Mayank Sufi
Part 1: The Man in the Silver Kurta
The lanes of Dariba Kalan in Old Delhi were quiet that morning, quieter than usual. The scent of ittar still hung in the air like the memory of a lover’s touch, but the shops had yet to roll up their shutters. It was barely 6:30 a.m. when a rickshaw-wala, yawning and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, noticed something odd in front of Ibrahim & Sons — Jewelers Since 1837. A man lay face-down, slumped against the closed shutter, silver kurta crumpled, a faint red trail soaking into the dust beside him.
By 7:15 a.m., the entire lane buzzed with whispers and questions. Some claimed they’d heard a scream around 5 a.m. Others swore they’d seen that man the night before, laughing with a young woman near the paan shop. But no one knew his name.
When Inspector Ayaan Mehra arrived, cigarette already half smoked, he took one look at the corpse and muttered, “Too neat. This wasn’t rage. This was planned.”
The victim’s neck bore a single, deep stab wound. No signs of a struggle. The pocket of his kurta had a visiting card — Rajveer Malhotra, CEO, Mandala Exports. A man with connections, money, and a penchant for antique jewels, if Ayaan remembered correctly.
“Sir, there’s a phone in his kurta,” constable Leela said, holding up a sleek black iPhone with a cracked screen. “No lock.”
Ayaan flipped through the recent calls. One number had been dialed at 3:52 a.m. — Neela. He pressed call.
“This is Neela,” came the voice, soft, sleepy, unaware.
“Ma’am, this is Inspector Mehra from the Delhi Police. Do you know a Mr. Rajveer Malhotra?”
The silence on the other end stretched.
“I—I did. We met last night. What happened?”
“He’s been murdered.”
Neela Kapoor arrived at the Chandni Chowk Police Station an hour later. She wore a sky-blue sari, her face pale under careful makeup. She looked like someone used to control but not to death.
“We met at the Taj hotel last night. He had invited me for dinner to discuss a potential collaboration,” she said, folding her hands neatly. “He was looking for antique silver artisans for a luxury line. I’m a textile designer.”
“And what time did you leave?” Ayaan asked, tapping his pen.
“Just after midnight. I took an Uber home. You can check the logs. I have nothing to hide.”
Her tone wasn’t defensive, just matter-of-fact. Too matter-of-fact.
“And you didn’t speak to him again?”
“I received a call from him at 3:52, but I was asleep. I didn’t pick up.”
Ayaan stared at her. “And yet he called only you. Odd, don’t you think?”
She didn’t flinch. “I suppose I made an impression.”
Ayaan leaned back. “Who else was at dinner?”
“No one. Just the two of us.”
“Was there anything unusual about his behavior?”
She hesitated. “He seemed distracted. He kept checking his watch and looking around like he expected someone to interrupt.”
Back at Dariba, shopkeepers murmured tales of secret deals, angry lovers, and one story about a ruby that had once belonged to a Mughal courtesan and cursed anyone who stole it. Ayaan dismissed the superstition — for now.
A clue came from Ibrahim himself. The jeweler was in his seventies, frail, eyes sharp.
“Rajveer came to see me yesterday evening,” he said. “He said he was looking for a gift. Something old. Something with… meaning.”
“Did he buy anything?”
“No. He looked at a set of silver cufflinks from the early 1900s. British Raj era. But then he got a call and left abruptly.”
“Who called him?”
“I don’t know, but he looked… shaken. Like he’d seen a ghost.”
Ayaan stood in front of the corpse again that evening. The body had been taken for autopsy, but the bloodstain remained on the shutter, drying like history.
Who killed Rajveer Malhotra? And why here — in Dariba Kalan — a place of memories, metal, and secrets?
As the sun dipped behind Jama Masjid’s minarets, a strange glint caught Ayaan’s eye. Just above where the body had lain, something was scratched into the shutter — almost invisible. He bent closer.
Three words.
“Tell her truth.”
And beneath it, the imprint of a woman’s lipstick, faint and red.
Part 2: Tell Her the Truth
Ayaan stood still, eyes narrowed at the faint crimson imprint. The lipstick was more than a mark; it was a message. “Tell her truth” — not the truth, but her truth. Words mattered, especially when left behind by a killer who had the luxury of time and calm. Whoever had murdered Rajveer wasn’t in a hurry. That changed everything.
He took a photo of the message and sent it to the forensics team. “Check if this lipstick has any identifiable chemical traces. And match the handwriting if possible. There’s no randomness in a murder like this.”
The report from forensics would take hours. Maybe more. Ayaan lit another cigarette and stared at the slowly awakening Dariba Kalan — the chatter of hawkers, the metallic clang of shutters, the aroma of fried kachoris. It was a world determined to move on, even when someone had bled into its heart hours ago.
He walked back to the station, passing a group of young boys chasing a stray kite with one wing torn. “Dilli mein sab kuch udta hai, sir,” one of them had once told him. “Kite, rumour, aur murder ka truth.” Truth — that word again.
By 10:30 a.m., the autopsy report arrived. Death occurred between 4:00 and 4:30 a.m. Clean puncture through the carotid artery. A sharp blade, not very long, likely a stiletto or ceremonial dagger. No defensive wounds. Rajveer hadn’t seen it coming. Or hadn’t resisted. Trust or distraction — both fatal.
What stood out was something unusual: under his fingernails, traces of silver leaf — varak, the kind used in sweets or old-style jewelry. “Check if any of the shops in Dariba still use traditional silver leafing,” Ayaan instructed Leela. “He was somewhere before he died. Somewhere nearby.”
At 1:15 p.m., Neela Kapoor returned. Uninvited.
“I thought you might want this,” she said, handing over an envelope. Inside was a printed email chain — her correspondence with Rajveer about the proposed collaboration. Dated three weeks back. She had highlighted the last mail from him: “There’s more to this than design, Neela. I need to talk to you in person. Something you deserve to know.”
“What did he mean?” Ayaan asked.
She looked away, out the dusty window. “I don’t know. That’s what I was hoping to find out last night. But he didn’t bring it up. He seemed… hesitant.”
“Do you have any history with him?”
Neela gave a strange smile. “We weren’t lovers, if that’s what you’re implying. We met once at an exhibition in Singapore. Spoke a few times over Zoom. That’s all. I was surprised when he messaged again last month.”
Ayaan leaned forward. “What’s your instinct? Why you? Why now?”
She hesitated, then said quietly, “My father used to work for the Malhotras. Long ago. As a caretaker in their Shimla estate. He left suddenly when I was seven. Never told me why. Died of a stroke the following year. I think Rajveer knew something.”
Ayaan blinked. “That’s something you should’ve mentioned earlier.”
“I didn’t think it was connected. Until now.”
The pieces were beginning to form a shape — faint, like fog around an old ruin.
Leela returned just as Neela left.
“Sir, we got something. A shop near the end of Dariba — Raza & Co. They still use silver leafing in traditional ayurvedic products and sweets. And guess what? Their CCTV shows Rajveer standing near their door at 4:05 a.m.”
“Alone?”
“No. With someone. A woman in a white shawl. She was wearing gloves, sunglasses even though it was still dark. Face mostly covered.”
