Rohan Sen
Part 1 – The First Murder
The night air in Mumbai carried its usual cocktail of sea salt, petrol fumes, and exhaustion. By the time Inspector Kabir Mehta arrived at the narrow lane in Fort, the neon lights had gone dim, the hawkers had packed their stalls, and the crowd had gathered in that restless half-circle that only death could command. The constable waved him in, parting the murmuring mass of onlookers. Kabir ducked under the yellow police tape, his eyes falling instantly on the sprawled figure inside the glass-fronted office. A man in his mid-forties, shirt stained with blood, his tie loosened as if in a final struggle. The body lay behind a desk littered with files and half-drunk tea. Kabir’s years on the force had taught him to read a room quickly—the open drawer, the scattered papers, the broken glass near the window. It had all the markings of a robbery gone wrong. But then his gaze stopped on the left wrist of the victim. A symbol had been carved into the skin with chilling precision. Not a random cut, not the frenzy of a burglar. A deliberate mark.
The victim’s name was Vijay Shastri, an accountant at a mid-tier finance firm. His ID card still hung from a lanyard, untouched, as though the killer had no interest in identity theft. Kabir crouched near the body, his torchlight grazing the bloodied wrist. The symbol looked like an inverted triangle intersected by a single vertical line—crude, yet intentional. Kabir’s jaw tightened. He had seen plenty of gang markings before, but this didn’t fit the pattern. Behind him, Rhea Deshpande, a newly assigned sub-inspector eager to prove herself, scribbled notes rapidly. “Sir, looks like they wanted the cash. The locker’s empty.” Kabir glanced at her, his voice calm but edged. “If it was only about cash, why the mark? Why risk time carving it in?” Rhea hesitated, pen pausing. The silence stretched between them, filled only by the faint hum of ceiling fans above.
He walked around the desk, scanning. No signs of forced entry. The office door was intact, the windows sealed. Whoever came here either had access or was let in. Kabir straightened and turned to the constables. “Check CCTV. And find out who last left this building.” He knew most cameras in old offices were dummies or long broken, but the ritual of command steadied him. Out on the street, the murmurs grew as word spread—a murder in the business district, respectable man killed at work. Kabir stepped outside briefly. The press vans were already circling, their reporters smelling scandal. He lit a cigarette, staring at the crowd, feeling the city’s pulse tighten.
The autopsy report came in faster than expected, confirming what his instincts had whispered. Death by stabbing, a single clean thrust to the chest. The carving had been done post-mortem. That detail chilled him more than the wound itself. It meant the killer had lingered, had time, had a message to send. Two days later, when the second body turned up in a suburban office—another accountant, another single stab wound, another carved symbol—Kabir knew this was no isolated case. Patterns were forming. And in Mumbai, patterns always led to power.
That night he sat alone in his modest flat, city lights flickering outside the window, the case file spread before him. Two accountants, no personal connections. Different firms, different neighborhoods. Yet both marked with the same symbol. Kabir poured himself a glass of cheap whisky, the liquid catching the light like burnt gold. His reflection in the window looked older than his forty years, hair flecked with premature gray, eyes hollowed by years of chasing men who always seemed one step ahead. He lit another cigarette, letting the smoke blur the city skyline. Why accountants? Why the mark? Somewhere, the answer lay buried in numbers, ledgers, transactions too dry for the world to notice.
When his phone buzzed past midnight, he almost ignored it. But the voice on the other end froze him. “Inspector Mehta, stop digging. Some books are meant to stay closed.” The line clicked dead. Kabir sat in silence, the smoke curling around him like a warning. He knew then—this wasn’t about robbery or revenge. This was about something larger, something written in ink and sealed with blood. And he also knew something else, with the certainty of a man too long in the game: he had just stepped onto a path where the line between survival and truth would vanish faster than the city lights in a power cut.
The next morning, as the sun bled over the Arabian Sea and the trains began their thunder, Kabir returned to the station. Rhea was already waiting, files stacked, her eyes burning with the zeal of the new. He offered no pleasantries. “We’re not dealing with random murders. We’re dealing with a message. And we need to find out who it’s meant for.” He flipped open the file again, the photographs of carved wrists staring back at him like mute accusations. Somewhere in those numbers, somewhere in the balance sheets these men guarded, lay the answer. Kabir crushed his cigarette into the tray, his voice low but steady. “Let’s find out who wants accountants dead. And why they want their silence written on skin.”
Part 2 – Clues in the Shadows
The city doesn’t wait for the dead. By the time Kabir Mehta reached the second crime scene, a glass-and-steel office park in Andheri, workers had already returned to their cubicles, pretending the blood scrubbed from the carpet the night before was nothing more than a routine cleaning. Mumbai thrived on such denial. Outside, the rain had left the streets slick, the neon boards reflected in puddles like fractured memories. Kabir stood at the entrance, hands in pockets, staring at the police chalk outline. The victim, Rahul Verma, had been another accountant, thirty-eight, married, father of one. A decent man with a simple life. And like Vijay Shastri before him, Rahul’s left wrist bore the same carved symbol, neat and deliberate.
Kabir bent over the desk where Rahul had been found. A stack of files sat untouched, a laptop still logged in. The cursor blinked on an open spreadsheet, numbers flowing in long columns. Ordinary to anyone else, but Kabir felt the stir of something hidden. Rhea hovered nearby, notebook ready. “Sir, his wife says he had no enemies. He was quiet, hardworking. Never even stayed out late.” Kabir exhaled sharply. “Two accountants from two firms, killed the same way, same symbol. Whoever’s doing this isn’t chasing personal grudges.” He clicked through the laptop, scrolling past endless rows of entries—transactions, balances, coded entries that would mean little to most. But Kabir had been in crime long enough to know where to look. He printed the last few files, sliding them into an envelope. Numbers had a way of betraying secrets people thought were invisible.
Back at the station, he spread the two victims’ files across the desk. Both had handled audits for mid-level clients, nothing flashy, no high-profile accounts. But when Kabir cross-checked their firms, a pattern emerged. A single corporate group, hidden behind multiple shell companies, had transactions in both. Small sums, carefully placed, moving like smoke through the ledgers. Laundering, perhaps, or worse. He tapped his pen against the photograph of the carved wrist. The symbol wasn’t random. It was a warning.
That evening, Kabir and Rhea visited the widow of Rahul Verma in a cramped apartment near Borivali. The air smelled of incense and fresh tears. She sat in a corner, clutching a child who couldn’t understand why his father wouldn’t return. Kabir’s questions were gentle but precise. Did Rahul mention fear? Had he received calls? She shook her head, eyes hollow. Only once, she whispered, had Rahul said he was working on something that “didn’t add up.” He had laughed it off, telling her numbers were playing tricks. But that night, he had stayed late at the office, and he never came back.
On their way out, Rhea looked shaken. “Sir, whoever’s behind this…they’re killing men for finding mistakes in accounts?” Kabir kept walking, his voice steady. “Numbers are where power hides, Deshpande. And when numbers are wrong, someone pays in blood.”
The rain returned as Kabir drove through the traffic-clogged streets. His phone buzzed—a message from an unknown number. Just three words: Stop digging now. He stared at it, the glow of the screen reflecting off the wet windshield. Whoever they were, they were watching.
The next day, Kabir summoned an old contact, a hacker named Jignesh who lived in a cluttered flat stacked with hard drives and empty beer bottles. Together, they decrypted fragments from Rahul’s laptop. Buried in the spreadsheets, they found irregular entries tied to offshore accounts. The names of the companies were meaningless strings of letters, but the money flowed like a hidden river: millions moving in and out, untouched by law. At the bottom of one sheet, Kabir noticed a name scribbled in the notes section—The Ledger. Not a metaphor, not a rumor. An actual file. Jignesh’s grin vanished. “If this exists, Inspector, it’s dynamite. People kill to keep it buried.”
Kabir drove back through the city at dusk, his mind heavy with possibilities. If The Ledger was real, it explained everything. The accountants had seen too much, stumbled on records never meant for eyes outside the circle. The symbol carved into their wrists wasn’t just a signature. It was a silencing ritual. A message to others: stay quiet or meet the same fate.
At the precinct, Rhea laid fresh reports on his desk. Both victims had last visited the same café in Colaba, days before their deaths. Kabir leaned back, connecting dots in his head. Two ordinary men, caught in a storm bigger than themselves, perhaps meeting to discuss what they had uncovered. If they had suspected danger, maybe they had left something behind. Evidence. A clue. Kabir’s instincts told him the café was more than coincidence.
He rose, grabbing his coat. “We’re going to Colaba,” he said. Rhea frowned. “At this hour?” Kabir’s smile was grim. “At this hour, shadows speak louder than people.”
As they drove, the city blurred past—billboards, temples, glass towers standing uneasily beside slums. Mumbai was a place where fortunes changed in a night, where numbers decided destinies. And in those numbers, Kabir now saw blood. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. Someone powerful was orchestrating this symphony of silence, and he had just stepped into their music. The question was how long he could play before the shadows swallowed him whole.
Part 3 – The Silent Ledger
The café in Colaba wore its history like a faded shawl—sepia photographs on cracked walls, a chalkboard menu with ghosts of old prices still peeking through, brass fans that turned the air into a slow carousel of coffee, butter, and rain. It was almost midnight when Kabir and Rhea slipped inside. A bored cashier looked up as a waiter wiped tables with the rhythm of routine sorrow. The city outside hissed with wet tyres and passing sirens; inside, time pooled in corners. Kabir flashed his badge, and the manager—thin, anxious, a moustache trimmed to the millimetre—materialised like a contrition. “Inspector, we close at eleven.” “You closed at murder,” Kabir said quietly. “Two of your regulars are dead.” The man’s pupils shrank; he led them to a booth by the window where the leather seat had cracked into the shape of a human absence. “They sat here,” he whispered. “Both. Different days. One had bun maska, the other nothing—only tea.”
Kabir slid into the booth, watching the streetlight fracture on the wet glass. He tried to feel what two doomed men had felt: a tightening in the throat, a secret pressed too hard against the ribs. “CCTV?” he asked. The manager nodded toward a camera with dust thick on its eyelids. “Working?” “Sometimes,” the manager said, and Kabir heard the country in that word—sometimes as policy. Rhea moved behind the counter, speaking softly to the cashier. A few minutes later she returned with a small black DVR box, the kind that died obediently when truth walked in. “Power cuts scrambled some hours,” the manager said. “But last week is there.”
On the screen of Kabir’s phone—tethered by a cable that had seen too many compromises—the footage jittered and then steadied. Rahul Verma appeared first, nerve thrumming through the way he kept folding and unfolding a napkin. Ten minutes later, another man slid into the opposite seat, his face shielded by a cap and an old pandemic mask still clinging to duty. No audio, only gestures. The masked man placed a small envelope on the table. Rahul shook his head; the man tapped the envelope twice, then pushed it across, a priest offering communion. The file cut. Hours lost to “sometimes.”
Kabir scrubbed forward. Different day. Vijay Shastri this time, same booth, same tension; the masked man again—same height, same jacket, same habit of turning his wrist before touching anything, as though he distrusted his own skin. The envelope ritual repeated. Shastri pocketed it quickly, eyes darting to the door. The feed stuttered, flickered, returned to empty chairs and a waiter scraping plates like a metronome for dread.
Rhea froze the frame and zoomed on the masked man’s wrist. “Look,” she said, and Kabir leaned closer. A thin bracelet—no, not a bracelet. A silicone band with a sliver of metal: a fitness tracker. Cheap brand. Scratches along the edge. A habit leaves a signature. The man’s fingers, too—clean nails but a stain near the cuticle on the left thumb, dark and stubborn, the type accountants wore after inky stamps and carbon paper. Except this man was no accountant. He moved like someone trained to disappear.
“Do you remember that man?” Kabir asked the manager. The manager pinched the bridge of his nose as if memory were a headache. “Came late, always ordered black coffee, left full. You know?” Kabir did. Full of knowledge, not food. “He paid cash,” the manager added. Rhea walked to the counter again, returning with two paper receipts from a forgotten drawer. “We keep some blind duplicates when the system acts up.” On both nights, the masked man had paid with crisp two-hundred-rupee notes whose serials the cashier had scribbled out of habit for the end-of-day tally. Rhea photographed them. Money leaves tracks.
Outside, the rain had gentled into a patient drizzle. Kabir lit a cigarette under the awning, watching a stray dog curl into a comma near a lamppost. His phone buzzed: a message from Jignesh. Found partial hash for a file labelled LEDGER.z. Encrypted. Source unknown. Will call. The word settled under his tongue like iron. The Ledger was no myth. It had a hash, a name, a shadow. It lived. The question was who owned it—and who would kill to keep it breathing.
