Beneath the Wraps

✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦ She wraps her hands every morning. and unwraps them before she comes home. She fights in the dark so her family never sees the light she's chasing. He plays at midnight when the grief gets too loud. She is rage that learned discipline. He is control that forgot how to feel. . . . RIYA DESHMUKH Born in Karjat, raised under the weight of expectation and silence. Riya is the obedient daughter at home and a southpaw boxer in secret - relentless, precise, and dangerous in a ring no one in her family knows she enters. She has two lives, two versions of herself, and only one dream she has never been allowed to say out loud. She is the kind of girl who doesn't break - she just bends until she can hit back harder. RANVEER RATHORE Heir to the Rathore business empire. Former national boxer. The man who decides who gets to compete and who doesn't. He walked away from the sport he loved because his body and his family left him no choice. Now he coaches underprivileged kids, runs boardrooms, and tells himself he has made peace with everything he lost. He is composed where she is combustible. Soft where she expects sharp. He will cook for his family without a word but cannot say I love you to save his life. . . . They were never supposed to be in the same room. Then one stolen moment goes haywire. His solution? One announcement. One, lie with a ring attached to it. She didn't agree. He didn't ask. It is two people carrying the wrong versions of themselves for far too long - until they have no choice but to stop. ✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦✦