The air in the upstairs living room was thick enough to choke on. For hours, the same argument had cycled—pleas, rejections, and rising tempers. Anaya's uncle, Leo, paced the cramped space, his footsteps heavy with frustration.
"Brother, this isn't a demand, it's a necessity!" Leo's voice was frayed at the edges. "Two families, crammed up here, while you have the entire downstairs to yourselves. It's not about greed; it's about breathing room!"
Anaya's father, Ben, sat unmoving in his worn armchair, a patriarch guarding a crumbling fortress. "This house is our father's legacy. We do not carve it up like a piece of meat. It is a matter of principle."
"Principle?" The other uncle, Sam, usually the quiet one, spoke up, his voice trembling. "What principle lets my wife weep in a shared kitchen? What principle forces our children to do homework in a hallway? Your principles are strangling us, Ben!"
"We will manage. It is a temporary situation," Ben stated, his tone offering no room for debate. It was the same wall he put up every time.
But today, the wall cracked.
"MANAGE?" Leo slammed his palm on the wooden table, making the cups rattle. "We are done managing! We are done begging for scraps of dignity from our own brother! The solution is simple—we divide the property fairly, or we sell it and split the money. There are no other options!"
Ben rose to his feet, his face darkening like a storm cloud. "There will be no division and no sale. This is my final word. If you cannot accept that, then you are free to leave this house!"
The ultimatum hung in the air, brutal and absolute. The line had been drawn.
Sam looked from his furious brother to his unyielding eldest sibling. The weight of a lifetime of silence and submission finally crushed him. His composure shattered. He fumbled for his phone, hands shaking so badly he misdialed twice.
He didn't call a friend. He called the one person Ben actually listened to—his brother-in-law, David, Dakshin's father.
The ringtone sliced through the tense silence.
"Clara?" Sam gasped when Dakshin's mother answered. "Is David there? Please, it's an emergency… it's life or death."
A moment later, David's calm, measured voice came through. "Sam? What's wrong?"
The words burst out of Sam in a panicked, sobbing rush. "David! You have to come! Right now! You need to be the mediator, you have to divide this property!"
Tears of sheer desperation streamed down his face. His wild eyes locked onto Ben's.
"Because I swear, David," he screamed into the phone, his voice breaking, "if you don't come… I don't know what I'll do! I'll kill him! I'M GOING TO KILL HIM!"
The silence that followed was heavier than the scream. The phone dropped from Sam's hand and hit the floor with a sickening crack.
Downstairs, Anaya, who had been listening to the muffled shouts with a growing dread, froze at that final, piercing threat. She looked at her mother, whose face had turned ashen with fear.
The point of no return had been crossed. The family was broken. And with that one desperate phone call, the venom of their conflict was injected directly into Dakshin's family, triggering a chain of events that would tear everything apart.
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Cast of Characters for Clarity:
· Dakshin: The male lead.
· Anaya: The female lead.
· David: Dakshin's father.
· Clara: Dakshin's mother.
· Ben: Anaya's father.
· Le
o & Sam: Anaya's uncles (her father's younger brothers).