Episode 1: The First Glance

Ananya was the kind of girl who moved through life quietly—soft-spoken, reserved, and deeply focused on her studies. She lived in a small town where everyone knew everyone, and dreams were often smaller than the boundaries of the neighborhood. But Ananya dreamed big. With her eyes set on becoming a civil servant, she spent her days buried in books, and her evenings at a coaching center tucked away in the crowded streets of the city.

It was outside those tuition classes that Aryan first saw her.

Aryan Kapoor was nothing like the boys in Ananya’s world. Sharp-suited, brooding, and always flanked by a black SUV and a pair of stone-faced men, he was a mystery. Whispers followed him—danger, power, crime—but so did admiration. He was the man you didn’t look in the eye unless you were ready for your world to change.

Aryan didn’t believe in love. He believed in control. In power. But the first time he saw Ananya, standing beneath a flickering streetlight, nervously flipping pages of her notes while waiting for the car to pick her, something shifted. She didn’t notice him. Not that day. But he noticed everything about her—the calm on her face, the wrinkle between her brows when she was concentrating, the simple grace in the way she tucked her scarf because of hot sunny day.

He could have walked away. But he didn’t.

It wasn’t long before Aryan reached out to a mutual acquaintance—a cousin of Ananya’s friend. A message was passed: “He wants to meet you.”

Ananya was confused. “Who wants to meet me?”

“Aryan Kapoor,” the friend whispered as if saying the name could curse them all.

Ananya laughed, brushing it off as a prank. Why would someone like Aryan Kapoor want anything to do with her?

But Aryan was persistent. Quietly so. He didn’t bombard her with messages or flashy gifts. Instead, he sent her a single book—‘Wuthering Heights’—with a small note tucked inside: “You remind me of her. Wild, yet unaware.”

It was the first time Ananya’s heart skipped a beat for someone.

She didn’t tell her parents. She barely told her friends. But slowly, secretly, she began to reply. Messages turned into phone calls. Phone calls into long, late-night conversations. Aryan listened to her talk about her dreams, her fears, her childhood stories. And he told her about his world—well, parts of it. The parts she could handle. The rest, he kept hidden behind his charming smile and commanding tone.

Within weeks, Ananya was pulled into a world so different from her own that it felt like a dream. Dinners in five-star hotels, midnight drives in cars that cost more than her family’s entire house, and a man who made her feel like she was the center of the universe.

Aryan, for the first time, felt peace in her presence. She wasn’t like the woman he knew—those who chased his wealth, feared his power, or tried to tame him. Ananya didn’t try to change him. She simply loved him.

And so began the story of a simple girl and the mafia man who fell for her.

They became inseparable. She was his secret peace; he was her forbidden adventure.

But even the most beautiful beginnings can hide cracks too deep to notice.

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***