Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter
Twenty-Six
Tejas stifled a yawn as he walked through the hallway with quick strides toward Ramesh Kumble’s office.
He’d had a sleepless weekend, not only as a consequence of that almost-kiss in the pub washroom, but also because he’d spent hours working on the Acharya case, doing background checks on Pai, Gopal, and Preethi.
He’d assumed fixating on the specifics of a murder case at four a.m. would make all thoughts of Naina disappear, but unfortunately, she’d been online too, adding notes to the shared Preethi case document.
Tejas had made his own changes minutes later, crossing out many of her points and rewriting them, even though they hadn’t needed edits.
So what, though? He had every fucking right to be antagonistic with her. She was the petty one, having ignored his texts about what happened in the bathroom all weekend, refusing to admit there was something real between them. Just like she’d done in Goa.
The clicking of heels sounded behind him, and he knew it was her before she even spoke. “Listen,” Naina said, her steps hurried as she caught up to Tejas, “can we put karaoke night behind us and just be professional?”
He stopped in place and whirled toward her, ignoring the heady scent of lavender. “Professional? Are you kidding me?” Then he looked around the office and lowered his voice. “We almost kissed. You wanted to kiss me too, don’t you think I know that? I’m tired of you stringing me along, Naina.”
“I’m still processing what happened,” Naina said, wringing her hands as she frowned.
“You’ve had over a year to process what happened.
” He paused as Iqbal brushed past them, heading to Kumble’s office up ahead for their catch-up meeting.
Then Tejas added, his jaw clenching, “This is exactly why I left for the bus stop without telling you, back in Goa. Because I didn’t think I could watch you walk away from me without it completely shattering my heart.
So I did it myself. But guess what, Naina? ”
Her lip wobbled as she stared up at him. “W-what?”
Despite his anger, Tejas had the sudden urge to interlock his fingers with hers, to kiss away the lines on her forehead, to press her to his chest and remind her of everything they’d once shared. Everything they could share again, if only she’d take a chance on them.
But she didn’t need to be reminded. She knew it already; she just didn’t care. So he only scoffed. “On Friday night, at karaoke, you walked out on me and shattered my heart anyway. I guess that was inevitable.”
“Tejas, I—”
“Anyway”—he tipped his head toward the managing partner’s door—“I’m going to head in there. You should too. A woman’s life is on the line.”
Head bowed, she nodded, and they knocked and entered Ramesh Kumble’s office. They’d already sent him their notes, and he seemed to be perusing them as he gestured for them to sit. Iqbal stood beside Kumble’s chair, his eyes on the laptop too.
“So…” Kumble looked at Tejas and Naina, rubbing his chin. “Four days before trial, the only lead we have so far is that the actor had a beef with Rohith Pai?”
Tejas felt Naina straighten beside him, like she was going to speak, but he cut in, his jaw set.
“Yes, because he refused to get close enough to Preethi while filming the action scenes. Probably because he thought she’d accuse him of something, given everything that happened with Preethi and Pai years ago.
Maybe he was scared she would sabotage the film—and his career. ”
“Your sources?” Iqbal asked as he flipped through a copy of the latest forensic report.
“The crew members we met know a lot of industry gossip,” Tejas explained in quick words so he could beat Naina to it.
“The on-set makeup artist said Gopal and Pai were arguing the entire shoot, and Pai refused to budge on altering the scene. Also, it’s suspicious neither he nor his wife heard Preethi’s screams, but they heard Jagannath’s cries for help.
In any case, we’re meeting with Preethi day after tomorrow to find out if she knows more about Gopal’s dynamic with Pai.
I’m certain we’ll have some evidence against Gopal soon; he’s our strongest suspect.
Plus, the forensic report’s findings might work in our favor. ”
Kumble and Iqbal exchanged glances, then nodded as one unit.
“Good job,” Kumble said, his approving eyes on Tejas.
“Let us know what Preethi has to say. In the meantime, make sure to check our case files for any precedents we can use. Speculation and rumors won’t be enough to save Preethi Acharya.
” Then he returned to his screen without one look at Naina.
Tejas’s stomach squirmed. He himself had every right to ignore Naina—she deserved it after what she’d pulled on Friday—but why was Kumble doing it too?
Iqbal must have noticed the tension in the air, because he smiled at Naina specifically and said, “You’ve got this.”
“Thank you,” she said, her chin up.
“Back to work,” Tejas said, gesturing toward the door. “We don’t have time to waste.”
He led the way out of Kumble’s corner office without another word and strode over to his cubicle to a rather unfamiliar sight: Dhanush hunched over the desk, no ringing phone in hand, his laptop on standby.
Tejas sat in his chair and poked Dhanush on the shoulder. “You okay?”
“No,” Dhanush replied glumly, rubbing his eyes.
“I was distracted all weekend, and I’m so behind on my cases.
Plus, the prosecution found more evidence against Subramanian, and the stock market’s already crashed in anticipation of his arrest. Court is going to be a nightmare this week…
” He turned his eyes to his keyboard and pressed a random button on it. “My uncle’s going to fire me.”
Tejas scoffed. “Look at me, man.”
With a heavy sigh, Dhanush did as he was told. Tejas pressed a hand to his back and smiled. “You’re not the only lawyer on this case. Is Kumble going to fire Iqbal too?”
“Obviously not, he’s a partner,” Dhanush grumbled. “I’m the scapegoat, the one they’ll blame if this case goes under. Which it inevitably will.”
“There isn’t a single lawyer out there who’s guaranteed to win all of their cases,” Tejas reminded him. Then he brought his voice to a whisper. “Do you remember the Bollywood drug trafficking case from two years ago?”
