Arora walked slowly—painfully, agonizingly slowly.
Each step down the sterile third-floor corridor felt like dragging the weight of an entire shattered world behind her. She was a woman who usually walked with the wind at her back, who cut through syndicate boardrooms and blood-soaked battlefields like a polished steel blade, never allowing hesitation, fear, or doubt to stain her movements.
But today, her heavy boots felt impossibly anchored to the polished white tiles, as if invisible iron chains were bound tightly around her ankles.
She had fought men twice her size in dark alleyways. She had conquered rival networks older than her family line. She had stared straight into the barrel of a loaded gun without so much as a tremor in her hands. But facing her brother—facing the raw, unyielding truth sitting behind the heavy ICU doors—was harder than any bullet she had ever dodged or any war she had ever declared.