Ayaan’s eyes gleamed. “Get the footage.”
The grainy video, once loaded, showed Rajveer pacing nervously, checking his phone. Then the woman arrived. Her walk was deliberate. Not hurried. She stood close, too close. Their mouths moved rapidly. Rajveer touched her arm once. She pushed it away. Then, at 4:16, they walked out of frame — together.
“Ten minutes before he died,” Ayaan said softly. “Where did they go?”
Leela pointed to the timestamp. “There’s another angle at the alley behind the lane. She came back alone at 4:31 a.m. Wiped her gloves on a handkerchief. Threw something in the garbage bin.”
Ayaan was already on his feet. “Send a team. Dig through that bin. Gloves, tissue, anything.”
By evening, they had results. From the garbage came a pair of white gloves, faintly stained at the fingertips. Forensics confirmed — traces of human blood, type matching Rajveer’s. On the tissue, a hint of lipstick — same color as the mark on the shutter. Deep crimson. The brand? Chanel 99. Expensive. Rare. Traceable.
“Get a list of salons or cosmetic suppliers who sell Chanel 99 in this area,” Ayaan told Leela. “And cross-check it with women connected to Rajveer.”
Leela hesitated. “Sir, you might want to see this too.”
She handed him a printed image from Raza & Co.’s front-facing CCTV. It showed the mystery woman’s hand as she adjusted her shawl. Just for a second, her sleeve shifted. A small tattoo peeked out — a crescent moon with three dots.
Ayaan froze.
He knew that tattoo.
Six years ago, he’d worked a case in Hauz Khas involving a jewelry scam that had implicated a well-known dealer named Isha Rana. She had vanished before charges could be filed. The only lead? A blurry photograph showing the same tattoo — crescent moon, three dots.
Isha had been Rajveer’s ex-fiancée.
Everyone thought she had left the country.
Had she returned?
And what had brought her back to Rajveer?
—
That night, Ayaan didn’t go home. He sat on the station balcony, watching the traffic hum along Netaji Subhash Marg. The city was always writing its own stories — blood, betrayal, and memory etched into every stone.
Rajveer Malhotra had died in silence, leaving behind three things: a message scratched into metal, a red kiss no one returned, and a truth someone was desperate to hide.
Now, he had a name.
Now, he had a shadow to chase.
Tomorrow, he would find Isha Rana.
Part 3: The Woman with the Crescent Moon
Ayaan stared at the printed image again. The tattoo was unmistakable. A crescent moon with three dots — small, elegant, feminine. Isha Rana had worn it on her left wrist like a signature. When she vanished six years ago, everyone assumed she’d escaped to Dubai or somewhere farther, under a different name. Ayaan had chased leads that dried up faster than ink on hot parchment.
And now, here she was — or at least her wrist was — captured on camera hours before Rajveer Malhotra’s death.
“Reopen the Isha Rana file,” he told Leela. “I want everything. All old addresses, contacts, business associates. Check passport renewals. Alias names. Cross-check immigration logs. She was too smart to fly commercial, but maybe she slipped up somewhere.”
“And Neela Kapoor?” Leela asked.
Ayaan lit another cigarette. “Keep her close. She’s not lying, but she’s not telling everything either.”
The file was thick. Back in 2019, Isha had been one of Delhi’s most promising gemstone experts. She curated antique collections, advised auction houses, and dealt with high-profile clients — celebrities, politicians, even royalty. Her engagement to Rajveer had made headlines. It lasted exactly seven months.
The scandal broke three days after Rajveer’s father died. Isha was accused of switching out a rare Mughal ruby with a synthetic one during a private estate audit. Rajveer denied the theft, but others pressed charges. Isha vanished before any arrest could be made.
That ruby was never found. Neither was Isha.
Now, Rajveer was dead. And the trail was warm again.
At 9:00 a.m. the next day, Ayaan sat in an obscure beauty salon in Daryaganj. One of the five listed distributors of Chanel 99 confirmed a recent bulk order — just two days before the murder. Paid in cash. No name.
“But,” the receptionist whispered, glancing around, “I remember her wrist. Pretty tattoo. Moon and dots. She said her name was Rukmini. Sounded fake.”
That sealed it.
Back at the station, Leela called with an update. “Sir, the CCTV camera from the ATM near Raza & Co. picked her up at 4:25 a.m. She withdrew ₹5000. Face still covered, but the walk, the bag, the dress — it’s all there.”
Ayaan smiled grimly. “She knew she’d be seen. But she didn’t care. She wanted to be found — or wanted us to believe we found her.”
He pulled out a dusty old photo from the file — Isha and Rajveer at an engagement party. He was in a black bandhgala, she in an emerald lehenga. They looked like perfection. But behind the smile in Isha’s eyes, there was something else. Something detached.
“Run a face match using AI enhancement on the CCTV image,” he said. “And run it against her old photos.”
By afternoon, the result came in — 93.4% match.
Isha Rana was back in Delhi.
Ayaan drove to the last known address from the old file — a defunct studio apartment in Vasant Vihar. As expected, it was locked and abandoned. But the landlord, a grumpy Bengali named Mr. Nandy, remembered her.
“She was a quiet one. Paid six months’ rent upfront. Left one day without notice. But last week…” he paused, scratching his neck. “Someone came asking for her. A woman. Pretty. Long scarf. Same tattoo.”
Ayaan’s heart thumped. “What did she ask?”
“She said she wanted to see the flat again. ‘For memory’s sake,’ she said. She even had a key. Went inside. Stayed for ten minutes. Then left.”
“Did she leave anything behind?”
Mr. Nandy frowned. “No… wait. There was something on the balcony. An old packet. I didn’t throw it. Thought it might be important.”
He led Ayaan up to the terrace-level unit. The packet was wrapped in newspaper and tied with string. Inside was a photograph — aged, curled at the edges.
It showed three people. A much younger Rajveer. A man Ayaan didn’t recognize. And a child.
Neela.
The photo had a date scribbled on the back: Shimla Estate, July 1999.
Back at the station, Ayaan stared at the photo under the magnifier. Neela couldn’t have been more than seven. She stood between two men — Rajveer and the man on the right, her father, presumably. The same man who had worked as a caretaker at the Malhotra estate.
But the photo raised a chilling question.
What was Rajveer doing there in 1999 with Neela?
Neela had claimed she barely knew him — that they met years later, as professionals. But this photo suggested otherwise.
He dialed her number.
“Neela Kapoor.”
“Come to the station,” he said. “Now.”
Her voice was calm, but something had shifted. “You found the photo.”
“Yes. You were lying. About your history with Rajveer. About your father. Start talking.”
“I’ll be there in an hour.”
At 5:05 p.m., Neela arrived, this time in a grey cotton kurta, no makeup, no earrings. She looked tired. Or relieved.
Ayaan slid the photo across the table. “Why lie?”
She touched it gently, tracing her father’s face. “I didn’t lie. I just didn’t know the truth. Not until recently.”
“Explain.”
“My father wasn’t just a caretaker. He was… more. He managed secrets. He protected the family from itself. Rajveer’s father had enemies — in business, in politics. My father was his fixer. Silent. Loyal.”
“And Rajveer?”
