Author's POV
Power doesn’t always roar.
Sometimes, it’s a quiet whisper in the dark, walking behind you in the shadow of those you trust. Sometimes, it wears a perfect smile, speaks in polished words, and hides its true intentions under the disguise of velvet lies.
Fifteen years ago, a night of hope turned into a night of death. The Rathores, the beloved family of the public, hosted a grand inauguration for a new hospital in a rural district—built to save lives, to heal a suffering nation. The ceremony was set in a beautiful garden, the soft glow of candlelit lanterns catching the wrinkles of distinguished faces. The elite, the powerful, the ones who held the world by its collar, were all present—unaware that beneath the celebration, betrayal was creeping forward, dressed in the finest tuxedos, sharpest suits, and deepest grudges.
Azhar Malik, head of the Malik empire, the man whose family had been woven into the fabric of this nation’s history, would never make it to the end of the night. Neither would Pratibha Rathore, the woman who stood beside her husband and a thousand well-wishers, all of whom had no idea what was about to unfold.
The assassination was swift. Clean.
And just as swiftly, the blame was placed. The Chauhans took the fall. They had their own grudges to settle with the Rathores. They had everything to gain. But in the depths of the plot, it was something far more sinister—an invisible hand—turning the wheel of destruction.
And for those of us left behind? The children? The heirs of broken legacies? We were taught to live in the ruins of the past.
But sometimes, truth is like fire. You can lock it in a chest. But it burns its way out, no matter the cost.
________________________________
Vidhi’s POV —
Vidhi Sharma’s house smelled of ink and stale coffee.
The soft hum of the city outside the windows did nothing to calm her mind. The rain pattered gently against the glass, but inside, her heart raced as it had for the past week. Documents. Case files. A world of corruption spread across her living room, a minefield of truths, half-truths, and lies she would one day expose.
She adjusted her glasses, which sat too low on her nose, and ran her fingers through her hair in frustration. Final hearing. Tomorrow. The words echoed in her mind like a ticking bomb.
She could either end the empire or burn it all to the ground.
Her phone buzzed again. She glanced at the message from , Adhvika her closest friend since law school.
Adhvika: “Are you still awake? You know I’m not getting any sleep until you’re done with this case.”
Vidhi’s lips twisted into a small smile. She needed a break, but no one else was coming to save her from this.
Vidhi: “Final hearing. Let’s see if I win or go down in flames.”
Adhvika's response was almost immediate. “You’re the one who goes down in flames. Not anyone else. You and your damn hero complex.”
Vidhi chuckled softly, sending a brief reply: “I’ll take that as a compliment.”
She leaned back, staring at the wall covered in evidence—an intricate network of photos, files, and connections that had started to make her question her own sanity. Names, faces, a few familiar ones… but she wasn’t here to make friends. She was here to win.
Her fingers hovered over a file. It was the last one on her stack. A man’s face stared back at her. Samarth Agnihotri. A name that haunted the courts and the politicians. A man whose fortune, and future, had been built on the bodies of those less fortunate.
But she couldn’t shake the feeling that Samarth was only a small part of a much larger game. There was something she wasn’t seeing. Someone else was playing behind the scenes.
Her phone buzzed again. This time, a strange number.
“Vidhi Sharma,” she answered, her voice even.
The line was silent for a long moment. Just as she was about to hang up, a soft whisper broke through.
“You don’t know what you’re about to step into.”
Click. The line went dead.
Her blood ran cold. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled. She set her phone down, eyes darting toward the balcony. Out there, across the street, parked at a distance, was a black SUV. Its windows were tinted. The driver’s side window was rolled up, but she could feel someone watching her from the shadows.
This wasn’t just a game anymore. This was war. And she was the target.
With a deep breath, Vidhi rose, grabbing her coat. Tonight, she would make sure the night was as dark as it needed to be.
________________________________
— The Other Side of the City
The air was thick with the smell of burnt oil and iron, the kind that made you gag even when you tried to forget about it. In the warehouse, a few men moved like shadows — efficient, quick, and deadly.
Four bodies lay on the ground, covered with rough sacks. Their faces were unrecognizable, their bodies still. The men worked in silence, almost reverently, as they went about their grim task: photographing, cataloging, and then, like a sick dance, burning the evidence.
There was no panic. No chaos. Everything was perfectly orchestrated.
In the corner of the warehouse stood a man in a suit, his back against the wall, his arms crossed. He didn’t flinch as the bodies were handled. He didn’t speak either, not yet. His gaze was distant, focused. Every muscle in his body was coiled, and every inch of him screamed control.
“Are we clear?” his voice finally broke the stillness. The men around him nodded.
“Yes, sir. The files are erased. The scene is cleaned.”
The man in the suit took a slow drag from his cigarette, the smoke curling around him like a shadow. He turned and flicked the cigarette away, his eyes narrowing.
Another man approached him, a dossier in hand. “We found something interesting. One of the dead was connected to a case involving the Sharma girl.”
The man in the suit remained motionless for a long moment. Then, he exhaled. “Did you secure the file?”
