36. Rockefeller Levels
Rockefeller Levels
Kiri
The flight from Los Angeles to Mumbai, plus the connection to Udaipur, was long enough for me to regret every drink I’d had the night before, every decision I’d made since birth, and the fact human beings had ever looked at the sky and decided we belonged up there.
Radhika had been in India for nearly three months filming, sending me photographs from the set between takes and calling whenever the time difference allowed.
Sometimes she appeared on my screen in full costume and jewelry, looking like someone carved out of history.
Other times she was wrapped in a robe with half her makeup removed, complaining about fourteen-hour days while someone shouted for her beyond the trailer door.
Now I was crossing an ocean to enter the part of her life I had only ever seen through a screen. A week in the home where she had grown up, surrounded by people who knew her before the rest of the world did.
I had played festivals in front of eighty thousand people with my hands shaking.
I had walked onto stages after throwing up from nerves, stood across tables from label executives who could erase careers with one phone call, and once performed an entire encore with blood filling my boot after splitting my heel open on a lighting rig.
None of that felt as dangerous as meeting Radhika’s father.
As the plane’s wheels touched solid ground, I’d convinced myself it would be fine.
Then a man in a dark suit addressed me by name and guided me through a private arrival process I hadn’t known airports offered.
Outside, a black car was waiting to take me from Udaipur airport to the Malhotras’ ancestral estate, nearly an hour into the Aravalli hills.
The second I stepped outside, India hit me all at once.
Color everywhere. Saris flashing pink, orange, yellow, red through crowds that seemed to move in every direction at once.
Motorbikes threading through gaps I would have sworn weren’t wide enough to exist. Cars leaning on their horns, people calling to one another, luggage carts rattling over pavement, families squeezing together beneath the heat.
I’d toured some of the biggest cities in the world.
I knew crowds. Traffic and noise were nothing new to me.
But I’d never experienced anything with this much movement packed into every inch of space.
It was fucking beautiful. It was also so intense that when the driver reached for my duffel, I held on to it. We had an awkward staring contest.
Eventually, he said, “Sir?”
Right. Rich people hospitality.
I released the bag. “Sorry.”
He nodded with the patience of a man who had probably dealt with far more difficult guests than an overtired bassist emotionally attached to his luggage.
By the time I climbed into the back seat, I was grateful for the sudden quiet.
I didn't want away from everything outside, but my body needed a minute to remember how to breathe before all that color and humanity made me pass out in the middle of it.
Inside the car, there was bottled water waiting in the console, along with fruit, cold towels, and a handwritten note from Radhika.
Wear the blue shirt tonight. I like you most in that one.
I laughed for the first time since leaving Los Angeles.
For the journey I was wearing an old band shirt with the collar cut low enough to expose the top of my chest, two necklaces resting against my skin.
It looked like me. More importantly, Radhika had spent enough time on video calls staring at that exact strip of skin for me to know she approved.
The confidence lasted until the city began thinning around us.
The roads widened. Walls appeared, then gates, then properties hidden behind trees and security posts.
Our car turned onto a private road lined with flowering trees.
I looked out the window. The road kept going, and going.
I leaned toward the driver. “Are we still on their property?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How long have we been on their property?”
He glanced at me through the mirror. “Several minutes.”
A fountain appeared ahead of us, large enough to belong in front of a government building.
Beyond it stood the house. No. Not a house.
Calling it a house would have been offensive to architecture.
The Malhotra estate spread across the rise in pale sandstone and carved white marble, with long colonnades, arched windows, balconies, terraces, and an entrance wide enough to admit a royal procession.
Domes rose above the central structure. Courtyards opened through enormous carved doors.
Gardens stretched away on either side in geometric paths broken by fountains, flowering trees, and lawns so perfect they looked painted. There were peacocks on the grass.
Fucking peacocks.
One opened its tail as the car passed, like even the wildlife had been trained to perform for arriving guests.
I stared at the estate. I had been inside mansions.
I had attended parties in houses worth more than entire neighborhoods.
I had watched billionaires lose obscene amounts of money over poker tables and musicians buy islands because they were bored.
