The next morning, Arvi was gone before sunrise.
He left a single note on the nightstand:
"I'm going to find her. Don't be afraid. Let me protect you."
Rose held the note against her chest.
She didn't know when it happened—when she stopped fearing him, and started fearing a world without him.
She still didn't know if it was love.
But it was something dangerous. Something powerful.
And it was already too late to pull back.
Three days passed.
Each hour felt like a storm waiting to fall.
Rose stayed in the safehouse. Guards rotated every six hours. She barely slept. Barely ate.
Her hands kept trembling. Not from fear—but from the silence.
And the memories.
The accident.
The blood.
Her sister's body, gone before she could say goodbye.
Was it really possible that Ruma survived?
That she'd been out there all this time?
That Arvi had seen her—and hadn't known who she truly was?
The questions screamed in her mind, louder each day.
On the fourth night, a call came.
Blocked number.
She answered anyway.
"Rose?" Arvi's voice. Hoarse. Rushed.
She stood up instantly. "Where are you?"
"I found something," he said. "I need you to come. Now."
"I thought you didn't want me involved—"
"This is different," he cut in. "You need to see this."
They met in an abandoned hospital in the countryside.
The wind howled through broken windows. The halls smelled of rust and forgotten time.
But what Rose found inside changed everything.
Arvi stood in a dim room lit by a single lantern.
On the wall—photos. Documents. Medical records.
And in the center—
A video.
He pressed play.
On the screen: a recording from seven years ago.
A girl strapped to a hospital bed. Pale. Bruised. Her voice soft, like a whisper in the dark.
"My name is Ruma. I had a sister. Her name was Rose. She died… I think she died in the crash. They told me to forget. But I can't. I can't."
Rose's knees gave out.
She crumpled to the floor, a hand over her mouth.
Ruma was alive. She was taken. Hidden. Lied to.
And still, she remembered her.
Arvi knelt beside her.
"I found this in a facility linked to the Vasquez family," he said quietly. "They were trying to create leverage. Weapons out of lost souls."
"Why?" Rose sobbed.
"Because they knew one day someone would come looking."
That night, she didn't cry herself to sleep.
She didn't sleep at all.
She stood by the window of the safehouse and watched the storm roll in.
Arvi sat behind her, silent.
And then she asked him the question she'd buried for days.
"Why did you really help me?"
He looked up.
"I told myself it was because of your file. Your record. Your background."
"But?"
"But the truth?" he said, standing.
"I saw you once. Before I hired you. You were sitting on a bench. Feeding birds. You looked… alive in a way I hadn't seen in years."
She turned to face him.
"And I thought—if someone like you could survive what you did and still be kind, still be soft—maybe I didn't have to be cold forever."
Her heart cracked.
Tears filled her eyes again. This time, not from pain.
But from something more dangerous.
Belief.