“Yes, sir. Everything is handled.”
“Then we have a problem,” the man in the suit said, his voice cold and measured. “That Sharma is too close. We can’t let her continue this case. You know what needs to be done.”
"Yes, sir,” one of the men nodded.
He turned away, his eyes fixed on the photo of Vidhi Sharma pinned to the wall.
“Make sure she never sees the truth. Not if it costs me everything.”
He lit a cigarette. Inhaled slowly.
“She wants justice?” he muttered. “Let her choke on it.”
________________________________
Vidhi — Midnight
Vidhi sat alone in her living room, the darkness of the city surrounding her. Her mind kept racing — the case, the phone call, the SUV outside. It all felt too real. Too close.
Something was wrong. Something was about to break open.
She stared at her corkboard, filled with connections, names, dates, and faces. Five emblems, connected in various lines of betrayal, had marked the center. Malik. Rathore. Agnihotri. Chauhan. Kapoor. Each of them was a piece of a puzzle she couldn’t yet put together.
But she would. Even if it meant she had to burn everything to the ground to get the answers.
The phone rang again.
Rudra Agnihotri.
She answered it without a second thought, knowing there was something in the way he had spoken to her last time. Something that made her uneasy.
“Vidhi,” he said, his voice deeper now, coated with something she couldn’t quite place. “It’s time to stop digging. For your own good.”
Vidhi’s breath caught. "You think I’m afraid of you?"
A low chuckle. “No. But you should be.”
________________________________
Rudra's POV
The first thing Rudra noticed wasn't the silence. It was the stillness.
Midnight bled into the streets of Lutyens' Delhi like ink spilled on silk - slow, cold, and suffocating. The kind of night where not even the wind dared to whisper. Three matte-black SUVs stood parked across from a modest high-rise apartment, their engines cold, yet their presence louder than any storm.
Inside the lead vehicle, Rudra Agnihotri sat, his arms crossed and back straight, tension threaded through every vein like barbed wire. His gaze was fixed on the faintest slit of light glowing from a third-floor window. A silhouette moved behind the curtain, pacing.
Vidhi Sharma.
"Why are we watching her, sir?" Sameer's voice broke the quiet, laced with hesitation as he sat in the passenger seat beside Rudra.
Rudra didn't answer right away.
Instead, he tapped the manila folder resting on his knee - the top sheet held a high-contrast black-and-white image of a young man. Eyes wide open. Lifeless. His name circled in red ink.
Rohan D'Souza.
The whistleblower. The one set to testify in court tomorrow morning - in a case Vidhi Sharma had been preparing for months.
"A message was delivered tonight," Rudra finally muttered, eyes still fixed on the window. "Four of them. Each one connected to that case... and now they're all dead."
Sameer tensed beside him. "You think she's next?"
"I think she's in the middle of something much bigger than her moral compass can navigate."
The silence in the car thickened as Rudra opened the folder.
The case wasn't clean.
It wasn't even supposed to be public.
Four victims, each with dangerous knowledge.
Rohan - who'd been building a timeline of offshore movements tied to Agnihotri-funded shell companies.
Pranali Mehta - a freelance reporter who had managed to extract testimony from nurses tied to the Mahir Agnihotri suicide cover-up.
Ashfaq Khan - a disgraced ex-security head Rudra had personally dismissed for disloyalty. And the last one... still unidentified.
Young. Mid-20s. Military build. Civilian clothing. No ID. But there was something about his calloused hands, the scars on his fingers. Intelligence.
Not local.
Trained.
Rudra had seen bloodbaths. Orchestrated some. Survived worse. But this one was silent. No public witnesses. No traceable bullets. Just four corpses, neatly dumped in an abandoned construction site outside the city - and not a headline in sight.
He glanced at the tablet next to the file - footage from the scene flickered. Shadowed figures. Coordinated movement. The clean-up crew worked with surgical precision. No mistakes.
That meant one thing.
Someone close. Someone with power.
Rudra leaned his head against the headrest and exhaled slowly.
Vidhi Sharma.
He hadn't thought of her since law school records surfaced in his father's old intelligence reports. Samarth Agnihotri had flagged her back then - a rising star in criminal law, obsessed with reform, with a dangerously sharp mind and unshakeable ethics.
"Potential risk. Highly driven. Morally rigid. Dangerous if provoked."
Samarth tried recruiting her. Flattery, mentorship, internships. Rudra could picture the playbook - dangle opportunity, watch them bite.
But Vidhi never bit.
And now here she was - poised to deliver a legal blow to the Agnihotris from the one place no one had expected: inside the court.
Rudra's fingers curled tighter around the folder as he remembered the anonymous tip from four days ago. A burner phone, left on the table of one of his logistics fronts. No number. No call log.
Just a voicemail.
"Watch Sharma. They'll come for her too."
He didn't believe in omens. But he did believe in strategic threats. And Vidhi Sharma had just moved from "curious outsider" to "active threat."
He snapped the folder shut.
"Is the apartment bugged?" he asked, gaze flicking toward the building again.
