CHAPTER 17
The informant's name was Deepak Rao, and he'd been feeding information to Rajput's gang for three months.
He sat in the metal chair in Elysium's basement, zip-tied, bloodied, and terrified. Two of Samarth's men had softened him up already. Now it was Samarth's turn.
He crouched in front of the man, his expression empty.
"The shipment routes," he said quietly. "All of them."
"I don't know—"
Samarth stood and drove his elbow into Deepak's jaw with clinical precision. Not excessive. Just enough.
The man's head snapped to the side.
"The shipment routes," Samarth repeated.
"They'll kill me—"
"And what do you think I'll do?" Samarth's voice was conversational, almost gentle. That was what made it terrifying. "I'm The Executioner, Deepak. I didn't earn that name handing out warnings."
He picked up the knife from the table beside him and examined the blade with detached interest.
Deepak broke.
Names. Dates. Locations. Routes. Everything Samarth needed poured out of him in a desperate, stumbling confession.
Samarth listened. Committed every detail to memory. Gave no indication of what would happen when the information ran dry.
Abhay typed rapidly on his laptop in the corner, recording everything.
When Deepak finally ran out of words, silence fell.
Samarth stood there, knife in hand, and his mind—without his permission—drifted.
To Nimisha.
To her face when Tanisha's hand had connected with her cheek. The way she hadn't cried out. Hadn't reached for comfort. Had simply stood there and absorbed the blow like she was accustomed to absorbing pain without acknowledgment.
That's the role.
He looked at Deepak, shaking and bleeding in the chair, broken open by pain and fear and the unbearable pressure of being taken apart by someone who knew exactly which points to press.
And the thought arrived with the force of a physical blow:
He'd been doing the same thing to her.
Different tools. Different methods.
But the result was identical—a person systematically dismantled by someone with power over them. Left exposed and bleeding in ways that didn't show.
Cold indifference instead of a knife. Dismissal instead of a fist. The casual, consistent message that she didn't matter, repeated so many times it had carved itself into her.
I didn't think anyone would notice. Or care.
The words she'd said after disappearing for a night. Spoken without bitterness, which was somehow worse. Like she'd genuinely accepted her invisibility as fact.
He'd done that to her.
He'd taken a woman who wrote about love with breathtaking clarity and made her believe she deserved none of it.
"Boss?"
Samarth surfaced. Abhay was watching him with careful eyes.
"We have everything," Abhay said.
Samarth set the knife down. "Finish it."
Abhay's brows rose. "You're leaving?"
"I need to go."
"The Rajput situation still needs—"
"Handle it." He was already moving toward the stairs, stripping off his bloodied gloves. "You know what to do."
"Boss, this is the first time you've ever left before—"
"Abhay." He stopped at the base of the stairs without turning around. "I said handle it."
Silence.
"Yes, boss."
He climbed the stairs and left Elysium without looking back.
Ranawat Estate - 11:23 PM
He drove home with his hands still faintly marked with blood he hadn't entirely cleaned off. The drive should have given him time to rebuild his walls, to convince himself that what he'd felt in that basement was just a moment of weakness.
It didn't.
He entered through the side door, moving quietly through the dark estate. Everyone was in bed at this hour.
Except—
Light under the library door.
He pushed it open.
Nimisha sat in her window seat, exactly where she always was. Laptop open, brow furrowed, fingers moving over the keyboard with quiet focus. Her hair was loose around her shoulders. She was wearing a simple cotton kurti, her feet curled beneath her.
She looked up at the sound of the door.
Her eyes went immediately to his hands.
He watched her assess—the faint residue of blood, the tension in his body, the lateness of the hour.
"Are you hurt?" she asked.
"No."
"Good."
She looked back at her screen and kept typing.
No horror. No questions. No demand for explanation. Just the quiet acceptance of who he was and what he did, offered without condition.
He crossed the room without planning to and leaned against the bookshelf opposite her, watching.
The lamplight caught the ends of her hair, turning them gold. Her face was soft with concentration, lips moving slightly as she worked through a difficult sentence. When she found it, her expression cleared with satisfaction—that small private smile she wore when the words came right.
She felt everything deeply. Had always felt everything deeply.
And he'd spent a year trying to convince himself she felt nothing. That her composure meant emptiness. That her silence meant she didn't care.
He'd been catastrophically wrong.
