Modi sat in his office, the air around him thick with a silence that hummed with tension. The weight of the phone pressed tightly against his ear seemed heavier than usual, as though the device itself knew the kind of news it carried.
His jaw was clenched so tightly, a faint ticking could be heard from the strain in his temples. His eyes, which were normally sharp and unreadable, were now stormy, shadowed with growing rage that deepened with every word spoken through the receiver.
He didn't say anything, not yet. He just sat there, statue-still, except for the twitch of a muscle in his cheek that betrayed the turmoil building inside him. The doctor's voice on the other end of the line was calm, clinical, and that only made it worse. There was something infuriating about how detached the man sounded while delivering such brutal news. Modi's fingers tightened around the edges of the phone, his knuckles whitening, lips pressing into a thin line.
