The Mumbai alley was an intricate maze of shadows, with monsoon rain upping the tempo, imminent and punctuated by the sharp, coppery scent of blood. He stood under a blinking streetlight, his kurta stained crimson, with a butcher's knife shivering in his hands. She was glowing across the road, his casstte; his heartbeat, the laughter that he would kill to preserve. There was a man too close next to her, his arm brushing her dupatta, eyes lingering where they shouldn't be.
"Love is a river of blood, my casstte," he whispered to the night, voice very tender growl. "It's for you, drowns for you."
He moved like a ghost, with rain masking his footsteps as he walked on those slick cobblestones. The man was not aware of him coming; that was one thing he would not again be permitted to scream. The knife thrust with a wet meaty sound into the chest, piercing lung and bone. Blood sprayed, a warm rain bathing the psychopath face, hands, flooding in soul. He twisted the knife, carving deeper, and dragged it down, spilling insides on the pavement steamy with cold air: a monstrous sacrament at her feet. In lover's care, he etched a heart into the flesh, skin peeled back in scarlet curls. "No one comes near you, meri casstte," he panted, wild-eyed with lust. "I'd rip the world apart to keep you mine."
She turned, and her scream was swallowed up in the shock of seeing him—drenched in blood, a deity of death and love. He stepped forward, blood still dripping from his fingers, softening his voice into a caress. "You're my pulse, meri casstte. Every drop I spill is a poem for you."
Tears brimmed the eyes, the body quaking. "Why him?" she whispered, voice breaking like glass.
"He is between us," he said and cupped her face with bloodied hands and smeared red across her cheeks. "Love isn't gentle, casstte-it's a blade, and I wield it for you. He was your brother, but he thought he could cage you-keep you from me.
She didn't run, her tears mingling with the rain; silence was a fragile bridge dividing them. All was still in the alley but for the dripping of blood and an orchestra of distant cars. But behind, in the shadows, was a figure that watched-a dangerous hint to promise that this was just the beginning.