CHAPTER 40
The air inside the factory was thick with heat and the smell of iron and oil.
Yamini stepped through the security gates behind Bharat and his executive team. The metallic clang of the gate shutting behind her echoed through the space. The smell hit the back of her throat. Hot steel, something sulfurous, industrial, and heavy.
They were all dressed for it. Protective helmets. Fire-resistant jackets. Industrial gloves. Safety goggles.
Yamini adjusted her helmet strap and settled her goggles into place. The camera hung against her chest, its strap crossing over the flame-retardant jacket.
The sterile entry corridors opened into vast industrial chambers. Molten metal glowed in long lines beneath suspended cranes. Machinery roared without pause. Sparks burst upward and died mid-air.
The tour had already begun.
“...protests at the outer perimeter earlier this week...”
“...another incident at the north unit...”
“...funding source still unidentified...”
The updates were low, meant for Bharat alone. But she heard them.
Bharat walked ahead of her, gloved hands clasped behind his back, like a military general inspecting troops.
Even in safety gear, he moved through the factory floor like he owned every inch of it, which he did.
Engineers flanked him. Executives kept half a step behind. Workers straightened as he passed.
But Yamini noticed something different that day. Her photographer’s eyes caught details others normally missed—the way some of the workers’ shoulders stiffened when Bharat passed.
A foreman wiped sweat too quickly from his brow with a gloved hand.
A group near the loading bay went silent mid-conversation.
She lifted her camera.
Click.
Not the staged PR shots his team expected. The details underneath.
The tension in shoulders. The averted gazes.
Then a flicker near a supply station caught her eye. Partially hidden behind stacked crates, a phone screen glowed inside a cleaner's cart, angled just enough to be broadcasting live footage of the inspection.
She slowed, pretending to adjust her focus ring.
Click.
A security guard moved swiftly, sweeping the cart aside before she could get a second shot.
She kept walking.
The heat intensified as they reached the smelting zone. Massive furnaces roared along Line 3, molten steel pouring in controlled streams. Even through the insulated jacket, the warmth pressed against her skin.
Bharat had removed his sunglasses. Sunlight came through the high windows and caught his profile in broken gold against the steel and fire.
He stood with the head of engineering, reviewing a schematic on a heat-resistant tablet. His gloved fingers moved precisely, outlining structural points, thermal adjustments, and yield output. He spoke rarely. When he did, no one interrupted.
Yamini raised her camera.
Not for the steel. But for him.
His hand hovered mid-gesture for a fraction of a second. Then his fingers curled into a fist and lowered.
A tremor. Small. Controlled. Gone almost before it registered.
She had never seen his hands do that before.
Her shutter clicked.
His head turned at exactly that moment. His golden-brown gaze cut straight through the heat haze and the noise—direct and unblinking.
Even behind the safety goggles, she felt it.
Something flickered briefly behind his usual composure—raw and unguarded for less than a second. Then a worker stepped between them, and when the view cleared, his expression had reset completely.
Annoyed, she kept moving.
Near the shadowed alcove where the cleaner's cart had been, she ran her fingers along the warm metal wall. A folded slip of paper jutted from a seam in the paneling. She palmed it, unfolding it under the pretense of checking her camera settings.
Workers strike at dawn. Sabotage planned for Line 3.
Rushed handwriting. Smudged with grease.
She tucked it into her sleeve and kept her face neutral.
For a moment, she stood still, the paper warm against her skin.
She had two choices. Leave the way he told her to. Or tell him.
She already knew which one she was going to do.
Across the factory floor, Bharat's voice cut through the mechanical noise—calm, clipped, and unhurried. But she watched his gloved hands flex once before he pushed them into his pockets.
She moved toward his group. The executives and engineers stepped aside with polite nods, acknowledging her as the maharani as much as the photographer. Bharat didn't turn until she was close enough to smell his cologne beneath the metallic air.
“Your work is done here for today,” he said. “You should leave.”
She kept her voice low. “You don't get to tell me how to do my job.” She inhaled a breath. “And you should know that some of your workers are planning a strike.”
His fingers froze mid-gesture.
For several seconds, the factory noise seemed to fall away. His eyes locked onto hers. “Leave,” he commanded.
She knew he didn’t mean her. The executives scattered without a word.
“Explain,” he said.
She pressed the folded note into his palm. Their fingers made brief contact. His glove was warm, and her hand was bare and slightly unsteady.
He unfolded it slowly. She watched his jaw tighten as he read. It was barely perceptible, but she knew his face well enough now to catch it.
The emergency alarm shrieked overhead.
Red lights pulsed through the entire space. Workers scrambled. Bharat grabbed her wrist firmly with no hesitation and pulled her toward a steel service elevator at the far wall.
“Move,” he commanded.
The door clanged shut behind them. And then the elevator dropped.
He released her wrist only to brace both hands against the walls, his shoulders blocking the dim emergency light overhead. Yamini pressed into the opposite corner.
