Adultery The Swamiji

[shailu4ever]

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You don’t belong to them. You belong to me. Soon, everyone will know.
 


The handwriting struck her immediately: no frantic loops or uneven strokes, no adolescent passion pressed into paper. Instead, the letters flowed with poise and balance. Elegant. Assured. As though the writer was not begging for her attention, but declaring possession.
 
For a fraction of a second, the smallest flicker of unease passed through her eyes, though her face, her public mask, remained unbroken.
 
Meera leaned over her shoulder, eyes widening. “Oh my god. That’s… unnerving. Should I report it? Security will...”
 
“No.” The interruption was calm, commanding. Rhea’s lips curved into a practiced smile, the kind that reassured without revealing. She folded the note and, instead of discarding it, slipped it into her purse with deliberate grace. “It’s only another admirer. Let it be.”
 
 
But she had not dismissed it. Not truly. Something in her touch betrayed that. She did not throw it away because, in some unspoken corner of her mind, she understood: this was different.
 
Time ticked forward, and when the hour arrived, the frenzy outside surged like a tidal wave. The door opened, and the world greeted her with blinding light and deafening sound. Hundreds of flashbulbs burst like fireworks, cries of her name rising in a chorus of devotion. The lilies were still in her hand, their pale petals a startling contrast against the black tide of cameras.
 
She descended into the chaos with majesty, her every step measured, her poise untouched by the storm. She did not emerge from the vanity van like a woman; she emerged like a vision. A sovereign stepping into her court. The air shifted around her, as it always did, bending toward her presence.
 
Yet tonight, something was different.
 
For years, she had worn her smile like a crown,  a gift, a weapon, a shield. But as her gaze drifted over the crowd, her lips remained still. Her eyes, sharp and searching, no longer sought the adoration she had grown accustomed to. They hunted.
 
The crowd blurred into faceless worshippers, their adulation a background hum. But somewhere in that sea of devotion, she felt a gaze set apart,  not reverent, not dazzled. A gaze that claimed. It lingered like a touch against her skin, invisible yet undeniable.
 
The note’s words pulsed in her memory, as vivid as if they had been etched into her veins.
 
You don’t belong to them. You belong to me.
 
The night thickened around her. Even as the cameras immortalized her every gesture, Rhea felt herself less a star and more a secret,  a treasure already stolen in the mind of another.
 
For the first time in a very long time, Rhea Malhotra, queen of the screen, untouchable star, woman of legend, walked into the light without her smile. And the city, though it did not yet understand why, sensed the shift.
 
Somewhere beyond the flashes and cries, someone was watching not Rhea Malhotra, the goddess, but Rhea, the woman. Watching her not as an icon, but as possession.
 
And though her posture remained regal, flawless as ever, beneath the sheen of her perfection, a quiet truth began to unfurl.
 
The story was no longer hers alone.
 

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