CHAPTER 19
Raghbir was on his second cup of tea when his eldest son entered and closed the door.
He looked at Samarth's face and set the cup down.
"Sit," he said.
"I'd rather stand."
"Sit, Samarth."
His son sat, which told him everything about the weight he was carrying.
"Kabir Malhotra tried to have Nimisha kidnapped," Samarth said. No preamble. No softening. "Yesterday. At the bookstore in Bandra. Three hired men. Bruno intervened before they could get her into the vehicle."
The room was very quiet.
Raghbir had lived a long life in a complicated world. He had made decisions that most men couldn't make and slept afterward without particular difficulty. He believed in protecting what was his. He believed in loyalty and consequence in equal measure.
He looked at his son's face—at the control there, so absolute it was its own kind of violence—and understood exactly what was being asked of him.
"Show me," he said.
Samarth laid the evidence on the desk. The security footage from the bookstore.
The intercepted communications between Kabir and the men he'd hired.
The testimony of the survivor, recorded and transcribed by Armaan.
The paper trail—three cash transactions, untraceable on the surface, traced anyway by men who were very good at finding things that didn't want to be found.
Raghbir reviewed each piece without rushing.
The room was silent except for the sound of papers turning.
When he finished, he looked up.
"What do you want to do?" he asked, though they both knew the answer.
"I want him dead." No performance in it. No drama. Just a man stating a fact. "He put his hands on my wife. He planned to keep her. He's been harassing her for months while we gave him access to this family." Samarth's jaw tightened. "He's going to die for it."
"He's Tanisha's fiancé."
"He's a dead man. Those two things aren't incompatible."
Raghbir was quiet for a moment.
"And Tanisha?"
"She'll be told he left. That he couldn't handle the pressure of the family, decided it wasn't worth it." Samarth met his father's eyes. "It will hurt her. I know that."
"You're willing to accept her anger."
"I've accepted worse things for this family." Something shifted in his expression—brief, honest. "But this one I'm doing for Nimisha. Not the family. For her."
Raghbir studied his son for a long moment.
He thought about the girl who'd come into this family a year ago—quiet, composed, impossible to read. He'd thought her unremarkable. He'd been wrong. He'd also been a coward about correcting his wife when her treatment of the girl became unkind, which he would have to reckon with separately.
He thought about what it meant that his son—who had never done anything in his life that wasn't calculated, measured, controlled—was sitting here with barely contained fury because someone had frightened his wife.
"Make it clean," he said.
Samarth stood. "No promises."
It was the most honest thing he'd said in the conversation.
Kabir Malhotra's Office, Lower Parel - 11:47 AM
Kabir's assistant was on the phone when Samarth walked through the main doors of Malhotra Investments with Abhay on one side and Armaan on the other.
"Sir, you can't just—you need an appointment—"
"He'll see me," Samarth said pleasantly, continuing toward the corner office.
He pushed the door open.
Kabir was at his desk, on a call, his expression moving through surprise, irritation, and then—when he registered who had walked in and who was behind him—something that briefly resembled fear before charm reflexively replaced it.
"I'll call you back," he said into the phone, and set it down. He stood. "Samarth. This is unexpected."
"I imagine it is." Samarth closed the office door. "I'll make this simple. You know why I'm here."
Kabir's eyes moved to Abhay and Armaan, calculating.
"I'm afraid I don't," he said carefully.
"Three men. A white van. A bookstore in Bandra." Samarth moved closer, and Kabir—despite himself—stepped back. "You paid them fifty lakhs to take my wife."
"That's a serious accusation—"
"Yes," Samarth agreed. "It is."
He nodded to Abhay.
Everything after that happened very quickly.
Warehouse, Dharavi - 2:30 PM
The warehouse was one of several Samarth owned under shell company names. It was clean, secure, and regularly swept for devices.
It was also, currently, occupied by Kabir Malhotra, who had not come here willingly.
Samarth stood in front of the metal chair, his jacket removed, his sleeves rolled to the elbow.
He looked at the man who had spent months terrifying his wife—sending her packages designed to make her feel violated, following her, touching her, and finally trying to have her taken from a public place in broad daylight.
He felt nothing complicated about what came next.
"You touched my wife," he said.
Kabir's jaw was set with the remnants of bravado. "I never touched her."
The sound of bone breaking was louder than most people expected.
Kabir's scream bounced off the warehouse walls.
Samarth looked at the man's hand with detached interest. "You tried to take her."