“What's happening?” she asked in panic, her voice barely audible over the alarm’s echo through the shaft.
He didn't answer immediately. The flickering light caught the hard lines of his face. “You'll be safe,” he said. His voice was completely calm against the noise around them.
The elevator shuddered to a stop. The doors opened onto a dim concrete tunnel.
Bharat stepped out without waiting to see if she followed.
The tunnel smelled of damp concrete and burnt metal. The ceiling was low enough that he had to duck slightly as he moved. Yamini followed, her shoes catching on the uneven floor. The emergency lights buzzed and cast long shadows along the narrow walls.
“Where are we going?” she demanded, her voice echoing off the narrow walls.
Bharat didn’t slow down. “Somewhere secure,” he said.
The tunnel curved sharply and opened through a heavy steel door into a control room. Banks of monitors lined the walls. A single chair was bolted to the floor. A large schematic of the factory glowed under emergency power.
Bharat crossed to the monitors in three strides, and his fingers moved across the keyboard with practiced speed. The screens came to life with security footage from the factory floor above.
Workers were overturning conveyor belts. Flames were at the base of Line 3. Security teams were advancing from outside.
“You have cameras everywhere,” Yamini said.
“Yes.”
She looked at the footage. The workers on the screens didn't move like agitated employees. They moved with cold, deliberate purpose.
“Why are they destroying it?” she said. “The workers I've spoken to in your factories—they genuinely like working here.”
Bharat tapped a frozen frame on the nearest screen—a man breaking into Line 3's control panel. His face was blank, focused, and not angry.
“These are not my workers,” Bharat said. “They were planted.”
She stared at the screen.
“Someone is funding this,” she said. “The protests and the sabotage.”
He didn't respond. He pulled out his phone.
“Containment protocol,” he said into it. “Line 3 sabotage confirmed. Secure perimeter. Detain all non-verified personnel.”
His eyes stayed on the screens while he spoke.
Beneath the surface of his composure, she could feel the controlled fury of a man watching his territory be attacked. He didn't look like a businessman in that moment.
He ended the call.
Silence settled into the control room.
He turned to her.
“Stay here,” he said. “This place is completely secure.”
“Where are you going?”
“Line 3.”
“Bharat—”
“Stay.”
He was already moving before she could argue further.
Yamini’s heart thudded. The heavy steel door locked behind her.
And then barely a few minutes later, she saw him on the screens.
He walked onto the factory floor with a calmness as though there wasn’t any active violence taking place.
Three men were tearing into a control panel with crowbars. A fourth had a worker pinned against a support beam, fist raised.
Bharat didn't shout a warning.
He closed the distance in seconds, caught the raised fist mid-swing, and used the man's own momentum to put him into the support beam instead of the worker.
The other three turned.
Oh God.
Yamini’s heart thudded loudly in her ears as her hand pressed flat against the screen, as if that could change what was taking place.
The three men attacked together.
Bharat didn’t move back or even flinch. He struck.
She watched in shock as he moved with a lethal calmness and precision. A block, a redirect, a strike placed exactly where it needed to be placed. He moved like he'd already calculated where each man would be before they got there.
One went down. Then another.
The third ran.
Bharat let him go. His attention was already on the worker against the beam, checking him, saying something the cameras didn't carry sound for.
Security flooded the floor seconds later.
Her chest rose as she let out a small, relieved breath, even as her heart continued to pound.
Why hadn’t he waited for security to go there first?
He had deliberately gone there, knowing security was securing the perimeter outside first, as he instructed.
It annoyed her that he put himself at risk.
The steel door opened a few minutes later, and he stepped inside.
He looked composed and controlled as though he hadn’t walked into a brawl and punched the daylights out of four men.
“You should have left when I asked you to this morning,” he said.
Irritation and concern tangled together. She was annoyed at him and worried he was hurt.
“You didn't ask. You commanded,” she shot back.
“Yes.”
He stepped closer and lifted her helmet slowly from her head. The cool air loosened her hair from where it had been tucked. His gloved thumb brushed a smear of soot from her cheek—brief and unhurried.
“You were almost caught in the crossfire,” he said, his voice tight.
“I can handle myself.”
His eyes dropped briefly to her wrist, where he had grabbed her. “That,” he added, his voice lower, “is precisely why I don't like it.”
Her pulse jumped.
He pulled off his gloves one finger at a time, his eyes not leaving hers. Her eyes lowered, and she saw bruises on his knuckles.
Her breath hitched as she tried not to touch him.
“Tomorrow you will not be at the factory,” he commanded.
Her eyes flew up to his.
Two weeks without speaking to her and two weeks without crossing the connecting door.
Yet somehow, he still expected obedience.
“You can't tell me—”
“I can.”
Before she could argue, he took her hand and walked her toward the exit.
She followed.
And somewhere between the dying alarm and the tunnel and the weight of his hand around hers, she lost track of what had unsettled her more.
The sabotage. Or the fact that when the alarm had screamed and the lights had turned red, his first move had been toward her.
.