Locking his dark, lethal gaze onto her trembling eyes, Vairagya leaned down until his breath brushed against her pale skin. "I persist in asking the exact same question, precious, because I am granting you every opportunity to excavate your memory," he purred, his baritone laced with a suffocating, razor-sharp edge. "I am waiting for you to realize if there is a single transgression you owe me a confession for—something you committed that breaches my code, something that inevitably demands a severe penalty. I am practically begging you to remember, but it appears your fragile mind has suffered a convenient lapse. You claim to remember nothing."

A cold, paralyzing dread gripped Chahat’s chest. Her mind raced frantically, searching for any possible mistake she might have made in his absence, but nothing surfaced to explain the sudden, suffocating interrogation. She stared back at him, her wide, dark eyes trembling with raw fear.