On the drive back, Rhea said, “Sir, suppose the envelopes had copies of the Ledger? Or fragments?” Kabir shook his head. “Too risky to pass the whole. If it exists, it won’t travel in one piece. The envelopes were bait or proof—enough to recruit or to silence.” He took a long breath. “There’s a network. Shell firms, offshores, kickbacks. The accountants audited lines that connected, lines they weren’t meant to see.” “And the symbol?” Rhea asked. “A threat to others who might talk,” Kabir said. “Or a ritual for whoever runs this—their creed carved on skin.”
The station smelled of wet uniforms and cheap disinfectant. On his desk, an envelope waited with no sender. Kabir stared at it for a beat, then sliced it open with his key. Inside lay a single pen drive wrapped in brown paper and a note in block letters: YOU WANT THE LEDGER—START HERE. Rhea’s eyes widened. Kabir turned the drive in his fingers, noticing a hairline crack near the casing screw—tampered, maybe trapped. He nodded to the tech room. “Isolate a machine. No network.” An ancient desktop was dragged out like a retired soldier returning to one last war.
They slotted the drive. A directory appeared, innocent as schoolwork: five spreadsheets named after months that never existed—Smarch, Maugust, Jebruary. Humour as camouflage. Kabir opened the first file. Rows of transactions flashed up—amounts tiny enough to pass under noses, tumbling from “consultancy fees” to “logistics reimbursements,” then leaping offshore to accounts that looped back into land purchases under fake cooperatives. Rhea’s breath hitched. “Sir, these are real companies.” Kabir nodded. “Real, and hollow.” In the metadata, Jignesh would later say, hid a signature: a custom macro that masked duplicate payouts across subsidiaries—a laundering carousel. At the bottom of the sheet, a single cell contained nothing but a symbol: an inverted triangle cut by a vertical line. The same mark carved on the dead.
Kabir’s skin pricked. He felt the presence of the architect—a mind that turned cities into abacuses and men into counters slid back into a box with a click. He closed the file. “Print everything,” he said, though he knew printers jammed around truth. The machine coughed and chattered and, for once, obeyed.
The door to the squad room swung open. ACP Bhonsle entered with a smile that knew too much and shared too little. “Working late, Mehta?” His eyes skimmed the papers, pausing with a hawk’s poise. Kabir kept his face unreadable. “Two murders, sir. Same pattern. We might have a lead.” Bhonsle picked up a printout, holding it by a corner as if ink might bite. “Careful you don’t find what you shouldn’t. The Commissioner’s keen we avoid… embarrassments.” He put the sheet down, gaze lingering an inch too long on the pen drive. “Chain of custody, Inspector.” Then he left, silence returning like a slap.
Rhea whispered, “You think he knows?” Kabir didn’t answer. In his chest something old and stubborn bristled. He’d learned to map a room twice: once for furniture, once for loyalty. Tonight, the second room looked sparse. “We move fast,” he said. “Before this file disappears from our own table.”
They split the work. Rhea cross-referenced the shell firms with land records; Kabir dialled Jignesh, who picked up on the second ring, voice quick with fear. “If this is what I think it is, kaboom, Inspector. The macro architecture is…military neat. Whoever wrote it thinks like a quartermaster. Not street thugs.” “Can you trace the origin?” Kabir asked. “Maybe. There’s an embedded comment in the VBA—developer left a time zone stamp. UTC+3 once, mostly IST. Sloppy ego.” “A name?” “Not yet. But there’s a nod to ‘Palladium’ in the code. Could be a project label or a vanity tag.”
Kabir hung up and stared at the map on the wall—pins for the murders, strings connecting firms to addresses that existed only on paper, arrows pointing at the sea where money washed clean. Palladium. A precious metal. Or a mall in Lower Parel where the city pretended it had solved its contradictions. He filed the word in his head like a bullet on standby.
