Aaryan Mehta
She thinks I'm saving her.
But the truth is, I'm burying her father through her.
Every smile I give her, every gentle word that falls from my lips, every night she spends tangled in my sheets—it isn't love, it isn't protection. It's calculation. It's a plan I drew in my head years ago, carved in the ashes of the night everything was stolen from me. A plan I've lived and breathed ever since.
Saanvi Khanna.
The daughter of the man who ripped the ground from beneath my feet.
He stripped me of everything. Every deal my father worked for, every ounce of dignity I once carried, every fragile piece of the life my mother begged me to protect. He crushed it without mercy, and in that wreckage, I swore I would rise again—not as the boy who lost everything, but as the man who would take it all back.
And now his daughter lies in my bed and whispers my name like it's salvation.
The irony is suffocating.
I stand at the window of my office and watch her downstairs, where she laughs with my staff as though she belongs here. She looks radiant—light spilling out of her in waves, drawing people in, softening edges I've sharpened to steel. She is vibrant, magnetic, unguarded. And she has no idea she's the weapon in my hand. The perfect key. The match I intend to strike against everything her father has built, just to watch the whole thing burn.
The documents are ready. I've waited years for this moment, building it brick by brick, move by move. The offshore accounts her father thinks are untouchable? Already compromised. His partners, his allies, the men he trusts without hesitation—they're already collapsing, one by one, pulled from beneath him. And all of it was made possible because of her. Her access. Her presence. Her innocence.
She has no idea she's already undone him.
She is sweet poison in silk, laced into my life with soft words and softer touches, and she doesn't realize she's the reason his empire will crumble.
Still, there's something I hadn't calculated, something I hadn't accounted for in the blueprint of revenge I've carried all these years.
Her eyes.
The way they search mine, like she's trying to dig through the walls I've spent a lifetime building. The way her touch lingers, not with suspicion, but with belief. She trusts me. Completely. Foolishly. She trusts me in a way that feels like a sin. And every time her gaze locks with mine, I feel something I shouldn't—a weight pressing down on me, the unbearable sense that I'm tearing wings off a butterfly.
I hate it. I hate that I feel it. Because weakness was never part of the plan.
I pour myself a glass of scotch, but I don't drink it. The bitterness I crave is already in my mouth, in my chest, in the pit of my stomach.
Tonight is the night.
Tonight, I meet with the final investor—the last thread holding her father's legacy together. The man who could secure his empire, keep it standing for another generation. But I'll be there too. And I won't come empty-handed. I'll bring the documents she unknowingly handed over last week. A single signature she thought meant nothing will be the blade that guts her father's kingdom.
It should feel glorious.
It should feel like triumph.
Instead, it makes me sick.
My phone buzzes, snapping me out of the spiral. Her name lights up my screen.
Saanvi: Pick up something sweet on your way back. The kind that makes you feel like you did something wrong.
I stare at the words longer than I should. Sweet. Wrong.
The irony stings.
I don't need dessert to feel that way. I'm already choking on the guilt of the wrong I've been committing since the day I let her into my life. Since the day I let her believe I was her safety when I was only sharpening the knife behind her back.
Still, I pocket the phone. And I smile.
It's a mask, but I wear it well.
Because no matter what this is becoming, no matter how deep she seeps into the cracks I swore I'd never have, the mission hasn't changed.
The target hasn't changed.
Her father ruined my life.
And now, through her, I will ruin his.
She just doesn't know it yet.
---
But that's the thing about poison.
It doesn't scream. It doesn't announce itself.
It seeps in silently, disguised as sweetness, and by the time you realize it's killing you, it's already too late.
That's what she is to me. Sweet poison. And I drink her every night knowing exactly what she's doing to me. Knowing she's dissolving something inside me that was meant to stay stone. Knowing that when the dust settles, I'll be left with nothing but ash again.
Yet I keep drinking.
Because revenge tastes sharper than guilt, and hatred burns longer than desire.
And because no matter how much her eyes haunt me, no matter how heavy this guilt sits in my chest, I will not stop.
Her father took everything from me.
Now it's my turn.
And she is the perfect weapon.
The only weapon.
My sweet, unsuspecting poison.
And I'll use her until there's nothing left of him to destroy.