The morning broke under a soft blanket of fog, the kind that clings to the ground like a gray veil and slows the world down, as if everything were breathing more quietly.
Adrian Malhotra walked among the gravestones, holding a bouquet of white flowers tightly against his chest. He didn’t read the other names. He couldn’t. In that place, the pain of the rest of the world was just noise. His own pain, however, rang inside him like a bell that never stopped.
Since the death of his twin daughters, Bianca and Aarya, he had come to the cemetery every week without fail. At first, people told him it was healthy, that it was part of mourning. Later, they stopped commenting. A father’s grief is not debated—it is watched from a distance, respected, even feared.
Adrian was a billionaire. He owned companies, properties, drivers, and a surname that opened doors and silenced questions. But in front of that double grave, he was just a man on his knees, a man whose world had shattered and who never learned how to put it back together.
The cold wind cut his face, yet he felt nothing. His body functioned; his soul did not. Only guilt remained alive—the guilt of not being there, of arriving too late, of trusting an official version handed to him like a sealed box:
“Don’t open it. It’s for your own good.”
He stopped before the grave. Simple. Clean. Almost too clean for what it supposedly held.
The names carved into the stone felt like a cruel joke:
Bianca Malhotra
Aarya Malhotra
Forever Loved
Adrian placed the flowers gently, as if the marble itself could break. His breathing began to shake. Memories attacked him without mercy—their laughter, their mixed voices, tiny feet running across polished floors, small hands clutching his shirt so he wouldn’t leave.
And then… the fire.
The so-called fire at the house of his ex-wife, Rekha.
The hospital call.
The blurred photos.
The reports read aloud without anyone meeting his eyes.
“I don’t recommend seeing the bodies,” they had said, in a tone so falsely compassionate it still burned his throat.
The rushed funeral.
The pressure to close the case.
To not dig into the past.
Adrian accepted everything because he was broken. Because a father in shock signs papers the way a man signs his own sentence—without reading.
He knelt and pressed a hand into the soil.
“My girls…” he whispered, his voice in pieces.
“I didn’t get the chance to save you. Forgive me for being late.”
Tears fell freely, warm against the cold morning.
And then—through his sobs—he heard footsteps.
Small. Slow.
Not an adult’s.
Adrian turned, confused.
Behind a gravestone, like a frightened stray kitten, stood a boy. Dirty. Thin as a wire. Torn clothes. Worn-out shoes. A wool cap too big for his head, covering half his forehead. He was maybe eight or nine years old, but his eyes belonged to someone who had seen far too many goodbyes.
Adrian wiped his tears awkwardly.
“I’m sorry, kid… Are you lost?”
The boy didn’t answer right away. He took one step forward, then another, cautiously. He stared straight at Adrian, as if deciding whether telling the truth might kill him.
When he finally spoke, his voice was low, fragile.
“Sir… are you crying for them?”
“For who?” Adrian asked, though his heart already knew.
The boy pointed with a trembling finger at the grave.
“For the twins… right?”
Adrian felt a blow to his chest.
“Yes. Bianca and Aarya… my daughters.”
The boy lowered his head, as if carrying a weight heavier than his body.
“Sir… please don’t cry.”
Pain mixed with irritation. This was not a day for advice.
“You don’t understand, child. My daughters are dead. I can’t stop crying.”
The boy looked up. Fear filled his eyes. Real fear.
“Please, sir… they’re not there.”
The air froze in Adrian’s lungs.
“What did you say?”
The boy glanced around, as if the cemetery itself could hear. He swallowed hard and spoke the words that sliced Adrian’s soul open:
“Sir… they’re in the garbage dump.”
For a second, Adrian forgot how to breathe. Reality bent.
“What… what did you say?”
The boy stepped back, trembling.
“I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Adrian stood up abruptly. Terror and hope—two emotions that should never coexist—collided in his eyes.
“Explain. Now.”
The boy inhaled deeply, like someone jumping off a cliff.
“Sir… your daughters… your twins are alive.”
The fog thickened. The cold wind swept through the cemetery like a warning. Adrian felt the ground vanish beneath his feet—and at the same time, an impossible spark ignited in the darkness.
Everything that had always felt wrong—the empty grave, the mourning without bodies, the feeling that his daughters were not resting there—suddenly made terrible sense.
“What’s your name?” Adrian asked, his voice unrecognizable.
“Julian,” the boy replied, clutching his chest.
“Julian… where are they?”
“In the garbage dump, sir.”
“Did you see them?”
Julian nodded.
“I search for food there every night. Months ago… on a very cold night… I heard crying. Not a cat. Two voices. Two little girls crying together.”
Adrian’s legs weakened.
“Two girls…?”
“They were wrapped in dirty blankets. They had hospital bracelets… with names. Bianca and Aarya.”
Adrian grabbed a gravestone to keep from falling.
“No… no…”
“I’m not lying,” Julian said, with a sincerity that hurt.
“I take care of them. I give them old bread, water… clothes I find. They sleep hidden where no one looks.”
The horror burned upward.
“My daughters have been living in a garbage dump… all this time?”
Julian lowered his eyes. A shame that wasn’t his own shattered Adrian’s heart.
“I was scared that if anyone saw them… they’d be taken away. And… I thought you were like them.”
“Like who?”
“The ones who left them there.”
Adrian swallowed his rage.
“Did you see anyone leave them?”
“I didn’t see the moment… but I saw a white van speeding away that night. And I heard adults laughing.”
Each word completed a sinister puzzle. Adrian remembered Rekha refusing to let him see the bodies, the inconsistencies, the reports signed by strangers. The grief manipulated. The lie built carefully. And him—blind with pain—believing it all.
“Take me to them,” Adrian begged. The words came out like a prayer.
Julian hesitated.
“There are people there now… it’s dangerous.”
Adrian held the boy’s shoulders gently but firmly.
“Please. If my daughters are alive… I need to see them. Today. Now.”
Julian bit his lip, looked around, then nodded.
“Okay… but we’ll take the road no one uses.”
They left the cemetery. The city changed block by block—from clean avenues to broken alleys, from glass towers to crumbling walls, from perfume to smoke. Adrian, in his expensive suit, walked behind a barefoot child in torn boots—and for the first time, he felt ashamed of his world. Not for its wealth, but for its blindness.
After twenty minutes, Julian pointed ahead. A vast stretch of waste, smoke, and black bags—an open-air hell.
“There.”
The stench hit like a wall. Adrian covered his mouth but kept walking. Julian moved with precision, avoiding unstable ground, shards of glass—like someone who knew misery by heart.
When Adrian heard a faint cry, barely audible, his heart collapsed.
Julian raised a hand.
“Shh… it’s them. But don’t rush. They’re afraid of adults.”
Two small hands moved the tarp.
Two thin faces appeared. Dirty. Terrified.
Alive.
Adrian dropped to his knees.
From that moment on, nothing would ever be the same.