Why He Silence Me?

Why He Silence Me?
They hadn’t lived her nights of grief. They hadn’t felt the sting of betrayal or the hollow ache of losing everything before she had ever truly held it. And yet, these self-righteous, poisonous women spat judgment like they were gods on their thrones.
A low, humorless laugh escaped her lips. At first, it was soft.Then it grew louder, richer, and darkened by scorn.
Her laughter wrapped around the tense dining room, making every head turn toward her. She raised her chin, her gaze sweeping over the women across the table while the sister, the weeping Sylvia, the ever-composed Mrs. Chyntia as though she were standing at the peak of a mountain looking down at ants.
Her left hand, trembling with restrained fury, found Arnav’s beneath the table and curled around it, a silent signal.
Let me.
Her fingers squeezed his hand, not in desperation, but in declaration. She was done being silent. Done letting venomous tongues strip her dignity bare.
“I applaud you as well,” Raellyn said, her voice calm yet edged with a blade-sharp chill. Her gaze locked on her sister-in-law, carrying the kind of quiet scorn that cut far deeper than anger. “You know nothing, and yet your mouth can string together words sharp enough to wound. Did mother-in-law teach you to speak that way?”
The air turned heavy, thick with an unspoken tension. Her words landed like drops of poison, rippling across the table, leaving every ear stinging in their wake.
Then, slowly, Raellyn’s eyes shifted toward Sylvia. Their gazes collided, one burning with raw, uncontained rage, the other hardened with a sorrow that had crystallized into steel. “And Sylvia,” she continued, her voice now carrying the weight of years of swallowed pain, “I’ve told you this before, haven’t I? Arsene and I are over. Your husband has never touched me. Never.” She emphasized every syllable as if she could carve them into the walls of this room. “I swear to you, the child I bore is mine and Arnav’s. I don’t know how your mind twisted itself into this rotten conclusion.”
Sylvia’s sobs wavered in the air, but Raellyn’s words only grew sharper.
“You are just spilling your grief on me because you lost your child,” she pressed on, her voice trembling not from fear, but from a fury born of wounds too long ignored. “I never imagined that, since that day, your heart toward me would remain unchanged. You… both of you…” Her eyes flicked to the younger sister again, “…have disappointed me more than words can capture.”
Beneath the table, Raellyn’s fingers curled around Arnav’s, drawing strength from his warmth even as the ice of humiliation and betrayal settled in her bones.
“You were both born into privilege, into homes filled with the love of parents I never had,” Raellyn said, her jaw tightening as she forced back the tears burning her eyes. “And yet… you can’t even tell the difference between truth and the filthy whispers meant only to destroy.”
Her words fell into the room like stones, echoing in the tense, suffocating silence that followed.
Finally, Raellyn’s gaze found Mrs. Chyntia, her mother-in-law.
“Mother—” she began, her tone trembling but defiant, as though bracing for the storm she knew was coming.
“That’s enough, Raellyn.”
Arnav’s voice cut through the air like the crack of thunder.
Raellyn froze.
Her eyes widened, and her breath hitched in her throat. Slowly, she turned to her husband, searching his face for some flicker of understanding, for the warmth that had always been her anchor. But what she found in his gaze was not warmth. It was a command. Cold. Unyielding. Final.
“I don’t want you to speak another word,” Arnav said, his tone carrying something impossible to pin down, anger, frustration, perhaps even a desperate edge of fear.
For a moment, the world around Raellyn seemed to crumble.
Why?
Why would he silence me now?
“Please, do not ruin the goodwill I bring tonight. I did not invite you all here to hurl accusations or to hear my wife condemned for something utterly senseless,” Arnav’s voice cut through the air like a steel blade, silencing the room in an instant.
His authority was absolute, the kind that needed no raised voice, no physical force, just the weight of his presence.
Sylvia’s fiery eyes faltered, her lips trembling before she lowered her gaze to the polished table. Across from her, Louisa, the sister Raellyn had nearly forgotten in the storm of emotions, followed suit, her posture shrinking into quiet submission. The venom that had laced their words only moments ago dissipated like smoke under the pressure of Arnav’s unshakable tone and just like that, order was restored to the table.
Yet, Raellyn’s chest ached with the weight of it all. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
She had envisioned a gathering of family, where understanding might grow and fractured ties could be carefully, painstakingly repaired. But instead, the night had been painted with the same bitterness and distrust that had always lingered in the shadows of this family.
She glanced around the table, her heart heavy with a disappointment that seeped into her very bones. Adults, all of them, and yet their hearts and minds were still shackled by pride, resentment, and the petty desire to assert who was right and who was wrong.
Is that what this is? she wondered bitterly. A battle for sympathy? A contest for who suffers the most?
It was an old story, one she was so very tired of reliving.
Arnav’s voice broke through her thoughts once more, calm yet firm, carrying the gravity of a man who had carried years of silent pain.
“Mrs. Chyntia,” he began, his deep gaze finding his mother’s face across the table, “the reason I asked you here tonight… is because I wish to apologize.”
The words fell into the room like a sudden, heavy drop of rain. Even Raellyn, who had heard him speak of this intention before, felt a faint tremor in her chest at the sound of it voiced aloud. This was Arnav, stoic, guarded, a man who wore his scars like armor lowering that armor for the very person who had inflicted some of his deepest wounds. 
Everyone at the table turned to Arnav with wide-eyed disbelief. Even Mrs. Chyntia, who had always carried herself with unshakable grace, looked utterly shaken. Her eyes widened, her mouth falling slightly agape as though her composure had been stripped away in an instant. For a fleeting moment, she was no longer the imperious matriarch who had held herself above the world—she was simply a mother, stunned and breathless before the son who had once turned his back on her.
Arnav… is apologizing?
To her?
The thought rippled through the room, almost palpable. After everything that had happened between them, after all the cold shoulders, the harsh words, the years of estrangement. He was lowering his pride, offering her the one thing she had likely stopped hoping for. And yet, Raellyn’s heart trembled as her thoughts chased themselves in circles.
On what grounds does he apologize?