Chapter Twenty-Three #2
Saffi could’ve laughed. “No. There’s nothing I can do to change the past. An innocent woman lost her life because of me—a child lost a mother. I can’t reverse that.”
Saffi’s father was possibly the only person in the world capable of giving her the answers she needed. How to repent, how to move on. When it came to crime and punishment, he always had a solution.
“Why, then?” Dimple asked.
Saffi didn’t have an answer. Maybe at some point in her life, she’d had one, but it had been gradually leached from her since the day she started running.
“I see,” Dimple said.
Saffi’s first instinct was to retaliate. There was no way in hell she understood. But then again, of everyone, maybe Dimple Kapoor was the only person who could.
“You don’t think I’m a wicked murderer?” she deadpanned.
“No, you definitely are,” Dimple said, amused. “But I think I like you anyway.”
Her words were cruel and inappropriate and should not have sent a flutter through Saffi’s chest. The irony of it was laughable.
The corners of Saffi’s mouth quirked despite her efforts to suppress it. “What does that make you, then, I wonder.”
Saffi felt herself moving before she realized Dimple had hooked a leg under her chair, wheeling her closer.
Her body cast a menacing shadow from above.
It felt counterintuitive. This close, Saffi could hear the way Dimple’s breath hitched with every lie.
She could see the way her pupils dilated, maybe even feel the way her heartbeat picked up in speed.
But maybe that was the point. Maybe this was not the time for lies.
“Tell me, Saffi,” Dimple began, “how does one win in a world that favors the cruel?”
Saffi paused, taken aback. Not necessarily because of the nature of the question, but because it was something that she’d asked herself several times. It was impossible not to, given her line of work.
“You have to play by their rules,” she found herself saying. “And you have to be better at it than anyone else. Otherwise, don’t bother playing at all.”
“Is that why you allow Atlas and Eli to weigh you down?” Dimple asked. “Because you’re playing by their rules?”
Saffi blanched. “What?”
“Even your words aren’t your own. You didn’t run because you’re a coward like you allow everyone to believe.
And perhaps you’re starting to believe it yourself.
But really, you left to preserve your father’s reputation,” Dimple said.
“Let me guess: No matter what you do, it never seems to be enough, does it? Not for your family, not for Atlas and Eli, not even for yourself.”
Her words felt like a blow. Was she really so easy to read?
Or was Dimple Kapoor just that intuitive?
Part of her felt that same, age-old instinct to flee.
To give up on this investigation that was unraveling her and go back to Hong Kong or Paris.
But she would never win that way against Dimple Kapoor. And oh how Saffi hated to lose.
“Being around Atlas and Eli only serves to remind you of your greatest mistake,” Dimple said. “Haven’t you seen how much more you can accomplish on your own? Because they certainly have. And it makes them feel incompetent. That’s why they’re always trying to tear you down.”
Saffi was at a loss for words. Dimple’s expression, however, was bright. Saffi was a stranger to such a show of earnestness.
“You’re reading way too much into this,” she said, but her words sounded uncertain even to herself.
And just like that, the moment was broken. Dimple leaned away, the usual pleasant mask taking over her features. “Perhaps. But do not presume to know what it is to take a life.”
That much was true. Saffi had never experienced the desperate state someone like Dimple would have to fall into to kill someone.
What was it like, to watch the life drain from someone’s body?
To be the last thing they ever saw? An ice-cold chill shot down Saffi’s spine.
She wished she could go back in time and force herself to keep her mouth shut, to talk about anything else, to have never allowed Dimple to carve a space for herself at all.
But at least she had no right to judge Saffi.
“My childhood punishments weren’t as simple as being put in a corner.”
Saffi’s head snapped up at Dimple’s words and she frowned in confusion, but Dimple’s gaze was trained on her own feet. It took Saffi a moment to work out that she was meeting Saffi’s vulnerability with some of her own. That not today was now.
“They’d always threatened to throw me off the balcony,” she continued. “I don’t know why I never thought they’d actually go through with it.”
Saffi’s blood ran cold.
“The hitting and shouting and drinking I could handle, but living in fear is not living at all,” Dimple said softly.
“I just wanted it to be over, but bruises can be covered up until they fade, and broken bones eventually heal. I always had good grades and minded my manners. No scars meant no proof.”
And so Dimple had taken it into her own hands, Saffi realized.
She tried picturing a scared young girl on death row, sickened by the picture her mind supplied.
How many times had Dimple asked for help before realizing it would never come?
How many people had failed her? If she were in Dimple’s position, Saffi couldn’t imagine herself rising to the challenge like that.
If anything, she could see herself running, but as she was beginning to realize, that was not a permanent solution.
This was no use. Taylor’s investigative method often relied on picturing himself in others’ shoes, but Saffi had always thought it was an unfair comparison.
Who was to say whether another person saw colors more vividly or felt pain more deeply?
The fact of the matter was, Saffi was Saffi and she could be no one else no matter how hard she tried.
This was why there was no use getting to know the characters involved in every case; it would only complicate things.
But this truth given by Dimple was paid in good merit, a reimbursement for the one Saffi had given her.
In a currency only the two of them seemed to understand.
Dimple Kapoor was not someone who had initially struck Saffi as caring about fairness.
And the notion that Dimple could never understand her didn’t coincide with why it sometimes felt like the world viewed the two of them through the same warped lens.