“He was kind to me. At least I thought so. When my father died, Rajveer disappeared too. Never came to the funeral. Never called. I believed he’d forgotten me. Until he messaged last month — saying he had answers about my father’s death.”
“Death by stroke, you said.”
Neela’s voice hardened. “That’s what I was told. But Rajveer said… there was more. That my father had discovered something in the Shimla estate — something dangerous. He was about to go to the police. And then he died. Quietly. Without warning.”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know. Rajveer never told me. He kept saying, ‘It’s safer if I show you in person.’ That was supposed to happen last night.”
Ayaan stood. “And now he’s dead.”
Neela looked up at him. “You think I killed him?”
“No,” he said. “But someone wants you to think you did. Or feel responsible.”
He placed the Chanel lipstick on the table. Neela stared at it.
“I don’t use that shade,” she said softly. “But she does.”
“Who?”
“Isha.”
“You knew her?”
Neela nodded slowly. “She came to see me. Two weeks ago. Said she had something to confess. That she had wronged me. But when I pressed her, she vanished again.”
Ayaan felt the storm rising now. Isha was circling something — or someone. And Neela was in the middle, whether she liked it or not.
He walked to the board where the case files were pinned — the photo, the lipstick, the message on the shutter, the timeline. The more he stared at it, the more he saw one thing clearly.
This wasn’t a crime of passion.
It was a performance.
And the final act was yet to come.
That night, Ayaan couldn’t sleep. The city outside his flat was a dense mosaic of lights and memories, and somewhere in it, a woman who’d vanished was watching everything unfold — her hands clean, her lips red, her motives unreadable. Isha Rana.
He poured himself a second drink and stared at the corkboard pinned with names, timelines, photos, fragments. Each piece screamed motive, but none screamed murderer.
Rajveer’s death wasn’t random. A dagger to the neck in the early morning shadows of Dariba, a lipstick mark, a cryptic message, and a forgotten estate in Shimla that apparently held secrets someone killed to protect. Ayaan knew this was no longer just a murder — it was a legacy unraveling.
At 3:12 a.m., he called Leela. “Pack your bags. We’re leaving for Shimla in four hours.”
They reached Shimla by early afternoon, the hill roads winding like old regrets. Ayaan hadn’t visited in years, not since an unsolved smuggling case led him here in ’17. The Malhotra estate stood on the northern edge of town — a colonial bungalow surrounded by deodars, the kind of place where windows watched you back.
Caretaker Bansi Ram, a shriveled man with no teeth but memories sharp as needles, greeted them at the gate.
“We don’t open the main house anymore,” he muttered. “Haven’t since the old sahib died.”
“We’re not here for the view,” Ayaan replied. “We’re here about Rajveer Malhotra.”
Bansi Ram stopped short. “He was here last week. Said he wanted to find something his father left behind. Told me not to tell anyone.”
“What did he find?”
Bansi hesitated, then led them around the side path to a locked door beneath the main staircase — a storage room, by the looks of it. “He asked me for the key. Came out an hour later, didn’t say a word. Looked like he’d seen a ghost.”
Ayaan unlocked the door. Dust, cobwebs, rusted trunks. But there, in the far corner, under a torn sheet, was a steel safe.
“Open it,” he said.
Bansi handed him a worn key. The lock clicked.
Inside, wrapped in layers of cloth and plastic, was a leather-bound ledger. Old. Faded. The Malhotra crest embossed on the front.
Ayaan opened it.
Names. Dates. Transactions. Bribes. Threats. Payoffs. Everything from real estate scams to illegal export of heritage items. And at the center of it all — a man named Ravi Kapoor.
Neela’s father.
They returned to Delhi that night, the silence in the car thick.
Leela finally asked, “What does this mean?”
Ayaan didn’t answer at first. Then: “It means Rajveer knew the truth. That his father was behind Ravi Kapoor’s murder. That Ravi had discovered the smuggling of a priceless Mughal ruby — the same one Isha was accused of stealing. Only she didn’t steal it. It was planted.”
Leela gasped. “To silence her?”
“To get her out of the way. She and Rajveer were getting too close. The ruby was used as bait.”
“But then why come back now?”
Ayaan stared at the road. “Because Rajveer was going to confess. Maybe to Neela. Maybe to the world.”
“And Isha?”
“She’s come back to clean up what’s left.”
By morning, Ayaan had the forensics confirm it — the ruby, still embedded in the back of the ledger’s inner binding, was real. It was the same ruby once catalogued in a stolen Mughal collection from the 1857 loot — presumed lost. Worth over ₹40 crores.
A motive strong enough to kill.
A secret dangerous enough to erase history.
And a game of guilt played across three decades.
The breakthrough came not from a camera or a fingerprint, but a name scribbled in the ledger beside a delivery note.
Mithu, D-Block, Nizamuddin West.
A pawn, maybe. Or a missing piece.
They reached Mithu’s house by noon. The man was in his early sixties, nearly blind, lived alone. At first, he denied everything. Then Ayaan showed him the ledger.
“Rajveer came to you, didn’t he?” Ayaan asked.
Mithu trembled. “He wanted to know how his father had killed Ravi Kapoor. Wanted proof. I told him I had none. But then he pulled out that ledger. I hadn’t seen it in twenty years.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That Ravi had tried to blackmail his father. But not for money — for justice. He wanted to expose the trafficking racket. Said he had records, documents. Two days later, he was dead. The doctor said ‘stroke.’ But I was there that night. There was no stroke.”
“Then what?”
“He was poisoned. Slow acting. Colorless. Tasteless. The kind they give in tea.”
“And Isha?”
Mithu looked away. “She came to me last year. Said she wanted to clear her name. Said she’d forgive everyone if she just got the truth. I told her everything. She cried. Then she disappeared again.”
At 5:33 p.m., Leela walked into Ayaan’s office. “We traced Isha’s last known location. She’s been staying at a boutique guesthouse in Mehrauli — under the name Rukmini Das. Same tattoo. Same scarf.”
Ayaan didn’t wait. By 6:10, they surrounded the guesthouse.
Room 203.
He knocked.
Silence.
Knocked again.
“Police. Isha Rana, open the door.”
Still nothing.
He nodded to the team. They broke it open.
Empty.
But not quite.
A note lay on the table, beside a half-finished glass of water and an open lipstick.
Chanel 99.
The note was handwritten.
“Some truths are too heavy for justice to carry. I never killed him. But I watched him die. He said he deserved it. I believe he did.
Neela deserves peace. Give her what he never could — the whole story.
You’re a good man, Inspector. But not all good men win.
— I”
Ayaan sat in his office, reading the note again and again.
Was she telling the truth?
Had she only watched Rajveer die?
Had someone else pulled the blade?
And then it hit him.
What if…?
He rushed to the evidence locker.
Rajveer’s phone.
No fingerprints had been found except his. But the voice memo app — still untouched.
He opened it.
One file. Timestamped at 3:58 a.m., half an hour before death.
He pressed play.
“This is Rajveer Malhotra. If you’re hearing this, I’m either dead or running out of time. I’ve done terrible things. Covered up worse. But I’ve found the truth now. I’m going to meet someone who deserves to hear it. Her name is Neela. She’s… she’s not just a memory. She’s the beginning of my redemption. I don’t know if she’ll forgive me. But at least she’ll know. Isha — if you’re out there — I never stopped loving you. But we were poisoned by the same legacy.
