Arjun's POV
Love.
The word rolls off other people's tongues like music, like poetry. They make it sound like something holy, something worth dying for. To me, it has always sounded like a joke. An illusion, a chain, a leash that fools wrap around their necks and call bliss.
I was never meant for love. I was meant for hunger. For ambition. For the fire that does not let you sleep until you have destroyed every ghost of your past.
And my past has only one ghost.
Raj Malhotra.
I remember the day as though it was branded onto my skin. I was twenty-one, still raw, still bleeding from life's blows, but filled with hope. I walked into his office with a file clutched in my trembling hands—a proposal that had cost me months of sleepless nights. All I wanted was a chance. A chance to prove myself, to climb, to live.
He didn't even glance at the papers.
"Orphans like you should know their place. Business is not charity."
The words sliced deeper than knives. I stood frozen as his laughter echoed, each note hammering the reminder of what I was—nothing. Worthless. A stray child who thought he could matter.
That day, Arjun Mehra the dreamer died.
What remained was Arjun Mehra the storm.
Years have passed since then. I have built an empire with my own hands. Mehra Industries now stands higher than many men's dreams. I am called ruthless, arrogant, untouchable. Women whisper my name like a forbidden prayer. Enemies curse me in silence. Friends—well, I have only one true friend. Kabir. The only man who knows that behind the flawless suits and cold eyes lives a boy who once begged for a chance.
But even Kabir cannot wash away the fire inside me. The vow I made that day still burns in my blood. Raj Malhotra will kneel.
And destiny, it seems, has finally given me the perfect weapon.
His daughter.
Aarohi Malhotra.
I had seen her once before, from across a crowded gala. She was nothing like the other daughters of rich men who painted their faces with arrogance and swayed their hips with entitlement. No, she was softer. Untouched. A princess who looked like she had been raised in sunlight and lullabies.
Blue eyes, deep as oceans. Skin like porcelain. A nervous smile, the kind that spoke of innocence too fragile for this world. She wore pastel pink that night, a color that would have looked childish on another woman, but on her it looked like purity itself.
For one second—one dangerous second—I forgot myself. I stared too long, wondered too much.
But then I remembered her father.
Raj Malhotra.
And the fire returned.
The plan formed sharp and clear. I will charm her. I will play the role of the man every girl dreams of—gentle, patient, protective. I will make her heart race, her cheeks flush, her soul believe. She will give me her trust. She will give me her love. And eventually, she will give me herself.
Her first kiss, her first love, her first surrender. All of it will be mine.
And when the time is right, I will break her.
Not because I desire her. Not because I need her. But because nothing will destroy Raj Malhotra more than watching his only treasure shatter.
I will record it. Capture her innocence turned to ruin. And I will place it before him as my victory. Give me the project, or I will let the world see what your daughter has become.
Cruel? Perhaps. Ruthless? Certainly. But revenge is not gentle. Revenge is a flame that consumes everything, and I have fed it for too long to stop now.
I lean back in my chair, the city of Mumbai glittering beneath the glass walls of my penthouse office. The amber scotch in my hand catches the light, glowing like liquid fire. Somewhere deep inside, a whisper stirs—an image of her smile, soft and unguarded. But I crush it instantly.
I am not here to feel. I am here to conquer.
Aarohi Malhotra will be the blade I press against her father's throat. And when it is done, when Raj Malhotra finally bows, I will walk away victorious.
At least… that is what I tell myself
Aarohi's POV
They call me a princess. They say I live in a palace of glass. But what is a princess, if she has never seen the world outside her tower?
My life has been safe. Too safe. Father built walls around me out of pride and fear, and Mother decorated those walls with comfort. I have never known hunger, never known heartbreak. My friends at college say I am fragile, that I blush too easily, that I believe too quickly. Perhaps they are right.
But I can't help it. I was raised on fairy tales. Raised to believe in stories where love conquers everything.
I am twenty years old, studying literature because numbers suffocate me and words feel like air. In books, I can breathe. In books, love is not cruel. It is not business. It is not a deal between families. It is magic.
And yet, even in my sheltered world, loneliness seeps in. My father is always busy, my mother always tired. Friends come and go, but at the end of the day, it is just me and my dreams. Sometimes I wonder what it would feel like to be seen—not as Raj Malhotra's daughter, not as a doll in a glass case, but as Aarohi. Just Aarohi.
It was at one of Father's galas that I first saw him.
I didn't want to be there. I never do. These events feel like cages, where men boast about profits and women compare jewels. I had drifted into a corner, pretending to admire the chandeliers, when I felt it—eyes.
I turned.
And I saw him.
Arjun Mehra.
His name I had heard before, whispered in Father's office, spoken with disdain. A rival. A shark. A man of dangerous ambition. But seeing him in person was nothing like hearing about him.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, his suit fitting him like sin itself. His face was carved sharp, his jaw tight with a kind of arrogance that should have repelled me. But it didn't. It fascinated me.
And his eyes—honey-brown, fierce, alive—caught mine across the room. For a moment, I forgot to breathe.
Something in me trembled. Not fear. Not exactly. It was… something else.
The air thickened, as if the world had slowed, as if every sound faded except the pounding of my heart. I looked away quickly, cheeks burning. But even as I tried to convince myself it meant nothing, a strange ache lingered.
Why did I remember him? Why did I still feel those eyes even hours later, when I was safe in my room, hugging a pillow like it could hide me from myself?
He is dangerous, I tell myself. Father would never approve. He is everything I should stay away from.
And yet, the thought of him does not leave me.
Perhaps it is foolishness. Perhaps it is just curiosity. But a part of me, the part that has always longed for something beyond glass walls, whispers that maybe—just maybe—this stranger with eyes like molten honey is the beginning of a story I have always dreamed of.
I don't know why I feel this.
But tonight, when I close my eyes, it is not fairy-tale princes who haunt me.
It is him
Author's POV
And so it begins.
Two souls—one carved from vengeance, one woven of innocence—drawn into each other's orbit, unaware of the storm that waits.
He sees her as a weapon. She sees him as a mystery. Neither knows how fragile their worlds will become when love and hate collide.
What happens when a lie feels more real than truth?
What happens when the first touch, the first kiss, the first surrender is born not of love, but of revenge?
And what happens when the man who planned only to destroy discovers that in breaking her, he has broken himself?
Will she forgive him?
Will he ever forgive himself?
Or will their story end as most lies do—drowning in regret, torn apart by pride?
The answers lie ahead.
But one truth is already written in their fates—
Love born of deception is a fire.
And fire, no matter how bright, always leaves ashes.