In the high-security wing of Mumbai's Central Psychiatric Facility, Riya Mukherjee sat motionless on the edge of her bed. Six years had passed since that blood-soaked night.
The official report was simple and brutal
Riya Mukherjee, former Research Analyst of the Emergency Task Force, had shot her husband five times in the face while he slept. No struggle. No scream.
Just "silence".
She hadn't spoken a word since then.The ETF had shattered that night.
The mighty Arjun Suryakant Rawte, her once gruff second-in-command who had slowly learned to care, learned to let her place that silver coin in his pocket for luck had arrived too late.
He found her covered in blood, gun at her feet, staring blankly at the wall. The woman who once rattled off statistics to save lives, who teased him out of his shell, who sacrificed herself for the city..now refused to defend herself.
The courts called it guilt. Arjun called it impossible.He had never stopped believing there was more. Riya wasn't a killer.
Not his Riya.
Now, as a private forensic consultant ,he studied medicine sole purpose to reopen her case as none was ready to take her case. Everyone painted her as a cold blooded murderer.
It's ironic right, you may do thousands of good things in life but that one bad incident is what people remember forever and make opinions on you based on that one incident.
The ETF had moved on, Sameer had moved on, but Arjun never could), he pulled every string to get assigned as her therapist. The facility resisted too personal, too dangerous but Arjun's reputation as the relentless cop who bent rules for justice won out.
He sat across from her in the sterile room, notepad untouched.
"Riya," he said quietly, voice rough from years of grief. It sounds like a plea, a prayer, a hope disguised in his plea.
"I know you're in there. You don't have to talk today. Or tomorrow. But I'm not leaving until you do.
"She didn't look at him".Her eyes fixed on the small self-portrait she'd painted in therapy a woman bound in chains, mouth sewn shut.
The staff called it her "Alcestis," after the myth of the wife who died to save her husband. Arjun saw something else, a silent plea wrapped in a scream.
Weeks turned to months. He read her old case files aloud, reminded her of the virus she swallowed to save millions, of how he had yelled at her for being "useless" with a gun until he realized she was the bravest person he knew.
He brought her favorite coffe black, no sugar, the way she used to steal sips from his flask during late-night stakeouts.Nothing.
One day, he found her diary hidden in the art supplies. The staff had missed it. Pages filled with neat handwriting her thoughts, her fears.She wrote about the nightmares. About a man watching her. About paranoia that someone was in their home. About her husband her husband changing. Becoming cold. Threatening.
Arjun's blood ran cold. Riya had never married. Not in the timeline he knew. But the diary spoke of a secret wedding, rushed and hidden.
A man named Vikram someone from her past, someone she trusted. Someone who had betrayed her.The entries grew frantic.
He's cheating.
I saw the messages.
But he says I'm imagining it. That I'm unstable.
Like my father said before he died.
He tied me up tonight. It was a sick game. But the gun was real. He pointed it at me, said if I ever spoke, he would make sure the ETF never found my body.
Then the final entry
"I took the gun from him. I shot him. Five times". Because if I didn't, he would have killed me first. And then he would have gone after Arjun. After the team. I couldn't let that happen.
Silence is safer. Silence protects them.
Arjun's hands shook. This wasn't guilt. This was self-defense wrapped in trauma. But why the silence? Why not tell the truth?
He confronted her that evening.
"Riya", I read it. All of it. You were protecting us. Protecting me. But you don't have to carry this alone anymore.
For the first time in six years, her eyes met his. Tears welled, but no sound.He leaned closer. I failed you once. I didn't see the signs. I didn't protect you when you needed it most. But I'm here now. Talk to me. Please.
Her lips parted. A whisper so faint he almost missed it.
" Arjun"
His name. Broken, raw, but hers.He froze. She spoke again, voice cracking like glass.
He is psychotic, draws pleasure in seeing people in pain and bathed in fear. He bound me to chains of fear, instilled horrendous images of killing my dog brutally in front of my eyes. He said if I ever left, he would destroy everything that related to me.
I chose silence. To keep you all safe. To keep the truth buried.
Arjun's world tilted. The husband wasn't just a betrayer. He was a manipulator who had used Arjun's own unspoken feelings for Riya as leverage.
The marriage had been a trap. The murder a desperate escape.But the final twist cut deeper.
In her last coherent session, Riya confessed the full horror.
Vikram had been obsessed with her for years. He'd stalked her even before ETF. When she rejected him, he fabricated the marriage, drugged her during a "celebration," and staged the threats to break her.
The night of the shooting, he had forced her to choose " kill him, or watch him frame Arjun for murder".
She chose to end it. Then, overwhelmed by guilt not for killing a monster, but for the part of her that had once trusted him she vowed silence. A self-imposed prison. Because speaking would mean reliving it. And because she believed she didn't deserve forgiveness.
Arjun sat in stunned silence."You saved me," he said finally. "All those years ago, you saved everyone. And I... I never said it. I never told you how much you mattered.
How much I..."Riya reached out, trembling fingers brushing his.
"I know," she whispered.
"I always knew".
"The silence broke that day not with a scream, but with truth. Riya's case was reopened. Evidence from the diary, old surveillance footage Arjun hunted down, proved self-defense. She was released.But freedom came with scars.
Outside the facility, under Mumbai's relentless rain, Arjun waited. Riya stepped out, hesitant.He offered his hand. No words needed.She took it.And for the first time in years, the khadoos Arjun Rawte smiled small, real, hopeful.In every age, a hero emerges.
But sometimes, the real hero is the one who chooses silence to protect the ones she loves... until the one she loves refuses to let her stay silent any longer.
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