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CHAPTER – The Signature She Should Never Have Given

Dhruv had been awake since dawn.

The document lay on the dining table, disguised beneath a stack of routine papers—tax forms, property updates, insurance renewals. All legitimate, all boring. Except for the sheet buried in the middle.

Juhi’s guardianship transfer.

Temporary, on paper.

Permanent, in his mind.

His pen rested neatly across the top. The air in the house felt still, as if it knew what he was about to do.

Rhea walked in rubbing her eyes, hair tied in a messy bun.

“You’re up early again,” she said, yawning.

He smiled the calm, practiced smile he always used with her. “Just clearing some pending work. I need your signature on a few forms.”

Rhea slumped into a chair. “Now? Can it not wait until after breakfast?”

“It’ll take less than a minute,” he said, handing her the pen before she could protest.

She trusted him. That was the worst part.

He placed the stack in front of her, flipping pages casually, talking about mundane things—neighbors, bills, grocery lists—keeping her attention anywhere but the papers.

“Sign here… and here,” he said smoothly.

Rhea barely looked. She scribbled her name the way she always did when signing unimportant documents.

The custody form was next.

His pulse tightened.

He slid it forward.

“And this one,” he murmured, voice steady though his veins pulsed with heat.

Rhea signed without reading.

Just like that.

Her signature flowed across the page—graceful, innocent, final.

Dhruv inhaled slowly, a quiet victory curling through him like smoke.

She had no idea what she had just given him.

Rhea set the pen down. “There. Happy?”

“Very,” Dhruv said.

She laughed lightly, oblivious. “Good. Now make coffee. I’m starving.”

She left the room humming, the sound fading up the stairs.

The moment she disappeared, Dhruv picked up the signed papers.

His fingers traced Rhea’s signature on the custody form, and his mind drifted to Juhi—

her wide, fearful eyes from that day,

the way she stepped back from him,

the way she pushed him away.

Rejection burned inside him like acid.

She didn’t understand him.

She didn’t know what he wanted.

What he deserved.

But now… legally, technically, quietly… she belonged under his care.

A bitter smile pulled at his lips.

Rhea thought she was giving consent for routine paperwork.

She thought he was the same man she trusted, the same man she had married.

She had no idea.

Dhruv folded the papers carefully, placing them in the inner drawer of his study desk—locked, hidden, waiting.

When Juhi came downstairs a little later, cheerful and unaware, brushing her hair into a loose knot, Dhruv watched her with a gaze colder than before.

She didn’t meet his eyes. She didn’t even sense the shift.

But soon, she would.

“Good morning,” she said politely.

Dhruv nodded, expression unreadable.

Soon, she would understand how tightly he had started closing the walls around her.

And by the time she realized…

…it would be too late.