I’m going to tell her everything. Even if it kills me.”
Ayaan sat back.
He didn’t need to chase Isha anymore.
She hadn’t killed him.
Rajveer had walked into death willingly.
Maybe not suicide. But something close.
A final confession.
A gift of truth.
For the only two women he had ever wronged.
Part 5: A Gift of Truth
The voice memo echoed long after it ended. In the sterile quiet of the evidence room, Rajveer Malhotra’s voice lingered like incense in an old temple—regretful, reverent, resigned. Ayaan sat unmoving, his eyes fixed on the blinking cursor of the playback bar. So this was what a man sounded like moments before choosing to die. Not by his own hand, perhaps, but by surrendering to the consequence he believed he had earned.
And yet something gnawed at Ayaan’s instincts. If Rajveer had planned a confession and anticipated death, who had delivered the final blow? Someone he trusted enough to let close. Someone who perhaps loved him once—or still did.
The dagger. The lipstick. The gloves. The woman in white.
All signs still pointed to Isha.
But the note said she only “watched.”
And Ayaan believed her.
Mostly.
Neela arrived that afternoon, summoned not as a suspect but as an inheritor—of truth, of legacy, of grief.
He handed her the voice memo. She listened in silence. As Rajveer’s final words played, her eyes brimmed but didn’t spill.
“I waited so many years for a sentence,” she whispered. “And now all I have is a confession.”
Ayaan folded his hands. “He wanted you to know your father didn’t die of natural causes. That it was orchestrated by the man he called ‘Baba’—his own father.”
She nodded slowly. “He carried the guilt for decades. But why now? Why confess after all these years?”
Ayaan said, “Because guilt is patient. It waits for you to love someone. To trust. And then it whispers, ‘You don’t deserve this.’ Rajveer wanted to purge before he could love again—or be loved.”
She said nothing, just stared at the floor. Then quietly, “What happens to Isha now?”
“We haven’t found her.”
“Maybe she doesn’t want to be found.”
“Or maybe she’s waiting.”
“For what?”
Ayaan looked at the board again—the evidence, the timelines, the ledger. “For the curtain call.”
That evening, an envelope arrived at the police station. No return address. Hand-delivered by a child.
Inside: a photograph, a location, and a time.
The photograph showed a small wooden temple, flanked by two banyan trees. Ayaan recognized it instantly. The Malhotra family shrine in Shimla.
The time: 6:00 a.m.
Tomorrow.
No message. No signature.
Only silence.
Isha’s signature.
By dawn, Ayaan was in Shimla again. He went alone this time, without Leela, without backup. This wasn’t a chase. It was a conversation long overdue.
The air was crisp, the hills cloaked in a mist that softened even the sharpest sins. He climbed the stone path to the shrine slowly, the silence around him unbroken except by the rhythmic chirp of hidden birds.
She was already there.
Dressed in white, a pale shawl around her shoulders, sitting cross-legged before the temple, as still as the deodar behind her. She didn’t turn as he approached.
“You came,” she said.
“You invited me.”
She turned then, her face bare, older than the photographs but more beautiful for it. Time had not been unkind—just honest.
“I wondered if you’d arrest me,” she said, looking up.
“I wondered if you’d run,” Ayaan replied.
She smiled faintly. “I’ve done enough running.”
He sat beside her, folding his legs. They sat in silence for a while, watching the sun begin to split through the trees.
“He told me everything,” Ayaan finally said. “The ruby. The ledger. Ravi Kapoor. Your exile.”
She nodded. “I never stole that ruby. But I found out what it was—how it was acquired. I wanted to go to the press. Rajveer stopped me. Said he’d handle it quietly. Then the police came. And I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That the lie was bigger than both of us. That if I stayed, I’d destroy him. So I vanished.”
“Why come back now?”
“Because I thought maybe the lie was dead. That Rajveer could tell the truth, and we’d both be free.”
“But he died instead.”
She turned to him. “He asked me to come to Dariba that night. Said he’d finally gathered all the proof. That he wanted to tell Neela everything.”
Ayaan asked, “Did you see him die?”
She nodded, eyes distant. “We argued. He was shaking. Said he’d made peace with it all. That if someone wanted him dead, so be it. That it was time.”
“Did you try to stop him?”
“I didn’t think anyone else would come. I thought it was symbolic talk. But when he walked toward that shutter, he seemed to know.”
“Know what?”
“That the end had arrived.”
Ayaan leaned forward. “But someone stabbed him. Someone else was there.”
Isha hesitated, her throat tight. Then: “There was a sound behind us. I turned, saw a figure—hooded. Small. Quick. I thought maybe it was a thief. Rajveer didn’t move. And then—” she drew a breath—“he fell.”
“Did you see the attacker’s face?”
“No. Just the glint of the blade and a flash of color—crimson bangles.”
Ayaan froze. “Bangles?”
She nodded. “Glass ones. Red. Clinking.”
Not Isha.
Not a professional killer.
Not even someone stealthy.
But someone intimate. Familiar.
Someone allowed close enough to stab a man without warning.
Ayaan stood slowly. “You’re sure about the bangles?”
“I’d swear on my mother.”
He closed his eyes.
Crimson bangles.
There had only been one woman near Rajveer in those final days—someone who wore traditional glass bangles every time she came to the station.
Neela.
Back in Delhi, Ayaan reviewed the footage again. The gloves, the scarf, the walk. The camera angles had hidden the woman’s face too well.
But what if it wasn’t Isha in the video?
What if Neela had staged it to look like her?
He called the tech lab. “Run the CCTV footage again. Focus on height markers. Compare against both Isha and Neela.”
It took three hours.
The result: 5’4″.
Isha was 5’7″.
Neela was 5’4″.
The woman in the video was Neela.
It made sense now.
Neela had discovered the truth in the ledger.
Realized Rajveer’s role in her father’s murder.
He’d tried to confess.
She let him.
Then killed him before he could.
“Tell her truth,” he’d written.
But Neela never wanted his truth.
She wanted her justice.
She had waited years for it.
And took it the moment he was finally unarmed—not with weapons, but with remorse.
Ayaan found her at the Lodi Art District, sketching patterns on a wall, the kind people pay attention to only after death.
She looked up as he approached.
“You knew,” she said quietly.
He nodded.
“I didn’t plan it,” she said. “Not at first. But when I saw the dagger in my bag—my father’s old dagger—something inside me just… moved.”
He said nothing.
“I didn’t feel hatred,” she whispered. “I felt… silence. Like everything had ended. I wanted him to end too.”
Ayaan said softly, “You didn’t just kill a man, Neela. You killed the only one who finally wanted to make things right.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “Then maybe I deserve to be punished.”
“Do you?”
She looked away.
He pulled out his notebook. “The choice is yours.”
She whispered, “Do what you must.”
And sat back down.
Her sketch now complete.
A banyan tree.
And a ruby.
Bleeding at its roots.
Neela sat quietly in the interrogation room, her fingers stained with the red paint from the mural she’d left half-finished. Outside, the monsoon had finally broken across Delhi, sheets of warm rain sweeping the city as if trying to rinse away everything—dust, heat, blood.