At dawn, he drove to his brother Arnav’s apartment with two police escorts he didn’t entirely trust. Arnav answered in a crumpled T-shirt, eyes bruised by sleep and worry. “Bhai?” “You audited any firms with these names?” Kabir asked, handing him a list. Arnav scanned it, the colour draining from his face. “This one,” he said, tapping a modest-sounding logistics company. “They asked for expedited clearance. The books smelled like perfume covering rot. I pushed back.” “Did you tell anyone?” “Just my senior. And the client,” Arnav admitted, shame threading his voice. “They said they’d take their business elsewhere. Next day someone called, told me to mind my invoices.”
A motorbike slowed outside. Instinct pulled Kabir towards the window. Two men in rain jackets, faces under visors, the engine idling in a question. “Down, now,” Kabir snapped, dragging Arnav by the collar as the first shot spider-webbed the glass. The second buried itself in the cupboard, flinging mothballs like snow. Rhea dropped to the floor, drawing her weapon and rolling to the door; the escorts finally remembered their purpose and returned fire. The bike skittered away, taillight a retreating wound.
Silence dizzied the room. Arnav’s hands shook as he clutched the back of a chair. “Why me?” he stammered. Kabir pulled him into a quick, fierce hug. “Because you did your job.” He looked at Rhea. “We’re out of time.” She nodded, jaw set. “We go on the offensive.”
Back at the station, Kabir locked the printouts and the pen drive in an old metal safe whose dents were older than his career. He slipped one copy of the Smarch sheet inside his jacket, the paper warm against his ribs. He dialled a number he hadn’t called in years—an investigative journalist with more enemies than editors and an allergy to silence. When she answered, he said only, “If I vanish, look for a word: Palladium.” She whistled softly. “You’ve finally found a dragon, Kabir.” “No,” he said, eyes on the safe as if it contained a beating heart. “I’ve found its ledger.”
Part 4 – Allies or Enemies
By the time dawn fully pressed its pale weight across the skyline, Kabir Mehta was already at his desk, staring at the pen drive’s printouts like they might grow mouths and confess. Rhea sat opposite, her face still tight from the gunfire the night before. The air in the precinct was heavy with the stink of damp uniforms and the faint acid of burnt chai. Every phone ringing in the background felt like a test of patience. Kabir knew eyes were on them—colleagues curious, some perhaps more than curious. He had been in the force long enough to know that betrayal rarely wore a stranger’s face.
At ten, ACP Bhonsle returned. His polished shoes clicked like accusations on the tiled floor. He made small talk about monsoon traffic before sliding his gaze toward the safe where the pen drive now lay sealed. “Chain of custody, Mehta,” he said again, voice low, the words greased with caution. “I’ll be needing that evidence in my office.” Kabir smiled thinly, the kind of smile that didn’t reach the eyes. “Already sent a copy to cyber cell, sir. Just in case.” It was a bluff, but it worked; Bhonsle’s lips tightened, and he left without another word.
Rhea leaned forward, whispering. “Sir, if he’s involved…” Kabir cut her off. “Don’t finish that thought here.” He tapped the side of his desk. “Walls have ears.” He had once trusted Bhonsle—back when ambition hadn’t curdled into complicity—but now the man’s interest in the drive was too sharp. Kabir began to draw two circles on a scrap of paper: one for allies, one for enemies. He hesitated after the first few names. Most people belonged in the space between.
The day passed in fragments of frustration. Leads evaporated, phone numbers disconnected, witnesses “forgot” what they had seen. When Kabir tried to track the shell firms through official channels, the servers suddenly went down. When he requested backups, files were “accidentally” corrupted. Rhea slammed her notebook shut. “Sir, it’s like someone’s scrubbing the trail as we move.” Kabir lit a cigarette, eyes narrowing through the smoke. “Not someone. Multiple someones. With reach.”
Late afternoon, a call came from Jignesh. His voice trembled with fatigue and something darker. “Inspector, I dug deeper into the macro code. The author left more than a time stamp. There’s a string… like a signature. Three letters: RKV.” Kabir frowned. “A person?” “Could be initials. Could be a project code. But the way it’s embedded—it’s pride, Inspector. Someone wanted to leave a fingerprint under the paint.” Kabir scribbled it down, the letters staring back at him like a riddle. RKV.
At dusk, Kabir and Rhea drove to a warehouse listed under one of the shell companies. It stood near the docks, corrugated walls rusting into the sea air. Inside, the space was empty but for a few crates stacked like forgotten promises. Kabir pried one open—rows of blank ledger books, brand new, unmarked. Rhea ran her hand over the spines. “They don’t keep accounts here. They erase them.” Before Kabir could answer, headlights flared outside. A jeep rolled up, unmarked. Men stepped out—plainclothes, but armed. Kabir recognized two of them. Cops. His cops.
