CHAPTER 18
The bookstore smelled exactly the way bookstores should—paper and possibility and the particular stillness of places where stories lived between covers.
Nimisha had been here for two hours, moving through the shelves with a researcher's focus, pulling books and setting them back, making notes on her phone.
Her current manuscript required accuracy about vintage jewelry markets in Mumbai, and three books on the craft history of Zaveri Bazaar had caught her attention.
She was genuinely happy, which still surprised her sometimes. The simple, uncomplicated happiness of being somewhere she loved, doing work that mattered to her, without the weight of the estate pressing down on her shoulders.
Her security detail—Prakash and Suresh—stood near the entrance. They'd been her shadows for three weeks now. Professional, unobtrusive, unfailingly polite.
Also, she noticed, increasingly relaxed.
Three weeks without incident had a way of making people comfortable.
She pulled a particularly beautiful illustrated volume from the shelf and turned it over to read the back, completely absorbed.
Which was why she didn't notice the two men enter through the back service entrance.
Or the third through the side emergency exit.
The first sign of trouble was Prakash's voice from the front, suddenly sharp—"Wait, who are—"
Then silence.
Nimisha looked up.
The man was already behind her.
She had half a second to register the wrong feeling—someone too close, the displacement of air—before his arm locked around her neck from behind, cutting off her scream before it could fully form.
"Don't fight," he said in her ear, his breath hot and sour. "Make noise and your guards get their throats cut. Understand?"
She understood nothing except terror, white and complete, flooding through her system.
Her heels scrambled against the floor.
The books in her arms scattered.
She fought anyway—because terror and reason were different things and her body didn't care about threats to people she couldn't see. Her elbow drove back into the man's ribs, her foot stomped down toward his instep, her nails raked at the arm around her throat.
"Bitch—"
A second man appeared in front of her. Grabbed her wrists. Pinned them.
She opened her mouth and screamed.
The sound tore through the quiet bookstore, knocking books from shelves with its force.
The first man's hand clamped over her mouth, cutting it off.
She bit down hard.
He swore, yanking his hand back, and she screamed again—shorter this time, cut off when the second man's forearm pressed across her collarbone, forcing her backward.
They were moving her toward the service entrance. She could see it through the shelves—a grey metal door propped open, a white van visible beyond it.
The van's rear doors were open.
Waiting.
Terror became something animal, fundamental.
No. No. No.
She threw her weight sideways, trying to unbalance them, and managed to take them both into a shelf. Books cascaded down. Someone shouted from somewhere deeper in the store—a customer, a staff member—and then nothing because the noise of the collision swallowed everything.
The second man had her off her feet now, her back against his chest, his arms pinned over hers.
The service door was three feet away.
Two.
The sound that came from behind her stopped everyone.
Not a growl.
Not exactly.
Something older than that. Something from before language, before civilization, from the part of the world where predators and prey had understood each other without translation.
Bruno hit the first man like a freight train.
A hundred and thirty pounds of Cane Corso, moving at full speed, in complete and focused silence—no barking, no warning. Just impact, precise and devastating.
The man went down.
Nimisha felt the second man's grip on her slacken—shock, instinct, the human animal's response to witnessing something that reminded it of its place in the food chain.
She drove her elbow back with everything she had.
He dropped her.
She hit the floor, scrambled, got her hands under her and pushed herself against the shelves, putting her back to something solid and her eyes on the room.
Bruno had the first man pinned, his massive jaws locked on the forearm the man had thrown up in defense. He wasn't tearing. Just holding, with the calm efficiency of an animal that understood the difference between ending something and controlling it.
The second man—the one who'd dropped Nimisha—had backed against the shelves, his eyes fixed on Bruno with the particular stillness of a person who has suddenly understood they are prey.
The third man appeared from around the end of the aisle.
He had a knife.
Bruno's attention shifted to him without releasing the first man—a kind of distributed focus that shouldn't have been possible, but the intelligence in those dark eyes didn't operate by typical rules.
The third man looked at Bruno.
Bruno looked at the third man.
The knife hit the floor with a clatter that echoed through the silent store.
Samarth's car covered the distance from Elysium to the bookstore in eleven minutes.