Ayaan stood across from her. He hadn’t cuffed her. Not yet.
“I’m not a monster,” she said after a long silence.
“I never said you were.”
“I didn’t plan it like a murder. I didn’t stalk him or leave poison in his tea. I didn’t wait in the shadows with a hood over my face. I just… reacted.”
“To what?”
“To a man who waited twenty-three years to tell me that my father’s death wasn’t natural. That it was arranged. By his family. That he knew. That he helped cover it up.”
“You didn’t want the truth.”
She looked up at him. “I wanted it too late. I wanted it when it would’ve saved something. Not when it became another wound.”
Ayaan leaned back against the wall, arms crossed. “You wore the white shawl. You wore gloves. You bought the lipstick to mimic Isha’s signature shade. You made sure CCTV caught you. Why?”
“Because I knew I’d regret it later. And I wanted them to look at someone else long enough for me to figure out whether I should confess.”
“And did you?”
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
He studied her carefully. “You could’ve run. You’re smart. You could’ve buried this.”
“I tried. But Rajveer’s voice wouldn’t let me.”
“You heard the memo?”
She nodded. “Last night. When I went home, I played it from his iCloud account. He’d shared it with me weeks ago. I just never opened it.”
Ayaan walked to the window. Rain streaked down the glass like old tears.
“Why the dagger?”
“It was my father’s,” she said quietly. “He carried it from the hills of Kumaon. He used to say, ‘Every truth has a sharp end.’ I guess I believed him.”
“And now?”
“Now I just feel empty. Like someone rewrote my childhood with red ink.”
Ayaan turned to her. “You still have a choice, Neela.”
“To do what? Seek forgiveness?”
“To forgive him.”
She looked away. “I forgave the man he was becoming. I couldn’t forgive the man he had been.”
—
Later that evening, Ayaan stood before his superior, DCP Manav Roy, handing over the file marked MALHOTRA / DARIBA / CLOSED.
“She confessed,” Ayaan said. “No deal. No lawyer. No denial.”
Roy nodded slowly. “It’ll be a media circus.”
“She knows.”
“And Isha?”
“Gone. Again.”
“Do we chase her?”
“No need. Her part’s over.”
The DCP opened the file and glanced through the notes. “You believe Neela’s version? That she acted in grief and fury? That it wasn’t premeditated?”
Ayaan said nothing for a moment, then nodded. “I believe she didn’t come to kill him. But she didn’t stop herself either.”
“Still murder.”
“Yes.”
Roy closed the file. “The court won’t be kind.”
“She’s not expecting kindness. Just silence.”
—
Two weeks later, Neela Kapoor stood trial. Her confession was read aloud in full. No plea bargain. No defense. Just truth laid bare.
The media called it The Dariba Redemption.
Some said she was a modern-day Medea. Others said she was a martyr. Everyone had an opinion.
But Neela didn’t flinch.
The court sentenced her to seven years for second-degree murder, citing emotional provocation and absence of criminal history.
Ayaan didn’t attend the sentencing.
He visited the mural instead.
She’d completed it the night before her arrest.
A massive banyan tree, roots spiraling across the wall like veins. Beneath it, two figures stood—one male, one female—facing away from the viewer. And in between them, blooming from the soil, a blood-red ruby.
No signature. Just three words at the bottom corner, in crimson paint.
“Forgive, Forget, Fall.
Ayaan returned to the Malhotra estate once more, months later, when autumn came to Shimla and the trees turned gold.
The house had been auctioned off quietly. The new owners hadn’t touched the shrine.
He sat before the old wooden temple, now covered in dry leaves. The ruby had been handed over to the National Museum. The ledger locked away. Rajveer’s legacy was scattered—some pieces in prison, some in archives, some in the rain.
Only one thing remained whole: the truth.
It hadn’t brought peace.
But it had brought clarity.
Sometimes that’s all a death could offer.
Back in Delhi, a letter waited for him on his desk.
No return address. But the handwriting was unmistakable.
Isha.
“Dear Inspector Mehra,
You were right. I came back for closure. But I didn’t realize closure is just another word for carrying something differently.
Rajveer died not because of me or Neela. He died because silence ages like poison. And by the time it reaches the heart, there’s nothing left to save.
I’m leaving now. Somewhere warm. Somewhere no one asks about rubies or fathers or Delhi nights.
Thank you for listening to what most men would have dismissed as manipulation.
You are one of the rare ones.
If you ever come across a tree with red roots and golden leaves, know I was there.
— I.”
Ayaan folded the letter and placed it in the back of his notebook.
Sometimes the ones who vanished were more present than the ones who stayed.
As winter crept into the city, Ayaan walked the lanes of Dariba once more.
The shutter outside Ibrahim & Sons had been repainted. The stain washed. The mark erased.
But when he stepped close enough, he saw it—faint, like a whisper etched beneath paint.
“Tell her truth.”
Still there.
Still bleeding.
Some truths, it seemed, refused to die.
Even when the people who carried them did.
Part 7: The Whispering Ledger
The city moved on. That was its curse and its charm.
Dariba, with its sparkle and shadow, its bangles and betrayal, wore its routine again like an old sherwani—slightly frayed but dependable. Tourists returned, eager to photograph the gold-plated doorways and sample cardamom-scented paan, unaware that a man had bled quietly onto its stones just weeks before.
Only Ayaan hadn’t moved on.
Not entirely.
Because even with Neela in prison and the ruby back in national custody, something about the case scratched at the back of his mind like an itch under bandages. He tried to tell himself it was done. That murder was often messy, motives incomplete, endings inconclusive. But he knew better.
Murder didn’t just end with confessions.
It lingered.
And now it whispered again—through the pages of a ledger.
Ayaan returned to the archives, where the Malhotra ledger had been sealed inside a police evidence vault. He signed his name, flashed his ID, and entered the cold metal room.
The ledger was heavier than he remembered.
Not just physically—but morally.
He laid it on the metal table and began flipping through.
There it was again.
The page with Ravi Kapoor’s name.
Transactions. Dates. Payment receipts. All pointing to his whistleblowing attempt in 2002. Everything aligned with the story Neela and Isha had told.
But four pages later, something odd surfaced.
A page labeled “Special Arrangements – June 2003.”
Ayaan squinted. Handwriting different. Less precise. Sloppier.
And one name stood out among the scrawl: M.M. Rana.
He felt his breath hitch.
Rana.
Not Isha.
Manav M. Rana.
DCP Manav Roy’s full name before he changed it for “professional simplicity.”
Roy had been an ACP in 2003.
A rising star.
And the officer in charge of investigating the Malhotra estate after the sudden death of Ravi Kapoor.
Ayaan hadn’t thought twice about it before.
But now the dots lined up.
Roy had buried the investigation.
Marked Ravi’s death as “natural.”
And six months later, he was promoted.
A promotion tied to his “flawless handling of sensitive family property disputes.”
He stared at the page.
There it was. In looping black ink.
“M.M. Rana – assured discretion. ₹2.5L.”
A bribe.
A signature.
A secret.
Still bleeding.
Ayaan didn’t go to Roy immediately.
He needed more.