“Inspector,” one called, voice too casual. “ACP Bhonsle wants a word. Hand over the drive.” Kabir felt the cigarette burn to the filter between his fingers. He dropped it on the floor and crushed it. “Tell Bhonsle if he wants the drive, he can ask me in daylight. In uniform.” The men stiffened. One’s hand twitched toward his holster. Kabir’s own gun was already out, steady. Rhea mirrored him, her jaw like stone. A long moment stretched, the air humming with potential blood. Then the men backed away, muttering curses, retreating into the jeep. The engine roared, and they vanished into the dark.
Silence fell heavy in the warehouse. Rhea exhaled, a tremor breaking through her composure. “Sir, this is bigger than we thought. If our own people are in it…” Kabir holstered his weapon, eyes still on the empty doorway. “Then we count everyone an enemy until proven otherwise.”
That night, he drove alone to Marine Drive, parking by the sea where waves slammed the promenade like fists against stone. He thought of Arnav asleep under police watch, of the widow in Borivali, of Vijay and Rahul whose blood still whispered through paper trails. He thought of the Ledger, pulsing like a forbidden heart in his jacket. Allies or enemies—it didn’t matter anymore. The city had made its choice long ago. For Kabir, there was only one road left: follow the numbers, no matter how many shadows bled into his path.
Part 5 – Blood Money
The rain fell in hard silver lines that blurred the edges of Mumbai. From the window of his battered Ambassador, Kabir watched water stream down glass like ledger entries written by the sky. The city was restless, sirens in the distance, the smell of diesel mixing with monsoon musk. He had not slept; the warehouse standoff replayed in his mind, the faces of men he had once greeted in the station now staring at him with the eyes of hired muscle. Trust had rotted, and the city stank of it.
Rhea arrived with a file tucked under her arm, her hair damp from the downpour. She slid into the seat beside him, dropping the folder onto his lap. “Sir, I traced one of the shell firms. A logistics company in Dharavi. On paper, they move spare parts. In reality, it’s empty land. But the payments…they lead to him.” Kabir opened the file. The photograph inside showed a man in a tailored suit, slick hair, a smile sharpened for boardrooms and society pages: Devendra Khanna. Industrialist, philanthropist, king of ribbon-cuttings. The city’s newspapers had once called him “Mumbai’s rising lion.” Kabir had other names for men like him. Predator. Parasite.
“Khanna owns half the damn skyline,” Kabir muttered. “If the Ledger touches him…” Rhea nodded grimly. “It does. Multiple payments routed through his trusts. Small sums, but steady. Enough to grease the wheels.” Kabir’s eyes lingered on the photo. Men like Khanna didn’t get their hands dirty. They hired shadows to do it for them. Which meant the killers carving symbols into wrists could well be his ghosts.
By evening, Kabir had arranged a “routine questioning.” In truth, it was a provocation. The mansion in Malabar Hill loomed above the sea, glass walls catching the last shreds of light. Inside, everything smelled of imported leather and money scrubbed too clean. Khanna welcomed them with the smoothness of a man who’d never been denied. “Inspector Mehta, Sub-Inspector Deshpande. To what do I owe this…unannounced courtesy?”
Kabir didn’t bother with pleasantries. He slid a copy of the Ledger spreadsheet onto the polished teak table. “Do you recognize these payments?” Khanna barely glanced. His smile didn’t crack. “Bookkeeping is for accountants, Inspector. Surely you don’t expect me to track every rupee?” Rhea’s eyes flicked to Kabir, but Kabir stayed steady. “Two accountants are dead. Both handled transactions tied to your companies. Both marked before they died. That’s not bookkeeping. That’s blood.”
For the first time, Khanna’s smile thinned, a crease slicing across his face. But his tone remained velvet. “Inspector, Mumbai is a city of coincidences. Two accountants in a city of twenty million? You can’t pin their fate on me.” Kabir leaned forward, lowering his voice to a blade. “Then why did one of them write your name in his notes?” He didn’t wait for an answer; the bluff was enough. Khanna’s jaw tightened. He tapped the arm of his chair twice, a nervous tic that betrayed more than words.
