[SuitAndSyahi]

Chapter 4: Discovery and Retaliation

The television filled the apartment with voices that meant nothing.
A panel of experts argued over politics. Bright graphics flashed across the screen. Headlines scrolled endlessly along the bottom.
Ritu couldn't have repeated a single word.
She sat curled into one corner of the sofa, the remote lying forgotten beside her. The untouched dinner rested on the coffee table, its warmth long gone. Every few minutes, she absentmindedly rubbed the edge of the bandage around her finger with her thumb.
The sting had almost disappeared.
The memory hadn't.
She closed her eyes.
For an instant she could still see Sarla sitting quietly on the sofa, shoulders slightly hunched, trying to make herself smaller than she was.
Then the bruises.
Not one.
Not two.
More than she could count without feeling guilty for counting them.
Ritu opened her eyes again.
A knot tightened in her chest.
She had spent years believing she understood hardship.
Deadlines.
Mortgage payments.
Career sacrifices.
The endless balancing act between work and marriage.
Those had seemed heavy enough.
Yet this afternoon had quietly rearranged her understanding of suffering.
There were lives in which pain wasn't an unexpected visitor.
It was simply another member of the household.
She muted the television.
The silence was worse.
Fragments of the afternoon returned one after another.
"Love changes its clothes."
"Sometimes he apologizes."
"Sometimes he even believes it."
The words refused to leave her alone.
She leaned back and stared at the ceiling.
Why hadn't Sarla left?
The question rose again, stubborn as ever.
Almost immediately another followed.
Where would she go?
Ritu had spoken so confidently.
You could leave.
You deserve to be safe.
They had sounded like sensible answers when she said them.
Now, sitting alone in her comfortable apartment, they felt painfully incomplete.
Leave and go where?
With what money?
Into whose home?
Society admired courage in stories.
Real life demanded rent.
Food.
Medicine.
A place to sleep.
Her thoughts wandered unexpectedly to Arjun.
He would probably be boarding his flight by now.
She picked up her phone.
No messages.
She almost typed one.
Have you boarded?
Instead, she locked the screen again.
Tonight didn't feel like the right time to speak about airport delays or client meetings.
Not after everything she had seen.
She rested her head against the back of the sofa.
Another unfamiliar feeling stirred beneath the sadness.
Not attraction.
Not affection.
Something quieter.
The memory of gently tending to another person's injuries.
The trust Sarla had placed in her.
The way permission had mattered before every touch.
It had left Ritu strangely unsettled.
Her life had always been efficient.
Scheduled.
Measured.
She solved problems with presentations, budgets, and planning.
This afternoon, none of those skills had mattered.
All she had been able to offer was kindness.
And somehow, that had felt more significant than anything she had accomplished at work in months.
The realization embarrassed her.
Why?
She couldn't quite explain it.
Perhaps because caring for someone so personally had crossed an invisible line she had never imagined crossing.
Perhaps because she had glimpsed another woman's private suffering and now felt responsible for having witnessed it.
Or perhaps because, beneath the anger and compassion, there lingered a quiet shame.
Shame that she had never noticed.
That Sarla had been cleaning her home, smiling politely every morning, while carrying bruises hidden beneath loose cotton sleeves.
The apartment suddenly felt too quiet.
She stood, switched off the television, and walked toward the balcony.
Delhi glittered beneath the night sky.
Thousands of apartment windows glowed like tiny stories suspended in the darkness.
Behind each one, lives unfolded unseen.
Arguments.
Laughter.
Loneliness.
Love.
Fear.
She wondered how many smiles concealed bruises.

---

Several kilometers away, the city moved with its usual indifference.
Traffic crawled through intersections.
Street vendors packed away the last of their carts.
Metro trains carried exhausted commuters home.
Outside the residential complex, Sarla emerged through the security gate.
The guard raised a hand.
"Leaving, Didi?"
She smiled.
"Yes."
He returned to his register without another thought.
Sarla walked toward the main road at an unhurried pace.
She blended easily into the evening crowd—office workers, delivery riders, students, domestic workers, all flowing together beneath the orange streetlights.
She stopped beneath a bus shelter.
For a moment, she simply watched the traffic.
Then she reached into her cloth bag and took out an old smartphone.
Its screen was scratched.
The protective cover had begun peeling at the corners.
She unlocked it.
Her expression changed.
The warmth she had carried inside Ritu's apartment disappeared, replaced by a calm, unreadable focus.
She opened a messaging application.
There were very few conversations.
One contact had no name.
Only a string of numbers.
The profile picture was blank.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard for several seconds before she typed.
She is tougher than expected.
She paused.
Then added another line.
But everyone has a place where they break.
She read the message once.
Without hesitation, she pressed send.
The screen showed only a single check mark.
She locked the phone immediately and slipped it back into her bag.
No smile crossed her face.
No trace of satisfaction.
Only patience.
A crowded bus pulled up to the curb with a hiss of air brakes.
People surged toward its doors.
By the time the bus pulled away again, Sarla had disappeared into the moving crowd.
The city swallowed her without resistance.