He'd been in a meeting when Abhay's call came through. He'd walked out of the meeting without a word, left three very important men sitting around a table, and gotten into his car with his heart in his throat.
The scene that greeted him when he pushed through the service entrance was one he would think about for a long time.
Nimisha, back against a shelf, knees drawn to her chest, her face the color of chalk. Her hair had come loose and her kurta was torn at the shoulder. One of her wrists was already darkening with bruising.
Bruno, stationed between her and three men who'd arranged themselves against the opposite wall with the cooperative stillness of people who had made peace with their situation.
Two of Samarth's security men—Prakash and Suresh—were on the floor near the entrance, conscious but zip-tied and sporting the beginnings of serious injuries.
The police hadn't been called. The bookstore staff had apparently retreated to a back office and were staying there.
Smart.
He crossed to Nimisha first. Crouched in front of her, forcing himself to look at her face before he looked at the men.
"Are you hurt?"
Her eyes found his. She shook her head.
She couldn't speak. He could see it—the words simply weren't there, shocked out of her.
He looked at her wrists. Her throat, where a bruise was forming in the shape of an arm.
Something cold and absolute settled into the center of his chest.
He stood, turned.
Two of his men—Abhay had arrived moments behind him—were holding the three attackers with the efficient courtesy of people who'd done this before. The third man, the one who'd dropped the knife, was talking already, words spilling out without prompting.
Samarth crouched in front of the first man—the one Bruno had held. He looked at the bite marks on the man's forearm with detached interest.
"Who sent you?" he asked.
The man pressed his lips together.
Samarth waited.
"I'll ask once more," he said pleasantly.
"Kabir," the third man said, before the first one could make whatever calculation he'd been making. "Kabir Malhotra. He paid us. Fifty lakhs. He wanted the woman—wanted her taken to a location he'd prepared. Said she wouldn't be hurt, just held."
Samarth stood.
He looked at the first man.
"You put your hands on my wife," he said.
The first man understood, in that moment, that nothing the third man had said was going to matter.
He was right.
The Car - 4:43 PM
Abhay drove. The partition was up.
Nimisha was in the back seat with Samarth, and she was trying very hard not to fall apart.
She was failing.
The first sob came out of nowhere—not built to, not warned of, just suddenly present. Wrenched up from somewhere deep and involuntary.
He had her against his chest before the second one came, his arms pulling her in completely, one hand pressed to the back of her head.
"I've got you," he said against her hair. "You're safe. I've got you."
"They were going to—" The words broke apart. "The van—there was a van—"
"I know." His arms tightened until breathing required effort and she was glad of it, glad of the pressure, the realness of him. "They're not going to get the chance. Not now. Not ever again."
"I bit him," she said, which was somehow what her mind produced. "I bit his hand."
"Good." His voice was rough. "I hope it hurt."
"Bruno came." She was shaking, she realized. Had been shaking since the floor of the bookstore. "I don't know how he found me."
"He's been following you for weeks." Samarth pressed his lips to the top of her head. "Without my knowledge. I found out two weeks ago and decided not to stop him."
She pulled back enough to look at him. "He's been following me?"
"Everywhere you went without me. Staying far enough back that your security didn't notice." Something moved across his face. "Apparently, a hundred-and-thirty-pound dog can be quite stealthy when he wants to be."
She laughed. It came out wrong—cracked in the middle—but it was a laugh.
He cupped her face in his hands, his thumbs brushing the tears from her cheeks with an attention that made her chest ache.
"I've got you," he said again. Like the repetition was as much for him as for her.
Master Bedroom - 6:15 PM
He carried her from the car.
She didn't protest, which told him more about the state of her than anything she'd said in the car. Nimisha didn't accept being carried. She didn't accept being helpless.
That she let him—that she simply put her arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder—meant the afternoon had taken more than she was showing.
He laid her on the bed and sat beside her.
"I'm going to look at your wrists," he said. "And your throat. Tell me if anything hurts."
"I'm fine—"
He gave her a look.
She closed her mouth.
He examined her wrists carefully, pressing gently at the bruising, watching her face for reactions. The left one was worse—the grip had been harder there. Nothing broken. He'd had Armaan confirm with a doctor before they'd left the bookstore.