"Raaz ki deewar, saanson mein hain,
Khamoshi ki zanjeer, dil mein hai,
Kabhi khul ke bahenge, kabhi chup jayenge,
Par ab toh sacchai chahaton mein hai"

~ Kabir ~

Mumbai, India

Something was wrong with the two of us.

I trudged through the front door, my eyes scanning the empty living room. I had hoped to find Meher home, waiting for me, but the silence was deafening. The ache in my head throbbed in sync with my racing thoughts. Why was it so hard to confront her? I knew I needed to talk to her, to clear the air, but every time I tried, the words got stuck in my throat.

I dropped my bag on the floor, the sound echoing through the room. The stillness was suffocating, and I found myself pacing back and forth, trying to shake off the restlessness. Where was she?

I winced, remembering the bump on my forehead. It still throbbed from when I acted clumsily out of nowhere. I had been frustrated, feeling like I was hitting a brick wall with Meher. We were friends, but lately, it felt like we were worlds apart.

My mind wandered back to Meher, wondering where she was and why she hadn't come home yet. Was she working late? Had she gone out with colleagues?

I thought about our last conversation, trying to replay every word, every gesture. Had I said something to upset her? Had I missed something? The more I thought about it, the more my head hurt, and the bump on my forehead seemed to pulse in sync with my worries.

As I stood there, lost in thought, I couldn't help but wonder if Meher felt the same way. We had transitioned from bitter enemies to unlikely friends, and I had to admit, I enjoyed her company. But lately, I'd caught myself stealing glances at her, noticing the way her eyes sparkled when she laughed or the way her hair fell in loose waves down her back.

I pushed the thoughts aside, telling myself I was being ridiculous. Meher and I were friends, and that was it. But the more time we spent together, the more I couldn't shake off the feeling that there could be something more between us.

I glanced at my watch, realising I had come home earlier than usual. That's why Meher wasn't here yet. She was probably still at the office, working on a case or something. I felt a pang of pride, knowing she was dedicated to her work.

As I waited for her to return, my mind wandered back to our last conversation. The last proper conversation we had was at her presentation when I congratulated her and she smiled back at me.

She looked beautiful.

And someone with power.

I shook my head, chuckling at my own foolishness. Meher and I were friends, and that was all. But as I waited for her to come home, I couldn't help but wonder— what if?

The sound of the door opening broke my reverie, and I turned to see Meher walking in, a tired look on her face. "Hey," she said, dropping her bag on the floor. "I'm back."

"Hey," I replied, trying to sound casual. "How was your day?"

Meher shrugged, heading towards the kitchen. "Long. But I'm glad to be back."

I followed her, watching as she poured herself a glass of water. "You look exhausted," I said, concern creeping into my voice.

Meher smiled, taking a sip of her water. "Just a long day, that's all."

We stood there for a moment, the silence between us comfortable. And then, without thinking, I reached out and gently brushed a strand of hair out of her face.

As soon as my fingers made contact with her hair, I felt a spark of electricity. Meher's eyes locked onto mine, and for a moment, we just stared at each other. Then, suddenly, we both turned awkward, like we had been caught doing something we shouldn't have been doing.

Meher quickly took a step back, her cheeks flushing. "Oh, um, thanks," she stuttered, her voice barely above a whisper.

I felt my own face heat up as I dropped my hand, trying to play it cool. "No problem," I said, trying to sound casual, but my voice came out a little too gruff.

The tension between us was palpable, and I knew I had to break it. "So, how was your day?" I asked again, trying to sound normal.

Meher hesitated, then said, "Officer Mistry texted me."

My heart skipped a beat. "What did she say?"

"She had sent those notes to the lab, including Tara's," she sighed, "It's a match."

I couldn't comprehend how she was feeling. Tara, Abhimanyu and Sahil all three of her friends were attacked— probably by the same person.

Earlier when she had told me how she had come into their little group, she always went into a trance, reminiscing about the time she had spent with them. It was marvellous, indeed. But there was also sadness like she was the only one left, all of them were gone.

And suddenly, all of it comes crashing down to me.

Sahil was very much alive and breathing and he was in Coma.

Which reminds me, whether the accident was planned by my enemy or his?

It had been almost four months since the accident and I hadn't said a word about it to Meher. But as our equation had been changing, I did not want to see how she would react to this. Every time I opened my mouth to speak, it was as if she anticipated if I had anything more hidden from her.

And I did not tell her— the most crucial thing ever.

"What are you thinking, Kabir?" I blinked my eyes and I watched her look curiously at me.

"Nothing," I gave her a half smile, "H-How is she going to proceed now?"

"Probably call the victims' families, I guess," she shrugged. "I am not really sure how they will carry out the investigation but I believe that is what is going to happen next considering this is a serial murder and kidnapping case."