Sameer nodded. "Yes. Minimal activity. She works late. Almost nothing online after midnight. No social media. No visitors. She's a damn ghost."
Rudra let a dry smirk flicker across his face.
"Then let's haunt her."
Without another word, he pushed open the SUV door. The night met him with its quiet chill. His boots echoed softly as he crossed the street, head tilted low, body language unreadable.
He didn't look up. But he knew-
She was watching.
And then, just as silently, he turned back and got into the SUV, not stepping into the light - just a shadow moving through shadows. A ghost who came close enough to remind her she was never truly alone.
Back in the car, he exhaled, still watching.
"Now," he said, "we wait."
_______________________________
Vidhi's POV
The first time Vidhi felt watched, it wasn't a shadow in her periphery or a sound at the window.
It was instinct.
An old, worn instinct sharpened through years in courtrooms and interrogation rooms - the same one that kept her up at night reading autopsy reports and scanning deposition statements long after her colleagues signed off.
Tonight, it hummed at the back of her neck.
She stood by the window of her modest flat, arms folded, coffee untouched, eyes fixed on the sliver of blackness beyond the streetlight glare. No movement. No breeze. But something was... off.
Her phone vibrated on the table behind her. She didn't move. Just listened - one buzz. Two. Three.
Only one person called her this late.
"Adhvika calling..."
Vidhi picked up. "You're awake."
"Of course I'm awake," Adhvika's voice was low and tight. "Four people, V. Four people connected to your case. Dead. All in one night."
Vidhi didn't flinch. She had already read the encrypted email half an hour ago - sent from an anonymous legal server, containing four names and cause of death reports stamped with falsified hospital seals.
"Did you verify the Rohan D'Souza tip?" she asked.
"Yes," Adhvika said. "He left a message two nights ago with an NGO contact, said he was being followed. Said if anything happened to him, it wasn't an accident. I triple-checked. Vidhi... this wasn't random. This was a cleanup."
Vidhi's hand tightened on the curtain edge.
She knew it in her bones. The way the state's silence screamed complicity. The way media houses had suddenly dropped the case coverage like someone pulled a plug.
"Who would do something this precise?" Adhvika whispered. "This fast?"
Vidhi closed her eyes. One name echoed.
Agnihotris.
But not the figureheads. Not the men who shook hands at charity galas and funded hospitals for press releases.
Someone deeper. Colder. Smarter.
Her mind flashed to that photograph from months ago - a confidential profile she wasn't supposed to see. Rudra Agnihotri. The ghost operative. Mahir's shadow. Samarth's nephew.
He hadn't been on record for five years. No financial trail. No known holdings. But everyone whispered the same thing:
If Rudra shows up, someone's about to disappear.
Vidhi exhaled and finally turned from the window.
Her table was a battlefield - court files, blood reports, a red-thread map she'd tacked to the side of a corkboard. Her entire case, now littered with corpses.
She didn't know if Rudra was watching.
But she knew someone was.
"Adhvika," she said, returning to her phone. "Send me the last known address of Pranali Mehta."
There was a pause. "Vidhi-"
"No, listen. If someone's tying up loose ends, I need to know what she found. There has to be a copy. A recording. Anything."
"I'll send it."
Click.
She tossed the phone onto the table and picked up the whistleblower's diary - dog-eared, smudged, pages torn in places. Her pulse quickened as she flipped through, until one loose paper fell out - barely folded, almost invisible.
A set of coordinates.
And beneath it, in a rushed scrawl:
"If anything happens to me, go here. Ask for the Raven."
The Raven.
She had no idea who - or what - that was.
But if someone killed four people in one night to protect a secret... then this might be her last chance to blow the case wide open.
Or end up corpse number five.
She folded the paper and tucked it into her pocket, grabbed her coat, and checked the Glock she kept in the drawer. One bullet chambered.
It wasn't legal.
But neither was this war.
________________________________
Rudra's POV
From the roof of the adjacent building, Rudra had a clear view into Vidhi's living room.
He saw her tuck something into her coat. Gun. Documents. Both, maybe.
"She's moving," Sameer said beside him, voice clipped. "You want us to intercept?"
"No."
Rudra's eyes narrowed as Vidhi turned off all lights except the one by her door. Her profile framed in the amber glow like a portrait - sharp jaw, dark eyes, spine straight with fire.
"She's going somewhere," he murmured. "Let her."
"You're letting her walk into a trap?"
"I'm watching where the trap leads."
Sameer didn't argue. He knew better.
Rudra's mind worked at full throttle.
Vidhi Sharma didn't know he existed.
Not yet.
She'd likely never even heard his name spoken aloud. But her case - her righteous, precise, inconvenient case - had just waded into Agnihotri waters. And that made her a threat.
Or a weapon.
Depending on how she played her cards.
Rudra stood from his crouch. The air was tighter now. Heavy with smoke, secrets, and the kind of tension that couldn't be written off as coincidence.
The girl was heading toward a war she couldn't see coming.
And he was the only one standing between her and the next body bag.
________________________________
Yups! that's it for now.
Do let me know how was it.
And comment down your thoughts.
Write a comment ...