"You can't bury the past when your soul still bleeds."
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NYRA VORA
I thought waking up in this new body would free me.
But freedom feels like a different kind of prison.
My heart still carries the weight of knives.
My mind—still stitched with the screams of my old life.
I stood in front of the mirror in the Vora estate guest wing. My reflection stared back: perfect skin, striking green eyes, lips painted with silent war.
But behind those eyes?
Meher.
The woman who died.
The mother who was buried.
The wife who was bled for sport.
---
The dream last night was no dream at all.
It was a memory.
> "Dance, Meher. Or your son doesn't eat tonight."
"Strip. Crawl. Smile while you suffer."
Ravian's voice, like poison in honey. Kray's laugh—sharp and disgusting. The pain, still fresh, still aching in my bones.
I woke up screaming.
Kai didn't knock. He burst in.
---
KAI
He stood in the doorway, shirtless, his gun in hand.
> "Another one?" he asked calmly, as if he'd heard this scream a hundred times before.
> "They haunt me," I said, wiping the sweat from my forehead.
He set the gun down on the desk.
> "Let them. Until your vengeance becomes louder than their voices."
His eyes lingered on me. Not with lust. With knowing.
Kai didn't want me the way Ravian did.
He respected me. And feared the fire I carried.
> "They're throwing a party tomorrow night," he added. "Ravian and Kray will both be there. For some investor deal."
I froze.
> "Will they recognize me?"
He shook his head.
> "Your face is different. Your voice, your gait, your eyes. But your rage?"
"They'll feel it. Even if they don't understand why."
---
LATER THAT DAY...
Kai brought me files.
Photos. Surveillance. Secrets.
I saw Ravian's schedule. Kray's current lover. Their business front. Their private crimes. A sex club under Ravian's name.
> "They're still monsters," I muttered.
> "Worse," Kai said. "They got better at hiding it."
A familiar photo slid from the pile.
A boy.
Aarav.
Older now. But still my son.
He was in some boarding school. Expensive. Hidden. He looked thinner. Quieter. His smile didn't reach his eyes.
My chest burned.
> "Does he… know anything?" I asked.
Kai hesitated.
> "They told him his mother abandoned him. Died in an accident. He doesn't know the truth."
Tears welled in my eyes—but I swallowed them.
> "I'll bring him back. I'll burn the world if I have to."
---
THAT NIGHT
I wore black lace.
Not for beauty.
For mourning.
The woman I used to be—the bride in gold, the mother on her knees, the daughter silenced—was dead.
Nyra was a shadow now.
A siren.
> "You ready?" Kai asked.
> "Let's see how well monsters handle ghosts," I whispered.
Tomorrow night, I would face Ravian and Kray for the first time.
They wouldn't recognize me.
But they would feel it—
The tremble in their bones.
The echo of my pain.
The taste of a storm coming.
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🩸 End of Chapter 3
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