He drove across the Yamuna, to an address he hadn’t visited in years—a forgotten journalist who had tried, once, to expose the jewel smuggling syndicate and been blacklisted for his efforts.
Dev Mehta opened the door wearing a lungi and the look of someone who no longer believed in justice.
“You look like a man who’s about to explode,” Dev muttered.
“I need your memory.”
Dev arched an eyebrow. “You finally admitting the system eats its children?”
“I’m admitting it eats its own. I think Roy took a bribe in 2003 to bury a murder.”
Dev blinked. “From the Malhotras?”
Ayaan nodded. “And I think he kept Isha as the scapegoat. She was framed.”
Dev laughed bitterly. “I wrote about that in ’04. No one listened. I called Roy the ‘velvet butcher.’ Too polite to be suspected. Too powerful to be questioned.”
“Do you have your notes?”
Dev walked to a filing cabinet and pulled out a dusty brown folder labeled “MALHOTRA-RANA – UNSUBMITTED.” Inside were typed sheets, photos, receipts, and one critical copy—a surveillance image of Roy entering the Malhotra estate at midnight, two days after Ravi’s death.
A second photo showed him exiting with a leather pouch.
“Bribe,” Dev whispered. “I tried everything. Press, police, even an MLA. Everyone backed off. Roy rose. I sank.”
Ayaan stared at the photos.
The past had finally come due.
Back at the station, Ayaan placed the copy of the ledger page and Dev’s photos in an envelope marked CONFIDENTIAL and slid it into the DCP’s mailbox.
That night, Roy called him.
“Come to my house,” he said. “Alone.”
The Roy residence in Civil Lines was immaculate. Bookshelves aligned like chess pieces. A fountain gurgled outside the window. Roy poured two drinks and handed one to Ayaan.
“So,” Roy said, sipping calmly, “you’ve been digging.”
“Not much digging required. You left your name in the ledger.”
“I was young,” Roy said. “Eager. Ambitious. And the Malhotras were kingmakers back then. What would you have done, Mehra? Refused? Let your career drown before it began?”
“I would’ve tried not to become the kind of man whose promotions are built on a dead caretaker and a silenced daughter.”
Roy chuckled. “Careful. You sound idealistic.”
“No,” Ayaan said coldly. “I sound like a cop.”
They stared at each other in silence.
Then Roy leaned forward. “What do you want, Ayaan? My badge? My retirement? My shame in the newspapers?”
“I want your confession.”
Roy tilted his head. “You think I’m stupid?”
“I think you’re tired,” Ayaan said. “I think your conscience has been eating itself for twenty years. And I think you planted every story about Isha. Fed the media. Kept her fugitive status alive so no one would look too closely at your role.”
Roy set his glass down.
“Did Neela know?”
“No.”
“Good,” Roy whispered. “Let it stay that way.”
“You’ll confess?”
“No,” Roy said, smiling sadly. “But I’ll resign.”
“And?”
“And I’ll leave Delhi. Quietly. No press. No noise. I’ll donate the pension to the Police Widow Fund if it makes you feel better.”
Ayaan said, “You don’t deserve a clean exit.”
Roy raised his hands. “Maybe not. But you and I both know the system won’t prosecute me. I am the system. And your word against mine won’t survive. So take the resignation, Inspector Mehra. It’s the most justice you’ll get.”
Ayaan stared at him for a long time.
Then stood.
“You’re wrong,” he said quietly. “I’ll get more. Just not for you. For the ones you erased.”
Two days later, Roy resigned citing “personal reasons.”
The media speculated.
No one confirmed.
But Ayaan knew.
And so did Isha, wherever she was.
And Neela, behind those prison walls.
Ayaan visited her again that week.
Brought her a copy of the photo from Dev’s file.
Her father, smiling. Alive.
Before he knew the cost of loyalty.
“This man,” Ayaan said, “deserved a daughter like you.”
She held the photo with shaking hands.
“And Rajveer?” she asked.
Ayaan paused. “He died trying to do the right thing. Maybe that’s all we can hope for.”
She nodded. “And you?”
“I’ll keep listening,” he said. “Even when it hurts.”
That night, Ayaan walked alone through Dariba again.
The street glowed amber under rain-kissed lights.
He passed the shutter outside Ibrahim & Sons.
And saw it again.
Beneath the layers of paint, etched by a hand that never asked forgiveness—
Tell her truth.
He touched the words gently.
Some stories never close.
They whisper.
They bleed.
They remain.
Part 8: Smoke in the Archive
It rained again in Delhi. Not the dramatic thunderous monsoon of July, but the soft drizzle of a city trying to cleanse itself—slow, persistent, futile.
Ayaan stood at the edge of Raj Ghat, watching the Yamuna flow sluggishly. The river had always felt like a lie to him. It pretended to move, but never really went anywhere. Like most things in Delhi—power, truth, grief—it just circled itself.
Roy was gone. Neela was behind bars. Isha had vanished like mist over hills. The ledger was sealed, the ruby displayed behind glass, labeled Mughal Origin, c. 17th Century: Donated anonymously.
And yet, Ayaan didn’t feel done.
Because something still itched in his gut. A sensation that had haunted him before in other cases: the feeling that the last line of the story had been written by someone else.
That there was one more act.
One more sin waiting in the smoke.
The police archive building in Kashmere Gate was a grey, fungal place where forgotten files lived longer than most memories. Ayaan arrived with a signed order to access case records between 2002 and 2006 involving gemstone certifications and estate tax fraud.
The clerk, a man named Bharat who smelled like old coffee and resignation, barely looked up. “Everything’s digitized now,” he grunted. “But you want the paper files, don’t you? You people always want the paper.”
Ayaan smiled. “Paper doesn’t lie as politely.”
They led him to a row of shelves labeled ‘CIVIL / ESTATE / JEWELRY / SPECIAL LICENSING’. Most files were crumbling at the corners.
He wasn’t looking for a killer this time. He was looking for a crack in the glass—anything that suggested the ruby hadn’t entered the Malhotra collection through inheritance. Because if it hadn’t, then someone still out there had traded blood for its silence.
After an hour, he found it.
File #RJ-383-2003.
Inside: a gemstone certification issued to Mandala Exports—Rajveer’s company. The ruby listed: 124-carat Burmese origin, acquired via private auction.
Signed by a gemologist named Dr. Y.P. Handa.
Except—Ayaan remembered—Dr. Handa had died in 2001.
The signature was forged.
He rushed back to his office, scanning all files tied to Mandala Exports between 2003–2006. Dozens of shipments listed rubies, emeralds, even sapphires—but always under vague headings like “heritage stones” or “antique consignment.”
And then, the link clicked.
The ruby Isha had been accused of stealing wasn’t from the Malhotras. It was placed there. Not by her. Not by Roy.
But by Rajveer himself.
To legitimize a forged acquisition.
He’d orchestrated the theft, blamed Isha to protect his name, and filed a fake certification. Years later, his guilt had made him want to confess.
But back then?
He was just another heir with blood on his fingers.
Ayaan returned to Neela.
He showed her the file.
She read it once. Then again.
“I thought the worst of him,” she whispered. “But even I didn’t think this.”