I nod.

Meher's eyes, once bright and full of life, now seemed to hold a thousand worries. The faint lines around them, like the gentle creases on a book, told a story of sleepless nights and her anxiety. I could sense her distress, like a palpable force. Even if she did not say that much, I always knew that she was up late at night, watching, and reading over cases of mysterious kidnappings and murders covered up as suicides. She was trying so hard to find out what might be the possible reason for those things that were happening.

I put a hand on her shoulder, and she leaned into the touch with a sigh. "How are you feeling?"

Meher's voice cracked as she replied, "I feel so disturbed, Kabir. I can't understand how Abhi, Tara, and Sahil got entangled in all this. And if they knew something, why didn't they tell me? It's like they hid a lot of secrets from me, and it's tearing me apart."

"Maybe they did not want to get you involved?" I offered her a silver lining, but gauging her reactions, she wasn't biting.

"Well, whatever they did without telling me," her eyes blazed with fire, "it has now come to bite my ass. I lost them, I have no answers and while they were alive, the least they could do was to tell me that they were doing something important, nothing more, nothing less— I would have understood and kept myself from getting involved. If only— if only I had a bare minimum idea of what they were actually doing, I probably would have dug into this whole matter right from when Tara and Abhimanyu died. It wasn't like I did not have resources. One phone call to Dad and everything would have started from then and there. Five years Kabir, five years I have been kept in the dark and I have no fucking answers."

Well, that was one.

This was a long time coming considering somehow she got herself involved in this. Knowing that your friends died mysteriously—

"And I don't know what the fuck is wrong with that masked man who has probably killed Utkarsh Patil and is after me for god knows what. In fact, Kabir, I think I saw him at the auditorium giving me a fucking peace sign," she stuck her two fingers out, imitating him.

Warning bells went off inside my head immediately. Holding her by her shoulders, I shake her for a bit so she comes out of her anger phase. "Get your shit together, Meher and stop saying fuck. You saw a man?"

Meher narrowed her eyes at me. "What are you, a prude?"

I scoffed at her. "No Meher, I am not. I know very fucking well how to speak in that language. Considering we will constantly be under the eyes of the media it is better not to make it a part of your language so that you don't actually curse out in public. And don't try to change the topic, Meher. What the hell happened there?"

"While we were talking, I saw someone at the top row in complete black as if it was some shadow. I could feel him smiling at me and then he just went away, giving me a peace sign," she finished and I could feel myself land in a pool of confusion.

"That's it?"

"Yes, that is about it Kabir," from the looks of her face, it indeed was. "Did you try searching for him?"

"I did," she said, making me frown even more. "Got all the CCTV clips from that day. But the man was too smart to be caught on the camera. Though two cameras did catch him, one him entering the auditorium at the entrance and two the one near the last row."

"Did you catch his face?"

Meher shook her head disappointedly. "I am afraid not he was in all black from head to toe and his face was covered with a mask and he was wearing a cap and sunglasses. But considering he entered the auditorium after my presentation was over, he wasn't one of the people who were already present in there which means it is indeed some outsider that we don't know of."

My fingers grazed the tips of my stubble as I thought, "This cancels a lot of people out. The good thing is that we at least know it is not someone who was in the auditorium."

"But the man did not attack you, right?"

"Of course, he didn't," she removed my hand from her shoulder as she walked away to the living area. "You were there with me the entire time, remember?"

Of course, I was there.

We went straight to AV Villa after that. Not once had I left her side as long as I could remember.

"Then what was he doing there if he had no intentions to harm you?" It absolutely made no sense at all and I wasn't sure what was Meher's role in all of this.

Meher turned around, facing me. "I felt like it was a warning, of some sort. Like he meant to tell me that whatever he had started hadn't finished, yet. And he was there to do it very soon. What is the guarantee that if he didn't attack me that day, he wouldn't do it again?"

And the thought of it was scary.

*   *   *

"You'll scare those guards away, brother," Maan swirled his chair towards the door to see the retreating figures of Alpha and Beta, who had a long conversation with me over why they were not near Meher like a shadow.

The masked man's entry into the auditorium had sent me off. The person was just a few metres away from Meher generating so many possibilities of him hurting her. I had already once committed the mistake of hiring the wrong guards and I was super careful this time while hiring these new ones.

I had even put Bruno and Charlie on their tail, to see what they actually did in their free time when they weren't guarding Meher.

"You are the only one who knows my deal with Sahil," I said, reading a document that Aanchal had left for me to sign.

"So Meher is in danger? Again?"

"It was never over, Maan. But I feel this time it's not my enemies who are trying to hurt her, it is Sahil's," Like Meher, even I was pissed at Sahil for not telling me what was happening with him. I felt like a fool for not knowing anything whereas he knew about everything.