Dhanush’s eyes widened. “Yeah, that producer who was arrested for selling cocaine to his actors? Isn’t he serving ten years in prison?”
“I was one of the lawyers representing him,” Tejas admitted, shifting in place. “And as much as we wanted to win the case, we also knew sometimes a guilty person can’t be saved, no matter how good their lawyers are. It’s…” He shrugged. “It’s just how the universe works.”
“In that case, I hate the universe.” Dhanush’s shoulders slumped.
Exhaling, Tejas said, “You and me both.”
Dhanush didn’t answer. His distant eyes were on Anil, who sat in his cubicle next to Naina’s. There was an emotion Tejas had never seen on Dhanush’s face before—something Tejas couldn’t place. “Dhanush, is something else on your mind?”
Dhanush jumped. “Oh, nothing,” he said quickly, wiping his face with a trembling hand. “Need to remind Anil to work on the pro bono case. I’ll email him.”
Tejas lifted his hand in Anil’s direction. “You could just go up to him. He’s right there.”
“Email would be quicker,” Dhanush replied, turning away.
“Okay, then…” Tejas returned to his laptop, but not before his gaze shifted to Naina, way ahead of him as she deftly typed into a document. How was she so unbothered by their fight?
Maybe he ought to cut his losses and follow her lead. If she could play it cool, he could too.
After successfully cheering Dhanush up with a mug of black coffee and a chocolate croissant from the office pantry, Tejas got back to work, deciding he and Naina might as well leverage the power of social media to win this case.
There were probably thousands of Kannada film fanatics who knew more about Rohith Pai’s life, hobbies, and habits than Rohith’s own wife did.
Tejas had learned as much after having worked in a Mumbai law firm that often protected Bollywood stars from their stalkers.
He took a sip of his latte and resumed scrolling through Reddit. According to his sister, who was obsessed with Bollywood, there was no better place for celebrity gossip or conspiracy theories than Reddit.
While the r/SandalwoodTea subreddit, dedicated to the nearly hundred-year-old Kannada film industry, had twelve thousand members, the newly created r/PaiMurder subreddit had a whopping 293,000 members.
It didn’t surprise Tejas that most of the posts in this specific subreddit were against Preethi.
They brought up instances of “bad behavior” from her past that obviously made her a murderer, like wearing a skimpy bikini at the beach for her swimwear sponsorship or “enabling” innocent, unsuspecting women to go to the pole-dancing fitness classes she endorsed instead of toiling away in the kitchen, where they apparently belonged.
Tejas’s nostrils flared. What a sad, toxic, depressing place the internet was. Blinking away his annoyance, he went through the rest of the r/PaiMurder subreddit, hoping he’d come across something useful.
Forty minutes later, when the words on the page were all starting to blur together in a heinous mix of knife and skimpy and home-wrecker and blood, something caught his eye.
Half the posts in r/PaiMurder were by one specific user: AllegedlyYourBestTea89.
“Huh.” Tejas sent Naina the profile link on Teams, then headed over to her cubicle with his laptop.
He noticed the empty chair next to Naina’s. “Where’s Anil?” he asked.
Naina, who was already going through the subreddit, looked over. “It’s lunchtime. He’s not going to be back for a while.”
Nodding, Tejas pulled out the chair and sat down.
His knee brushed against her thigh, and Naina nearly jumped.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, shuffling away. Tejas would have been offended, but now wasn’t the time to think about her indifference to that almost-kiss, to him, to everything they could have possibly shared if she didn’t have her guard up all the time.
“This user is definitely shady,” Naina said, pointing at the AllegedlyYourBestTea89 profile.
Tejas peered at the screen. Their first-ever post about Preethi was a month ago, on the day they’d created the account, after which they’d posted numerous hate messages about Preethi on the subreddit—nearly one every day.
All it said was: Preethi Acharya is and always will be a home-wrecker. She deserves to be locked up.
“Look at the time stamp on this post.” Naina pointed to the side of their profile and read out, “Seven forty-one a.m., October 1, 2026.”
Tejas’s eyebrows furrowed. He stood up and leaned over Naina’s desk, noting the way she sucked in a breath at his proximity. “That’s the day of the murder. Could it be a mere coincidence that they made their first anti-Preethi post possibly even before it was public news? Or…”
Naina bit her lip. “I guess we’ll have to find out. I’ll look up media archives and see what time the news broke.”
Tejas stood, tapping her desk with his fingers. “Good call. I’ll see if anyone from IT can track their IP address. Hopefully, it’ll be someone connected to our case.”
“Or someone the murderer hired to skew the public opinion against Preethi,” Naina said bitterly. “I’ll go through the rest of their posts. Maybe we can find clues to their real identity. There’s bound to be something.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Tejas agreed, just as Anil walked over to his cubicle. “Tejas, hey,” he said cheerfully. “Did you have lunch? The cafeteria has a special biryani today.”
“I’ll head over there soon,” Tejas replied just as amicably. “See you, Naina.” As he started for his own desk, he overheard Naina say to her best friend, “Where were you at karaoke night after you ditched my ass?”
“Oh,” Anil said, his laughter echoing, “having my favorite kind of fun. You should try it too. Maybe with Prince Charm—”
A playful smack sounded, even from the distance.
Shaking his head, Tejas returned to his cubicle and switched to working on one of his small-claims cases, this one involving property damage, but his mind was on Preethi Acharya.
With India having abolished the jury system decades ago, only the judge would have a say in the matter.
Would they be able to prove to the judge, against all odds, against all public opinion, that Preethi was innocent?
Well, with only four days to go until trial, Tejas would find out soon.