"It was business—" Kabir's voice had lost its shape. "I was going to—she was just leverage, I wasn't going to—"
"She's not business." Each word was very clear, very deliberate, dropped into the space between them like stones into still water.
"She is my wife. She is mine. And you thought—" He paused, almost as though genuinely curious.
"What did you think would happen? That you'd take her and I'd negotiate?
That I'd trade something for her return and you'd walk away with a profit and—what? Keep her?"
The silence was answer enough.
"You were going to keep her," Samarth said, very quietly.
What followed was not quick.
Kabir confessed everything—the obsession that had started the first time he'd seen her at a family dinner, the gifts, the surveillance, the plan.
The location he'd had prepared. The timeline he'd constructed.
The private thoughts he'd had about what he would do once he had her somewhere no one would find her.
Every word made the temperature in Samarth's chest drop another degree.
By the time Kabir finished, there was nothing left in Samarth that resembled hesitation.
Bruno, who had followed them in and been sitting quietly against the far wall, watched the proceedings with his ancient eyes and his still, patient presence.
When it was done, Samarth straightened and looked at his dog.
Bruno's expression was the same it always was—composed, intelligent, unmoved.
Good, it seemed to say. Now it's done.
Abhay handed him a cloth.
"Tanisha?" Abhay asked, as he always asked the practical question.
"The note is ready?"
"In his handwriting. Processed through his home printer. It'll hold."
"Then she gets the note." Samarth cleaned his hands methodically. "He left because he couldn't handle the family's scrutiny. That's the story."
"She'll be devastated."
"She'll survive it." He handed back the cloth. "She wouldn't survive the truth."
He looked around the warehouse one last time, then walked toward the door with Bruno at his side.
He needed to go home.
Master Bedroom - 7:23 PM
Nimisha was at the window when he arrived, her knees drawn to her chest in the armchair, looking out at the garden where the evening light was going gold and slow.
She heard the door and turned.
Her eyes went to his hands first. Then his face.
He hadn't cleaned up fully—there were things you missed, even when you were careful.
She looked at him for a long moment.
"Is it done?" she asked.
"Yes."
She held his gaze. "Good."
No flinching. No horror. No questions about what he'd done or how.
Just that one word, carrying everything—relief and understanding and the absolute trust of a woman who had been frightened for months and was finally allowed to stop.
She uncurled herself from the chair and crossed to him.
She took his hands—both of them—and held them in hers. She looked down at them with the focused attention she usually gave her manuscripts, examining carefully, her thumbs moving gently over his knuckles.
Then she led him to the bathroom.
She turned on the tap and waited for the temperature to settle before guiding his hands beneath the water. She picked up the soap and worked it into a lather and began to wash his hands—slowly, thoroughly, her fingers working between his with the same gentle focus she brought to everything she did.
He stood and let her.
The domesticity of it, the intimacy of it, undid him in ways that nothing else had.
"You don't have to—" he started.
"I know." She didn't look up from the task. "I want to."
He watched her face—the slight furrow of her brow, the way her lower lip pressed between her teeth when she concentrated. The unhurried tenderness of someone performing an act of care without needing it to be acknowledged.
"Thank you," she said quietly, still looking at their hands.
"For what?"
"Protecting me." She glanced up then, her eyes meeting his. "For taking it seriously from the beginning, even when no one else did. For believing me."
"Always," he said. The same word he'd given her before, wearing the same meaning.
She turned off the tap and reached for the towel.
He caught her wrist gently—the unbruised one—and waited until she looked at him.
"I should have done better," he said. "From the beginning. He should never have gotten close enough to frighten you. I should have ended it the moment you told me he made your skin crawl."
"You did end it."
"Later than I should have."
"You ended it." Her free hand came up to his jaw, her thumb tracing the line of it. "That's what matters."
He turned his face into her palm and pressed his lips there—not a kiss, exactly. Just contact. Just letting her feel that he was here, that she was, that this was real and safe and over.
"Stay with me tonight," she said. "Just—stay."
"I'm not going anywhere," he said. "I told you last night."
"Tell me again."
"I'm not going anywhere, Nimisha." His arms came around her, careful of her bruises, and pulled her against his chest. "I'm staying. Tonight. Tomorrow. Every night after that."
She exhaled slowly against his shirt.
"Okay," she said.
Just that. Okay.
He held her in the bathroom with the tap dripping and the evening light going dark outside and Bruno's claws clicking on the bedroom floor as he circled and settled, and thought:
He was going to say it soon.
The actual words.
He was going to stop being a coward and say them.
Soon.