“He was trying to clear his name at the end. But twenty years earlier, he made himself untouchable through deception.”
She smiled bitterly. “Truth was always the woman he couldn’t marry.”
Back in his flat, Ayaan pulled out his old case diaries.
He had handled two gem smuggling investigations in 2014 and 2016. Both fizzled due to “lack of evidence.” Both involved a man named Nabeel Vora—a middleman who specialized in undocumented antique jewelry, usually shipped to Dubai or London.
Vora had disappeared after the Isha scandal. Rumored dead.
But a recent customs alert mentioned an N. Vora detained in Istanbul trying to pass through with four unset rubies.
Could it be him?
Ayaan contacted Interpol.
They confirmed the match through fingerprints.
Nabeel Vora had been alive all along. Operating quietly under shell companies, false passports, and silence.
And when asked who supplied him the biggest Mughal ruby of his career back in 2003?
He gave one name.
Rajveer Malhotra.
It all came full circle now.
Rajveer had acquired the ruby illegally.
Had Ravi Kapoor discovered this and threatened exposure?
Was that why he was silenced?
And was Neela’s vengeance, as misguided as it had seemed, actually… justice?
Ayaan didn’t know anymore.
He only knew that the deeper you dug into elite Delhi legacies, the more rot you found beneath the marble.
Three nights later, he received a letter.
Delivered by hand. No return. Just his name in beautiful Urdu script.
Inside: a card and a train ticket.
“Platform 3, Old Delhi Station. 11:10 p.m.”
No message. No signature.
He knew who it was.
Only one person still left notes like poetry.
Isha.
He reached the station just as the 12952 Mumbai Rajdhani rolled in. Among the swirl of hawkers, porters, and sleepy travelers, she stood still, wearing a long shawl and no fear.
“You found the rest of the story,” she said softly.
“Yes,” he said. “But it didn’t bring closure. Just clarity.”
She nodded. “Closure is a western illusion. In our world, stories remain half-told and people remain half-punished.”
“Why call me?”
“To say goodbye. This time for real.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“I meant it less then.”
He walked beside her down the platform.
“I thought you might want to testify. Against Roy. Against Mandala Exports. You were framed.”
She shook her head. “Framing me was the kindest thing they did. At least I got out. You stayed.”
“And Neela?”
“She will survive. Like all women built from silence.”
She reached into her bag and handed him a small, heavy object.
Wrapped in silk.
He unwrapped it.
A second ruby. Smaller. Brighter.
“Where did you get this?”
“The original ruby’s twin. Rajveer had it hidden in the Malhotra piano. He meant to give it to Neela when he confessed. But time ran out.”
Ayaan looked at her. “And what do I do with it?”
“Whatever justice looks like to you.”
She turned to go.
“Isha,” he called.
She stopped.
“If you ever come back—”
She smiled. “—you’ll know before I do.”
And with that, she disappeared into the crowd, a shadow slipping into the pulse of the city.
Back home, Ayaan placed the ruby in a velvet pouch.
He didn’t log it.
Didn’t report it.
He simply walked to a jewelry school in Chawri Bazar the next day and donated it anonymously with a note:
“For every student who believes beauty needn’t come from blood.”
Dariba Kalan glittered again.
But Ayaan knew better than to trust glitter.
It was often what murder wore to dinner.
And yet—
He walked the lane.
Saw a new shutter painting being done.
A mural of justice—blindfolded, barefoot, holding not a sword, but a ruby.
Painted by a young girl.
One of Neela’s students, perhaps.
When he looked closer, he saw it.
Etched lightly in the corner.
Three familiar words.
“Tell her truth.”
Still there.
Still breathing.
Still Delhi.
Part 9: The City Remembers
The winter sun in Delhi rose late and lazily, as though reluctant to illuminate a city still recovering from the weight of secrets. Ayaan stood outside the old Haveli that now housed the Art Preservation Trust in Kashmiri Gate. The ruby he’d donated anonymously had made headlines—not because of its monetary value, but because of its message. The school had put out a statement saying they’d received “a symbol of reclaimed heritage, with a vow of ethics stitched in its history.” No one knew who had donated it. No one ever would.
But someone had painted it.
The mural of the barefoot Justice with the ruby in hand had become an accidental pilgrimage site—college students posed with it, bloggers romanticized it, and street vendors sold keychains with its print.
Only Ayaan knew its shadow.
And its blood.
The CID team was closing its file on Mandala Exports that week. Rajveer Malhotra’s empire was being dissected. His former business partner, Aseem Vaidya, had agreed to a plea bargain in exchange for exposing their decade-long smuggling operation. Shell companies were named. Vaults were uncovered. Two customs officers had quietly submitted resignations.
But nothing pointed further.
No living accomplices. No hidden heir.
Just echoes.
Until Leela walked in with a new file.
“Sir,” she said, carefully placing it on his desk. “You need to see this.”
Ayaan opened it, flipping past the contents. Bank transactions. Phone logs. Handwritten notes in Dev Mehta’s old files.
And one detail that froze him.
A second ledger.
Identical binding. Same crest.
But stored in a private locker under the name Ravi Kapoor.
“It was never found during the initial investigation,” Leela said. “Apparently, it was handed over to an NGO after Ravi’s death—something his wife arranged. It remained in their archives mislabeled as an ‘Estate Logbook.’”
Ayaan stared at the cover.
A different truth.
Written by the man everyone had silenced.
Inside the second ledger were records that made the first look like a preface.
Ravi Kapoor had documented everything—not just the jewel smuggling, but the intimidation tactics, the hush money paid to lower-level clerks, the falsified customs certificates.
And at the end, one damning paragraph:
If anything happens to me, I request my daughter, Neela, to find this ledger. Let it tell her the truth I could not.
I trusted Rajveer once. I hope, one day, he deserves it.
Ayaan’s fingers trembled slightly as he read it.
It wasn’t just evidence.
It was a love letter.
One that had never reached her in time.
Neela sat across from him in the prison meeting room, wearing the pale blue uniform of Tihar’s minimum-security block. Her face had thinned slightly, but her eyes still carried the weight of discipline.
When he handed her the ledger, she stared at it as if it might dissolve.
She opened it.
And began to read.
For ten minutes, she said nothing. Then she looked up.
“He tried,” she whispered. “He tried to leave a map out of the dark.”
“He trusted you’d read it.”
She touched the page like one might touch a forehead in farewell.
“This should’ve come to me twenty years ago.”
“Time buried it,” Ayaan said. “But not forever.”
She shook her head slowly. “The irony is… if I’d seen this a month earlier, Rajveer might still be alive.”
“You did what you thought justice demanded.”
“I did what silence demanded,” she corrected. “This—this is justice.”
She slid the ledger back. “Use it. Make it right.”
He hesitated. “You could appeal. With this, you might even get an early release. The court will understand the context now.”
She smiled sadly. “I’m not seeking release. Just completion.”
That week, Ayaan submitted the second ledger to a special inquiry commission. The story hit the press again, now not just about smuggled jewels, but suppressed truth.
Headlines read:
“Whistleblower’s Ghost Exonerates Daughter.”
“Justice Wears Glass Bangles: The True Story of Neela Kapoor.”