As they left, Kabir whispered to Rhea, “We rattled him.” Rhea frowned. “Or he let us think we did.” She wasn’t wrong. Hours later, the news broke: Devendra Khanna was dead. Shot point-blank in his car outside a charity gala. The city gasped in headlines, but Kabir heard only silence—the silence of loose ends being tied, the silence of a man erased before he could talk.
In the precinct, chaos erupted. Senior officers scrambled to assign narratives. Rival gangs. Political enemies. A lover’s spat gone extreme. Every theory but the truth. Kabir lit a cigarette, watching the smoke curl. Rhea slammed her fist on the desk. “Sir, they’re cleaning house. We’re chasing ghosts.” Kabir nodded, his voice gravel. “And ghosts don’t leave fingerprints. But they do leave ledgers.”
The autopsy confirmed what Kabir already suspected: a professional hit, execution-style, no witnesses willing to speak. But the timing was the real message. Hours after Kabir’s visit. Someone had been watching, waiting. Kabir felt the coil tighten in his gut. He had been allowed to reach Khanna, only to see him erased. Someone higher had decided the lion was expendable.
That night, Kabir drove through the city aimlessly, the monsoon washing every street into the same mirror. His thoughts looped back to Arnav, his brother, still under guard. If Khanna could be killed so neatly, what chance did Arnav have if the network decided to silence him? Kabir dialed the guard’s number twice, got no answer. His hands tightened on the wheel. Every second now felt like stolen time.
By the time he reached the safehouse, his heart was a drum. The lights inside were still on. Arnav opened the door, pale but unharmed. Relief flooded Kabir so quickly it felt like weakness. But then he saw the envelope on the table, delivered by an invisible hand. On the front, in block letters: BALANCE. Inside, a single photograph. Kabir himself, taken from a rooftop across the street, cigarette between his lips, eyes fixed on his brother’s window. Proof that he was already marked.
Kabir crushed the photo in his fist. Blood money had been paid, and debts were coming due. Allies were vanishing, enemies multiplying. He turned to Rhea, voice low, steady, certain. “We stop playing defense. From now, we hunt.”
Part 6 – Family in the Crossfire
The city felt sharper when family was at risk. Every honk on the street, every buzz of the phone, every whisper in the station felt like it carried Arnav’s name on it. Kabir Mehta sat across from his younger brother in the safehouse, the air between them thick with the smell of instant noodles and cigarette ash. Arnav’s face was drawn, his accountant’s calm shaken into raw edges. “Bhai, why me? I don’t even know what I saw. I only flagged some numbers.” Kabir took a drag and exhaled slowly, the smoke curling between them. “That’s all it takes. Numbers are more dangerous than bullets when they touch the wrong pockets.”
Rhea paced the room, restless energy in her steps. “Sir, the envelope with your photograph means they’re watching us constantly. This safehouse is compromised.” Kabir nodded grimly. “Nothing’s safe anymore. We move Arnav tonight.” Arnav’s eyes widened. “Move me where? I have a wife, a child. You can’t uproot everything.” Kabir’s voice hardened. “You want to see them alive? Then you listen. They’ve already taken photographs of me outside your window. You’re a target because you did your job.”
The rain hammered louder against the tin roof, as if agreeing with Kabir’s fury. He stood, grabbed his coat, and motioned to Rhea. “We’ll split. One car decoy, one car real. Rotate routes every fifteen minutes. If they want him, they’ll have to guess.” Rhea nodded, pulling her gun from its holster to check the magazine. Arnav looked smaller than ever, clutching a duffel bag with trembling fingers. “I never wanted this life,” he whispered. Kabir’s jaw clenched. “None of us do. But it finds us.”
They left past midnight. The first car—a beat-up police vehicle—took the main road, lights dim, designed to draw eyes. Kabir drove the second, a borrowed sedan, windows tinted, engine steady. Rhea sat in the back with Arnav, eyes scanning the mirrors. The streets were slick, reflecting every neon board twice, once in light and once in menace. At first, the ride was uneventful. But near Mahim, Kabir’s instincts screamed. A bike appeared in the rearview, then another. Black visors. Silent engines, too careful. Predators.
