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“No, Shaurya. This isn’t possible anymore,” Rhea said, her voice shaking. “I want a divorce.”

He froze, unable to process her words.

“A divorce?” he repeated, almost numb. “Rhea, this... this is not the solution. We can still fix this. I know I failed you, but we can come back from this.”

But she was unmoved. Her silence said more than her words ever could.

She shut her eyes and shook her head. “It’s too late, Shaurya.”

He tried again, pleading, reasoning, apologising, desperate to make her understand that he had changed.

“Rhea, please,” he said. “Don’t do this. Don’t throw us away like this. Tell me what you need. I’ll give it. I’ll change. Hell, I already started making the changes. I’m home now. I’m present. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

And then, she snapped.

“I don’t love you anymore, Shaurya.”

She blurted out the truth with the force of a blade slicing through my flesh.

“There’s someone else.”

For a second, the world stopped spinning.

“I’m in love with someone else,” she continued, her voice no longer trembling. “It’s been a year. His name is Anirudh. He works with me. He’s a senior leader in my company.”

She didn’t sugarcoat anything. She didn’t try to soften the blow. She laid it all bare—how she had grown close to Anirudh during his long absences, how the emotional connection slowly deepened, filling the void left by Shaurya, how her work trips weren’t just about work anymore. Anirudh had been travelling with her. They were together. They had been together for a year.

“I’ve been waiting to tell you,” she said quietly. “Waiting for the right time to end this.”

Shaurya couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. His blood pounded in his ears.

One year. One entire year, his wife had been lying beside him, living with him while loving someone else.

“You’re telling me,” he said, his voice rising, fury finally finding a voice, “that while I was still building a life for us, while I was trying to fix what I broke, you were sleeping with someone else?”

She flinched but didn’t back down. “Don’t twist it like that—”

“I am twisting it? I? Seriously?” he thundered. “You were living in my house, lying in my bed, wearing my ring, while being someone else’s! What the hell was I even trying to save?”

“I didn’t want to become this woman,” she said, her voice hardening. “But you left me no choice! You were never there. You didn’t see me, didn’t hear me. I begged you to stay, begged you to choose us… but you never did. You always chose your work, your meetings, your travel. I was done feeling invisible, Shaurya.”

He stared at her, the anger slowly replaced by devastation. “So you replaced me?”

“I found someone who didn’t make me feel like a calendar entry. Someone who put me first,” she snapped.

The room went quiet. The damage was done. Rage and betrayal crashed over him, but it didn’t change anything.

She packed her bags and walked out that very night, while he stood in the hallway, paralysed, too stunned to believe this was happening. When the door closed behind her, it felt like something inside him went with her. That was the night something in Shaurya Ahuja broke for good.

And true to her word, she filed for divorce within days. And from that night on, he was never quite the same.

Present

Back in the present, Shaurya paused and looked down at his bandaged hands, like he was trying to make sense of it all.

“At first, I refused to give her the divorce. Not because I still loved her. No, that part had died the night she confessed she was cheating behind me. I resisted granting her that freedom because of the humiliation, the betrayal, and the helplessness. It had consumed me. And from that moment, I turned rogue. I didn’t want her to be happy. I wanted her to suffer. I wanted her to wait for the man she left me for. To know she couldn’t be with Anirudh just yet.”

“That’s cruel,” Nandini said softly, not judging him but just being honest.