“Rajveer Malhotra: Tycoon, Traitor, Tragic.”
The public reeled. Some sympathized. Others debated morality.
But one quiet column by Dev Mehta said it best:
In Dariba, gold is weighed on crooked scales. And yet, somehow, the blood remembers how to balance the books.
Weeks passed.
Then months.
Roy had moved to a quiet farmhouse in Dehradun. Isha was never seen again, though rumors placed her in Morocco, working in stone restoration under an assumed name.
The Dariba shutter—where the words “Tell her truth” once lay—had been repainted twice. Yet each time, someone etched them back. Small, faint, just above the handle.
The city refused to forget.
Ayaan received one final envelope.
No name. Just a dried marigold pressed into the paper.
Inside was a train ticket to Shimla.
And a photo.
The Malhotra piano—its lid open.
And beneath it, in faded handwriting:
“For the woman I once failed, and the daughter I never deserved.”
Signed: R.M.
Rajveer’s last confession.
Not for the world.
Just for memory.
Ayaan didn’t take the train.
He didn’t need to.
The case was closed.
Not in court.
But in conscience.
Some stories don’t end in arrests.
They end in understanding.
And sometimes, that’s enough.
On a warm evening in March, the Art Preservation Trust unveiled a new sculpture.
A barefoot girl holding a ruby above her head.
Behind her stood two blurred shadows—a man and a woman—neither villain, nor hero.
Just human.
The plaque read:
“Let the truth rise, even if we fall.”
— Dedicated to Ravi Kapoor, Neela Kapoor, and Rajveer Malhotra
Ayaan stood in the crowd, hands in his pockets, silent.
He turned to leave.
But paused.
A young girl, no older than seven, stood near the sculpture sketching it in a notebook.
She wore crimson glass bangles.
When she noticed him looking, she smiled and held up her drawing.
A ruby.
Floating in a sky full of stars.
Beneath it, she’d written three words in careful block letters.
TELL HER TRUTH.
He smiled.
And walked away.
Part 10: The Weight of Silence
The day Neela Kapoor walked out of Tihar, there were no journalists, no news vans, no curious eyes. Just a late spring sun casting long shadows over the red stone and steel, and a single figure waiting by the exit.
Ayaan stood quietly, arms crossed, no smile but something softer—recognition.
Neela stepped out slowly, blinking into the light. Her hair had grown longer. Her steps were lighter, freer. But the weight in her eyes hadn’t changed. Grief doesn’t leave; it simply learns to walk beside you.
“You’re early,” she said.
“You’re free,” Ayaan replied. “I didn’t want you to walk alone.”
She nodded, as if acknowledging not just the gesture but the meaning beneath it. She had walked alone long enough.
They began down the path, no destination discussed. The air smelled of mango blossoms, of city dust, of unfinished stories.
“Do you still have the ledger?” she asked.
“It’s in the National Archive now,” he said. “Alongside your father’s original notes. Both are sealed for public release in five years. It was your idea, remember?”
She smiled faintly. “I wanted it to become history, not gossip.”
A moment passed. Then she added, “I’m not the person who left this city three years ago.”
Ayaan glanced at her. “No one is. But you’re the only one who came back with your truth intact.”
They stopped at a tea stall under a neem tree in Sundar Nagar. The man behind the counter, too old to ask questions, handed them two kullars of masala chai and gestured toward the stone bench. The world moved around them—scooters honked, kites dipped, a wedding band practiced nearby—but between them, there was stillness.
“Do you regret it?” Ayaan asked quietly.
Neela didn’t answer immediately. “Not the act,” she said finally. “But the timing. I wish I’d let him speak. I wish I’d heard him before I silenced him.”
“He left enough behind,” Ayaan said. “In ledgers, in whispers, in his silence. You weren’t the only one seeking the truth. He was too.”
“And Isha?”
Ayaan shook his head. “Gone. But I get postcards sometimes. Always unsigned. Last one had a picture of a tree with ruby fruits and the caption ‘Not all roots rot.’ I assume she’s healing, wherever she is.”
Neela sipped her tea, thoughtful. “Do you believe justice was served?”
“I believe something greater happened,” he said. “You changed the story. Not for Rajveer. For yourself. For your father. That’s more than most people ever manage.”
She nodded, then reached into her bag and pulled out something wrapped in cloth.
“I kept one thing,” she said.
Inside the cloth was a glass bangle. Red. Intact.
“I wore this the day I killed him,” she said softly. “But this one… it didn’t break.”
Ayaan looked at it, then at her.
“It stayed whole,” she said. “While everything else didn’t.”
“You should keep it,” Ayaan said.
She shook her head. “No. You should.”
He hesitated.
“Why?”
“Because you’re the only one who stayed unbroken through all of it.”
She placed it in his hand.
That evening, Ayaan visited Dariba Kalan once more. The street was preparing for Ramzan—lights strung overhead, shops stacking sweets and prayer beads, children chasing kites between brass lamps. The shutter where it had all begun was now a silk boutique. Its surface clean.
But if you looked closely, just above the handle, faint as a scar…
Tell her truth.
Still etched. Still there.
He placed the red glass bangle in his coat pocket and began to walk.
Through alleys where blood had once whispered, where guilt had once watched, where love had died without goodbye.
He passed Ibrahim & Sons.
The old man was still there, polishing silver under a flickering bulb.
He looked up and gave Ayaan a silent nod.
Nothing more was needed.
Everyone in Dariba remembered.
Even if they didn’t speak it.
Months passed.
Neela took a job teaching design at an NGO-run school for girls in Old Delhi. Her name never appeared in the news again, but her students painted murals across the city—bright, defiant, human.
One of them painted a woman’s hand holding a red bangle, shattering like glass against a stone wall. Underneath, the words: “Some truths are weapons. Others, mirrors.”
Ayaan saw it during a routine patrol. He smiled.
And kept walking.
One afternoon, a courier arrived at Ayaan’s desk. A brown envelope. No stamp. No address. Just a wax seal with the faint mark of a crescent moon and three dots.
Inside: a sketch. A temple perched on a cliff. A woman kneeling before it. In her palm—a ruby. But this time, the ruby glowed with light instead of bleeding.
Beneath it, one line handwritten in Urdu.
“Some endings begin again.”
Isha.
He folded the paper and tucked it into his notebook, beside the last page of the case file he refused to close, even now.
It didn’t need closing.
It needed carrying.
Like some stories.
Like some scars.
The ruby at the museum was now behind bulletproof glass. A small plaque noted its provenance, its controversy, its redemption.
Visitors leaned in every day, eyes wide, reading words they didn’t fully understand:
Once lost in darkness, recovered by memory,
Once owned by kings, returned by ghosts,
Its value not in its weight, but in its witness.
Ayaan visited once a month.
He never stayed long.
Just long enough to see that truth, finally, was no longer silent.
On the one-year anniversary of Rajveer Malhotra’s death, a new message appeared on the Dariba shutter.
Written in soft gold chalk, elegant and vanishing fast:
“Truth is the ruby no one can steal.”
Ayaan didn’t erase it.
He left it.
For someone else to read.
For someone else to remember.
Because in Delhi, everything is eventually forgotten.
But not Dariba.
Not her.
Not the truth.
THE END
