Over the next week, she began to fall into a pattern. Each morning, she woke up and freshened up before running out of the room for breakfast. After breakfast, she spent time on the computer reaching out to her contacts. Then later, she went to the library browsing through the catalogs.

Whenever she interacted with the people downstairs, some of them came to her with some or other complaints of minor ailments for which they wanted medications. Soon she began to run out of her limited medicines that she carried with her.

One day, while browsing through the catalogs, she found a book on home remedies using herbal medications.

Growing up, even though her mom and stepdad were doctors, whenever she or Myra fell sick, her mom always tried using home remedies to cure minor colds or fevers. Even after becoming a doctor, she also preferred using natural remedies as much as possible.

She browsed through the book and found that it had clear instructions of what remedy could be used for various minor illnesses. The good part about most of the natural medications was—they had no side effects.

Feeling it could be useful to the people living within the Singham Estate, she brought it down with her.

She showed it to the woman who had the stomach problem.

“This is Arundhati’s!” an old woman exclaimed.

“Who is Arundhati?” She remembered the password for the computer was the same name.

“Abhay’s mother. She was an expert in curing a lot of ailments using natural remedies. Sometimes people queued up from the neighboring villages to get her help.”

Anika was disappointed that Devasena wasn’t the name of Abhay’s mother. Each day, for a couple of hours, she was still obsessively searching for Devasena’s journals in the library.

“I see. What happened to her?” Anika placed the question casually, even though she knew she could be in a whole lot trouble if Abhay Singham found that she had been snooping around.

The old woman’s eyes fired up. “A lying cheating dog murdered her. That’s what happened!”

Anika was shocked. “What do you mean murdered?”

There was pure hatred in the old woman’s face. “The dirty lying bastard—”

“Sitamma!” Abhay Singham’s angry voice interrupted.

The old woman paled looking at his furious face. Anika felt equally terrified. Over the past week, she had barely interacted or seen him. The moment she woke up, she simply ran out the room to have breakfast and other meals with the rest of the household. During the night, after a long day of helping people and searching the library, she was exhausted enough to almost faint asleep.

And right then, she was back to being terrified of him, especially because he came closer to her, and pulled her away from the people to one of the rooms, and banged the door shut.

“I had warned you before of speaking about our families.”

“I-I was just curious to know more about this place and everyone. Please, it’s not Sitamma’s fault. I asked her who Arundhati was.”

He looked even more pissed. “Don’t ever discuss her again.”

“W-why?” she challenged. She was sick of walking on eggshells around him. “She is your mother which makes her my mother-in-law. I have the right to know everything about her.”

His eyes flared as she spoke, and he looked terrifying. He slowly walked towards her and stopped only a few inches away. “Right?” he asked in cold menace.

“Y-yes. I have the right.” She fisted her hands to stop them from shaking.

He smiled slowly. With his perfect masculine features and even teeth, he looked dazzlingly handsome from the outside, but all she felt was cold fear at the glint in his eye as he gave her a sweeping appraisal.

“I wanted to give you some time to adjust before you take up your duties as my wife, but if you are so willing and eager to demand your rights, then maybe we should do something about fulfilling all your other wifely duties sooner.”

At this threat, she wanted to step away in panic, but she stopped herself. It was time she called his bluff. Everyone at the Singham household worshipped him. How bad could he really be?

“You are not a monster. I know you won’t hurt me—”

Before she could finish the sentence, he grabbed her close by her hair and pulled her head back.

She gasped in fear.

“Don’t ever assume things about me,” he hissed out, tightening the pressure on her hair, causing her to whimper.

“You won’t hurt a w-woman,” she pressed.

“I am hurting you right now,” he said, watching her face with utter loathing. “I have been dreaming of hurting you in ways you wouldn’t imagine even a monster to do. Believe me, I’d feel justified, and so will rest of my people. I should be torturing you, ripping out your soul until all that is left is an empty shell. Maybe that will compensate for my loss.”

She felt his hands wrap around her neck, tightening the pressure around it. She screamed in fear. The next moment, he dragged the material around her neck towards her stomach, causing a loud rip. The torn top fell around her waist, leaving her almost bare in her bra.

He picked her up like a rag doll, and threw her on the nearby bed, and climbed on top of her.

Her throat froze in utter fear as she watched the glittering dark eyes filled with rage. He stared at her for the longest time, until she felt tears leaking from her eyes.

After several moments of silence, he loosened the grip on her hair.

“Now do you believe I can be a monster?” he asked quietly, causing chills to break out on her skin.

She jerked her head once.

“Make sure you follow my orders. Don’t ever ask or discuss anyone’s family again,” he said.

With her heart thudding, she nodded.

“Give me the words,” he demanded.

“I-I won’t ask about anyone’s family again,” she whispered.

“Good.”

With that, he rolled away from her, got up from the bed, and left the room, leaving her shaking and trembling.

The rest of the day, she remained frightened. She spent most of her time at the library, continuing her search. A few hours later, she finally found the rest of Devasena’s journals—that was the only silver lining to her living nightmare.