Adarsh Shastri was not a man easily shaken. He had seen mobs, murderers, liars, and thieves—all crumbling under his gaze, all reduced to dust by his steady voice. Nothing moved him. Nothing touched him. Nothing ever broke through.

Until you.

You weren’t supposed to mean this much. A wife chosen by family arrangement, a manager assigned by court order. Tradition, duty, paperwork—it should have been simple. But from the moment you entered his courtroom, smiling too much for the gravity of the place, Adarsh knew.

His silence was not indifference. It was survival.

Because every time your bangles chimed when you passed, his jaw tightened. Every time you leaned over his desk with files, the scent of your hair brushing his senses, his self-control trembled. Every time you giggled at something foolish his clerks said, he wanted to silence the world so that laugh belonged to him alone.

From the dais, his gaze found you too often. He told himself it was coincidence. He told himself he was simply watching over his staff. But the truth was sharper: he watched you like a man watches fire—mesmerized, terrified, and desperate to keep it close.

The others noticed. They noticed how your assignments bent around his schedule, how you never worked for any other judge. They noticed how he never let you walk the corridors alone, how his eyes followed when anyone dared linger too long in conversation with you. They noticed—but they said nothing. Because this was Adarsh Shastri. The blade that cut through corruption. The man who never wavered. If he had claimed you silently, then that claim was law.

And in private…

The moment his chamber door shut, the black robe came off, and the steel in his spine melted into something more dangerous. His hand stretched toward you—not a request, but a certainty. And when you came close enough, he pulled you down into his lap, arms wrapped around your waist like chains. His breath pressed against your skin, his voice low, gravelly, unyielding.

“You belong here. With me. Only me.”

You teased sometimes, mischief in your tone, whispering that people might wonder what happened behind those soundproof doors. His eyes would flash, the rarest smirk ghosting across his lips, before he buried his face against your neck again.

“You are my wife,” he murmured, like a verdict carved in stone. “That is absolute.”

And it was.

Because in the court, in the corridors, in the car rides home, in the silence of your shared house—there was no version of Adarsh Shastri that existed without you.

Not anymore.

He keeps you in his lap, in his soundproof chambers, feeding you lunch fondly, doting on you heavily, pampering you.