The Last Letter - Part 4

 

(...She needed to fight back.... Read Part 3)

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PART 4:  The Hunt

Maya did the one thing Arjun didn't expect.

She returned to his past. She visited the town he lived in before meeting her. It was small, quiet, and full of people who sighed at the mention of his name. His name felt like a quiet warning.

The librarian remembered him well.

"The girl before you?" she whispered. "Her name was Riya. Sweet thing. Always reading or sketching. They met here only. He was very sweet when they first met. But then .. then he became… attached."

"What happened to her?" Maya asked.

The woman's lips tightened, with a hesitation she replied, "She.. she disappeared."

Maya's stomach twisted.

She found Riya's parents as well. They refused to let her inside until she mentioned Arjun's name.

Their grief clung to the air like humidity. Their eyes were heavy, with grief and anger.

"He ruined her," Riya's father said. “He was charming at first. Thoughtful. But underneath, he was broken. Evil."

Riya’s mother trembled. "We found her journal. She wrote that she felt watched. That he knew things she never told him. That he'd show up when she was alone and say, 'You cannot leave, you need me. We are the End Game"

Maya swallowed hard, "That's what he said to me."

They exchanged a haunted look.

"She vanished three days after writing that."

Only silence prevailed in the room after that moment. A haunting silence.

Maya drove back with her heart pounding.
She now knew the truth. 

Arjun didn't fall in love. He never did. He possessed.

And when he felt abandoned, he destroyed.

Back home, she prepared the one trap she hoped might work. Not violence, not police, but something that could resonate to a mind like Arjun’s.

She wrote him a letter.

Arjun,
You were right. Fear does keep love awake.
I understand you now.
Come find me.
---M

She left it on her window where she knew he'd see it.

And it happened exactly as she hoped. That night--he returned.

A faint thud on her balcony.
A soft inhale in the dark.
Then there was a low voice, low but familiar:

"I knew you'd choose me."

Maya took a step forward.

She wasn't afraid anymore.

She was ready, she was ready to face her darkest fear. Ready to face Arjun.

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