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The marble floors of Malik Estate gleamed under the evening lights, polished so often they reflected faces like shallow mirrors. Zoya Malik walked across them with the grace of someone born into money, yet there was an emptiness clinging to her like perfume worn too long. The daughter of billionaires, the only child in a house echoing with silence. Her parents lived in meetings, flights, and boardrooms; their love was measured in allowances and luxury cars, never in warmth.
She had grown used to it. If they didn’t care, why should she?
Her friends filled the hollow, or at least masked it. The girls who trailed her at university laughed too loudly, flattered her too easily, and worshipped her status like it was a crown. And Zoya wore that crown proudly — until the day it slipped.
It happened in the most ordinary place.
The campus canteen, smelling faintly of tea leaves and fried pakoras. Zoya and her friends had drifted in like royalty entering a marketplace, chatter swirling around them. She spotted him near the back, sitting alone, his sleeves rolled to the elbow, a book open beside a half-finished cup of chai.
Ayaan Raza.
There was nothing remarkable at first glance — a plain white shirt, a backpack patched at the corners, hair falling over his forehead in careless waves. But there was a stillness about him, the kind that pulled eyes even when it didn’t seek them. He wasn’t scrolling through his phone, wasn’t whispering about who had just walked in. He was reading. Just… reading, as though the world outside his page barely mattered.
“Look at him,” one of Zoya’s friends giggled, leaning closer. “So serious, like he owns the place. Maybe he doesn’t know who you are.”
Another chimed in, smirking. “Imagine the mighty Zoya Malik ignored by some nobody. Tragic!”
The teasing was harmless on the surface, but it landed sharp. Zoya’s pride had never been tested that way — never bent beneath the idea that someone might overlook her. She tossed her hair back, forcing a laugh. “Ignored? Please. Boys don’t ignore me. He’s probably just shy.”
But when she glanced at him again, expecting a stolen look, she found nothing. No awareness of her presence. No stolen glance at her branded bag or diamond bracelet. His eyes lingered only on the words before him, his lips moving faintly as though whispering them to himself.
That sting… she didn’t like it.
Her friends kept poking, smirking behind their hands. “Bet you can’t make him look at you. Maybe he’s the one person immune to Zoya Malik’s charm.”
The words lit a spark she didn’t know existed. It wasn’t love, not then. It wasn’t even attraction. It was ego, wrapped in silk. A challenge had been thrown at her feet, and Zoya Malik had never walked away from a challenge.
She walked past his table, slow, deliberate. The perfume she wore left a soft trail, one meant to turn heads. Yet his didn’t lift. She paused, fingers brushing the edge of his desk, waiting. Nothing.
And that was the first time in her twenty-one years, the daughter of one of the richest men in the city, that Zoya Malik felt invisible.
Her laugh was light when she returned to her friends, but her fists curled tight at her sides.389Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡtCZl6EeM15
He will notice me. He will.
Not because she cared for him. Not because she loved him. But because her pride, her throne of untouchable arrogance, demanded it.
That night, as she lay in her room surrounded by everything money could buy but no one to ask if she’d eaten dinner, Zoya Malik thought of him. Not the boy himself, but his indifference.
And quietly, in the dark, her ego whispered: This is not about love anymore. This is about winning.
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and then Add to home screen.