought.

“No,” he said coldly to himself.

This wasn’t weakness.

Wasn’t love.

Wasn’t attachment.

Poornima was simply his responsibility now.

Nothing more.

That’s what Veeresh forced himself to believe while staring into the darkness—

Even though somewhere deep inside, Salvatore Dreewan already knew he was lying to himself.