She didn't fight back because she chose not to, not because she had nothing to fight for. She was silent because she'd learned that speaking cost more than it returned, not because she had nothing to say.
The realization settled into him like something finding its rightful place.
He loved her.
The thought arrived without drama, without thunder. Just a quiet, absolute certainty that had apparently been building for months, waiting for him to stop being too stubborn to see it.
He loved the way she talked to Bruno like the dog was a disappointing colleague.
He loved the way she ate street food with total abandon and no apology.
He loved the way she wrote love stories while living in a loveless arrangement without once letting the irony make her bitter.
He loved her composure and the cracks in it and the moments when she forgot to be fine and let him see the real thing underneath.
He loved her.
The feeling was enormous. Terrifying. Completely beyond his experience of himself.
He crossed the room before he'd consciously decided to move.
She looked up, startled, as he reached her. He pulled her up from the window seat and kissed her before she could speak—desperate and claiming, his hands framing her face.
She made a soft, surprised sound against his mouth and then kissed him back, her hands finding his shirt, her body softening into his.
When he pulled back, they were both breathing unevenly.
She looked at him with wide eyes. "What was that?"
"I—" He stopped.
The words wouldn't come. Three years of emotional lockdown didn't dissolve in one night, even for this.
"What?" she prompted softly.
"Nothing." He pressed his forehead to hers. "I just needed to kiss you."
Her expression shifted into something gentle and knowing, like she understood far more than he'd said.
"Okay," she said simply.
He pulled her against his chest, his arms wrapping around her completely, and stood there memorizing the weight of her, the way she fit against him, the warmth of her hands pressed flat against his back.
This. This was what he'd been pushing away.
And he was done pushing.
Family Dinner - Two Days Later, 7:34 PM
The dining room held its breath.
Tanisha sat at the table with the rigid posture of someone committed to suffering publicly. She hadn't spoken to Nimisha in four days. Hadn't looked at her directly.
Saroj had been coldly polite to everyone, which was somehow worse than direct hostility.
Kabir was present despite everything—Tanisha's defiant choice, her silent challenge to Samarth's authority.
Raghbir sat at the head of the table and said nothing, which meant he was watching everything.
Kritika was there too, helping serve, filling silences with careful conversation.
Nimisha sat in her seat and ate her dinner.
She'd said good evening to everyone when she entered. She'd asked Raghbir how his day had been. She'd accepted the bread basket from Shaurya with a thank you.
And when Tanisha's pointed silence scraped at the table like nails on stone, Nimisha didn't flinch.
She was done flinching.
Tanisha's blind faith in Kabir was not her problem to solve. Saroj's disappointment was not her wound to nurse. Kritika's quiet heartbreak was not her responsibility.
She had enough of her own.
The sound of claws on marble preceded him.
Bruno appeared in the dining room doorway, his dark eyes sweeping the room with characteristic disdain.
Then he walked directly to Nimisha.
No deviation. No hesitation.
He stopped beside her chair and placed his massive head on her lap with a weight that was both physical and symbolic.
Complete, deliberate, public.
The table went silent.
"I've never seen him do that," Kritika said, her voice hushed.
"Not even with you, Rey," Saroj added, looking at her son with an unreadable expression.
Samarth was watching Nimisha scratch behind Bruno's ears with the ease of long habit. The dog's eyes had half-closed with pleasure.
"How long has this been happening?" he asked.
Nimisha didn't look up from Bruno. "Since the beginning. We have an understanding. He doesn't bite me, I don't make him wear sweaters."
Shaurya choked on his water. "The demon dog has a soft spot."
"Of course he does," Tanisha said, and the bitterness in her voice was a live wire. "She probably feeds him treats to buy his affection. She's very good at making people think she's something she's not."
Bruno's head lifted from Nimisha's lap.
The growl that came from him was low, continuous, and aimed directly at Tanisha.
"Boo Berry," Nimisha said softly. "Manners."
Bruno turned to look at her with an expression that clearly communicated: She started it.
"I know. But we're at dinner."
He huffed—a sound of profound indignation—and settled back onto her lap.
Unapologetic. Unmoved.
Tanisha's face had gone pale. Kabir, beside her, was carefully not looking at Bruno.
"She's talking to him like he understands her," Kritika said, something complicated in her voice.
"He does," Shaurya replied easily. "It's honestly incredible. Watch." He leaned across the table toward Nimisha. "Bhabhi, tell Bruno that Kabir has been looking at you again."