Regret

Regret
Tears after tears rushed through Dua's eyes, her eyes going blood-red, her body jolting with
her sobs. She was not able to identify the feeling that had put such heaviness on her heart,
propelling tears out of her eyes. In her dark room, lying on the bed, tears in her eyes and
eyes fixed on the ceiling, she found herself alone.
Dim light through the curtained window entered the room, but all she felt was darkness
consuming her, as the heaviness on her heart was not going. It didn’t matter how many
tears she let out or how much she sobbed; the restlessness was still there.
She knew it wasn’t just any restlessness but pure and lethal guilt that had jabbed its claws
into her soul.
Regret.
Regret was what overtook her entirely.
Her heart was pounding hard with guilt.
What had she done?
The horrors of the answer to this question increased her anxiety. The guilt was so
unsettling.
The peace she had been seeking after finishing her revenge game was not there. Rather, the
restlessness had increased. She thought she would be happy, content that the woman
because of whom her ex-husband had left her was now on her deathbed, battling for her life
after two suicide attempts. But that peace was nowhere.
She wasn’t smiling but crying.
And the remnants of peace she had went down the drain when she came to know the
crystal-clear truth. The ugly truth that probed at her heart, making her think this pain
would lead her to kill herself. She thought she deserved to die. It would be in the best
interest of everyone.
She raised her hands and looked at them, and her eyes couldn’t believe what they saw.
She could see her hands painted red. There was blood on her hands, as if she had just
murdered someone.
The blood of a human life.
She was pregnant.
Sheharzaad was pregnant.
And Dua was the killer of their child. The killer of the child of her brother, the brother who
treated her with nothing but affection, her second parent.
How could she…
How would she now face her brother?
How would she face Sheharzaad?
Because of the madness of revenge that had overtaken her mind and senses, in a flash, she
became the murderer of an innocent life.
Hannan had told her the truth.
All the truth. Told her what he had been keeping from her. And it not only broke her into so
many pieces but brought her immense guilt.
The day Hannan uttered every word to her was the day Dua realized the real evil was not
Sheharzaad but Hannan. Sheharzaad was innocent. Their unborn child was innocent.
The ones who were to blame were Hannan and Dua herself.
Dua realized what a grave error she had committed, and since that day, each and every
moment, she lived and died with regret.
Revenge was the worst possible solution to bring her heart peace because now she was
more restless than ever. She hadn’t been in such a state before.
Her sleep was gone. Appetite was lost.
The pain Sheharzaad must have been going through was most understood by Dua, as she
also went through the pain of losing a child.
How could she make a mother go through what she had been through?
What she felt now was worse than what she felt at the death of her own child.
Dua wondered what she would say to Sheharzaad.
She framed Sheharzaad because of revenge, which led her to a deep pit of regret from which
there was no coming back. And revenge over a man who was never hers in the first place.
Revenge over a man whose main purpose was to destroy Sheharzaad, and that was why he
had married Dua.
That day, she had gone to the dungeon where Hannan was kept. Its dark walls screamed an
ominous story to Dua, but she so wanted to smirk in his face and tell him that her brother
would give him death in the worst possible ways.
And surprisingly, she found him smiling as if he was at peace. Rather, he thanked her. It had
put Dua in so much confusion, and when Hannan did not utter anything, she had called
guards to beat him to a pulp. The next day, when he was in a better condition, Dua paid him
a visit again.
Dua probed him to tell her what he had been keeping.
And then his mouth opened, uttering the story from the very start—the story that brought
nothing but a series of surprises and shocks to Dua.
He started the story from the very first day, when Sheharzaad had come to her brother's
company seeking a job.
Hannan was at the company that day when he saw a woman asking his boss, Shehryaar, for
a job, but he didn’t give her one. Her face reminded him of someone, and that day, he had
gone home and went to his younger brother Hamza’s room. Searching through his drawers,
he found a picture and realized she was the same woman.
“Sheharzaad,” the whisper released from his lips as he eyed the picture venomously.
And after that day, he insisted that the secretary of the chief financial officer, Rafay, hire
someone as his secretary, as the workload was too much. Rafay agreed, and it was then
Hannan showed the files of one of the applicants chosen for the CEO’s interview. And that
applicant was none other than Sheharzaad. Hannan manipulated Rafay, saying she would be
the best candidate for the post, and Rafay, after consulting with his boss, called Sheharzaad
to join the company.
And then Hannan began to manipulate Rafay into thinking that Sheharzaad threw him
passes and he liked her. He manipulated Rafay so much that he began to think about
Sheharzaad. And one day, getting a chance, Hannan stole her phone and sent a lewd text
from Sheharzaad’s phone to Rafay, saying she wanted him. As Sheharzaad was extremely
busy with her work, Hannan had a hunch she wouldn’t notice it.