This was different. This wasn’t new money trying to prove itself; it was generations of wealth settled into stone. My phone vibrated in my hand.
Radhika.
“Exactly how much money does your family have?” Her laugh filled my ear.
“Hello to you too.”
“Are we talking Rockefeller levels or is that an insult to your family? There are peacocks. One just posed for the car.”
“They don’t pose; they live there.”
“That bird knew its angles.” She laughed again. “Where are you?” I asked.
“Almost home. Filming ran late, so I had to catch a later flight.”
“You’re not here?”
“I told you I might not arrive before you. My parents will welcome you. Try not to antagonize my father before I get there.”
“Your father is going to bury me beneath one of these fountains.”
The car stopped beneath a covered entrance supported by carved pillars.
Staff came down the steps before the driver opened my door.
Someone collected my duffel. Another man greeted me by name.
I climbed out and became immediately aware of every inch of my clothing.
My boots looked rough and worn. My jeans looked like I had bought them from a gas station.
The cut collar of my shirt, which had felt like a good idea when I left Los Angeles, now made me feel like a peasant who had wandered onto the estate carrying news from the western fields.
“Radhika,” I said quietly into the phone. “I’m underdressed.”
“My mother will think you’re handsome.” Her voice softened. “I’ll be there soon. Twenty minutes at the most.”
“You’re leaving me alone with them for twenty minutes?”
I looked up at the enormous carved doors opening before my eyes.
A woman in a pale green sari embroidered with gold and dark brown hair swept into a knot made her way toward me.
I saw Radhika in her immediately. The eyes, the mouth, the stillness that made everyone else seem to be moving too much.
Beside her stood a tall man with silver at his temples and the expression of someone prepared to identify every one of my weaknesses. Radhika’s parents.
“Your parent’s are coming,” I whispered.
“My mother likes you already. She trusts my judgment.”
“Your father looks like he doesn’t.”
“He doesn’t trust anyone’s judgment but his own. Be yourself; you’ll be fine.”
I watched her father’s gaze travel over me.
“That advice may kill me.”
She laughed softly. Then her mother reached me, both hands already extended in welcome.
I slipped the phone into my pocket and stepped forward to meet the family of the woman I loved, dressed like I had taken a wrong turn on the way to soundcheck.
“Welcome,” she said. “You must be Kiri.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Malhotra took both my hands in hers. “The flight was comfortable?”
“Very. Thank you for having me.”
“We are happy you came.”
Her husband remained a few steps behind her.
Radhika had his chin. His posture, too. He stood so straight it was difficult to tell whether he was naturally intimidating or practiced at it.
He wore a cream kurta beneath a dark vest, his expression controlled enough that I couldn't say he if only disliked me or was plotting my murder.
His assessment moved from my face to my necklaces, the cut collar of my shirt, my tattoos, then returned to my eyes.
I resisted the urge to pull the fabric closed.
“Mr. Malhotra.” I stepped forward and offered my hand. “Thank you for inviting me into your home.”
He looked at my hand for half a second before taking it. His grip was firm.
“So you are the musician my daughter has been crossing continents to see?”
“I’ve crossed a few for her too.”
Mrs. Malhotra touched her husband’s arm. “Let the poor man enter the house before you interrogate him.”
“I asked one question.”
Before he could ask any more, she guided me farther into the entrance hall, which could have swallowed my childhood home whole.
The ceiling rose two stories above us, painted in blue and gold.
Sunlight poured through carved stone screens and fell across the marble floor in intricate patterns.
Fresh flowers filled an arrangement taller than Rithy.
One wall held family photographs alongside old film posters, awards, and black-and-white portraits of people I recognized even though I had grown up thousands of miles away.
I stopped in front of one photograph of Radhika as a child, missing one front tooth and glaring furiously at the camera.
Mrs. Malhotra smiled. “She hated that dress.”
“I can tell.”
“She refused to smile for the photographer.”
Her father watched me studying it.
“She was stubborn from the beginning,” he said.
“She still is.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“Respectfully,” I added.