His secrets and mine.

"Now that I think of it," he pulled the chair closer to the desk, "I always felt Sahil was shady."

I stopped whatever I was doing and looked at him, narrowing my eyes, "What do you mean?"

"He approached you with the deal, remember?"

I nodded.

"Which means he did know something that he wanted to make use of and for that, you were the perfect candidate."

I inched closer to the table so that I could hear him more clearly. "I am not understanding where this is going, can you please be a bit more clear with your words? Don't go around in circles."

"What I am saying is," he took a paperweight in his hand and started playing with it, "he wouldn't have approached you if he didn't have a motive."

"He did have his end of the deal," I pointed out. "He wanted to use our resources."

"But for what? He didn't ask you for money, neither did he ask for something substantial. Instead, he asked for only one thing— the protection of your wife, Meher. Isn't that strange that out of all the things in the world, he asked something from you for someone knowing that the two of you were on bad terms?"

Things did make sense to me but the more clarity I got, the more conflicted I was becoming. Sahil wasn't just a partner I had a deal with, he was an ally— almost a friend.

"You mean to say he was aware of the equation I shared with Meher?" the question was an indication of confirmation, I wanted to know how much Sahil was aware of us.

"Isn't it obvious, Kabir?" Maan's lips quirked up a little. "The kind of friends Meher and Sahil were, it only made sense that they spoke often about family like we do. No one enters your cabin without permission, let alone sneaks in. Sahil did all of that. What are the stakes that he wouldn't have snooped around your family?"

I was silent for a while as my mind raced with an endless number of things. If Maan could sense my blank expressions, he continued to speak. "Well, his purpose for approaching you was for a bigger objective. Don't you think?"

And something clicked in my mind. Meher's words from yesterday were still fresh on my mind. Sahil wasn't just secretive with me, he was with Meher as well.

"You know Sahil was aware of someone threatening me with Arya and Meher's lives when he came to me for the first time. That wouldn't be possible if he did not know who was threatening me or whose people were threatening me. I think he did want to use the resources but to dig dirt on the people he was aiming for. And after his work would have been done, he would have given me the names and went off until something strange happened."

"What?"

I smiled. "Meher happened. Sahil was aware that whatever he was doing would eventually circle back to Meher and even if she wasn't involved, she would be the collateral damage."

"Which turned out to be true," Maan completed for me. "But what can we do now? Sahil is dead and all the answers we needed he has taken with him to his grave," he says, his voice laced with a hint of resignation.

Maan's words hang in the air like a thick fog, obscuring my thoughts. I felt a shiver run down my spine as I realised the gravity of our situation. We may never uncover the truth. The leads we had been chasing, the clues we had been deciphering, all led to a dead end. Sahil's silence was an impenetrable wall, and we were left with more questions than answers.

But what Maan didn't know was that Sahil wasn't dead. He was alive, lying in a coma in a US hospital, a secret known only to Aryan, William, and me. A secret I hadn't shared with Meher, and the weight of that omission was crushing me. I felt like I was living a lie, pretending to investigate Sahil's death while knowing he was actually fighting for his life.

My mind raced with the implications. What would happen when Meher found out? Would she feel betrayed that I'd kept this from her? Would it change everything? I couldn't bear the thought of losing her trust, of seeing the disappointment in her eyes. But I also knew I couldn't keep this secret forever. The guilt was eating away at me, like a slow-burning fire that refused to be extinguished.

The truth was far more complicated than we had ever imagined. I wanted to protect Meher from this truth, but I knew I couldn't keep it hidden forever. The tension built inside me like a storm waiting to unleash its fury.

Meher had to know.

As we wrapped up our discussion, I felt a sense of unease settle over me. We were no closer to the truth, and I was trapped in a web of secrets and lies. I knew I needed to come clean with Meher, but the fear of losing her trust held me back. For a while, I was stuck in that limbo, torn between my loyalty to Meher and my duty to uncover the truth.

As we left my cabin, the cool evening air hit me like a slap in the face. I took a deep breath, trying to clear my head, but the thoughts wouldn't stop racing. I knew I needed to find a way to reveal the truth to Meher, to find a way to make things right. But for a while, I was stuck in that darkness, searching for a glimmer of light to guide me through.

And we are at the end of yet another chapter. What was Sahil's plan? Will he ever wake up? Would Meher ever know that Sahil was alive and breathing? Tell me your thoughts about this chapter in the comments below.

I voted yesterday. Did any of you vote this year? It is kind of fun to sport the ink mark on your nails.

Please do VOTE, SHARE and COMMENT as you read this chapter. Comment a heart letting me know that you enjoyed reading this chapter.

With Love,

Akii.