The Price of Protection

INTRODUCTION

Hello....... this is my first story... English is not my first language.. so i hope you understand and support me....

This is YMwrites......

The Price of Protection with a rich, cinematic introduction of both Aryan and Khushi—separate POVs, showing their lives, personalities, and the dangerous contrast between their worlds.

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🖤 Chapter 1 – Introduction...

🧔‍♂ Aryan Rathore – Age 33

(POV: Third-person, deep, dark inner monologue style)

> The city didn’t breathe without his permission.

Aryan Rathore stood at the top floor of his private high-rise, one hand wrapped around a glass of blood-red wine, the other scrolling through confidential security footage from a rival gang’s hideout.

Clean-shaven, broad-shouldered, ink spiraling up one forearm like a silent warning—he didn’t look like a man who carved power out of corpses. But he was.

His light golden-brown hair was slicked back, revealing the scar above his right brow—a memory from his first kill.

There were whispers about him. That he owned half the underworld, that he turned betrayal into blood rituals, that no woman lasted more than a night in his bed.

Most were true.

What wasn’t whispered… was how cold his soul had become. Until one uneventful evening, he sat in a crowded café, waiting for a snitch.

And saw her.

Across the room. Head bent over a book, sipping from a chipped ceramic cup. Laughing softly with a friend.

Untouched. Unaware. Unbelonging to this world.

She didn’t look up. But his eyes never left her.

Something twisted in his chest—something violent and unexplainable.

He never even asked her name. He left.

But the memory stayed. Like a knife in his lungs.

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👩 Khushi Singhania – Age 18

(POV: First-person, soft and intuitive, contrasting tone)

> I always liked the café on 42nd Street. It was noisy enough to feel normal\, but quiet enough to think.

Today was my last week of freedom before college. Before responsibilities. Before more political dinners with men who looked at me like a pawn, not a person.

My father said I needed to “learn my place” as the daughter of a man who’d one day become Home Minister.

But in here, I could breathe.

“You never look up when you’re reading,” my best friend teased, nudging me.

“Because if I look up, I’ll see the world. And I don’t want to.” I smiled, sipping my chai.

I didn’t know that a pair of eyes had been watching me.

I didn’t know my smile had just become someone’s obsession.

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💀

> Somewhere across the city\, Aryan Rathore pulled up the CCTV recording from that café.

Zoomed in. Paused.

And whispered to the screen:

“I’ll find you again. And next time, I’ll never leave you unclaimed.”