Kabir pressed the accelerator. The sedan surged forward, tires hissing on wet tar. The bikes followed, closing distance. “Hold on,” Kabir growled, swerving into a narrow lane. The car bounced on potholes, splashing filthy water against closed shutters. The bikes stayed close, one pulling up alongside. Rhea’s window slid down; two shots cracked, the bike skidded, sparks flying as metal kissed asphalt. The second bike swerved, regrouping. Kabir drove harder, heart a steady drum.
They broke free onto the highway, but ahead loomed a roadblock—construction barrels, trucks abandoned like sleeping beasts. Kabir cursed under his breath. “Trap.” He yanked the wheel left, veering onto a service lane that led toward the docks. The second bike cut them off, its rider pulling something metallic from his jacket. A pistol. The muzzle flashed. The windshield cracked into a spiderweb of glass. Arnav screamed, ducking low. Kabir’s hands stayed firm, his eyes cold. He rammed the sedan sideways into the bike, the crunch of metal and bone colliding in a sound that silenced thought. The rider flew, vanishing into the dark rain.
The car limped but rolled on. Kabir didn’t slow until they reached an abandoned warehouse by the docks, where the smell of saltwater drowned the blood in their mouths. He killed the engine, chest heaving. Rhea checked Arnav—shaken, bruised, but alive. She looked at Kabir, her eyes wide, her voice edged with awe and fear. “Sir, they won’t stop. Not until the Ledger is gone. Not until we’re gone.” Kabir lit a cigarette with trembling fingers. “Then we give them a choice they don’t expect. We stop running.”
He pulled the crumpled photograph from his pocket—the one left on Arnav’s table. He tore it in half, the image of his own face splitting down the middle. “They think family makes me weak,” he said quietly, his eyes fixed on the sea beyond the dock gates. “They’re wrong. It makes me ruthless.”
Arnav sat in the corner, whispering to himself like a man doing math in his head, numbers becoming prayers. “They know everything, Bhai. They knew where I live. Where you stand. How long before they come for—” His voice cracked. “My son?” Kabir looked at him, the hard cop’s mask slipping for a flicker. “Not while I breathe.”
The night bled into dawn, the sky a bruised grey over the docks. Kabir knew the city was changing shape around him—friends becoming watchers, allies becoming enemies. And somewhere in that shifting maze, the Ledger waited, holding names powerful enough to burn Mumbai to its foundation. He drew deeply on his cigarette, the ember glowing like a vow. “From today,” he said, his voice low, meant for himself as much as for them, “they’re not hunting us. We’re hunting them.”
Part 7 – Betrayal in Uniform
The station smelled of damp files and fear. Kabir walked in with his brother’s safety gnawing at his chest, every eye in the precinct following him as if they already knew he’d crossed an invisible line. Rhea trailed close, silent, her fingers brushing the butt of her gun in habit. On the surface everything looked routine—clerks stamping papers, constables trading gossip, the hum of ceiling fans—but Kabir had lived too long in this machine not to hear when its gears had shifted. There was a pause in conversations when he passed, a sudden interest in shoelaces, averted gazes. Someone had painted a target on his back, and his own people were carrying the brushes.
In his office, a pile of case files awaited him. The top folder was the Ledger printout he had locked in the safe. His breath stilled. The lock showed no scratches, the hinges no tampering, yet the folder was here, laid out as if to remind him: privacy is an illusion. He opened it—blank pages. Every sheet gone, replaced with photocopies of parking fines and petty thefts. The Ledger had been erased from his custody. His gut twisted. Whoever had done this had access, authority, and arrogance. Betrayal in uniform.
He stormed into ACP Bhonsle’s office. The man looked up from his newspaper with practiced calm, spectacles balanced on his nose. “Inspector, you look troubled.” Kabir slammed the empty folder onto the desk. “Where is it?” Bhonsle raised an eyebrow. “Where is what?” “Don’t play dumb. The Ledger printouts. They were in my safe. Now they’re gone.” Bhonsle leaned back, steepling his fingers. “Perhaps you misplaced them. Stress does strange things.” Kabir’s jaw tightened. He wanted to drag the truth out of Bhonsle’s smug smile, but the man’s walls were thicker than concrete. And behind those walls, Kabir knew, were bigger hands pulling strings.
Rhea found him pacing the corridor, fists clenched. “Sir, the safe wasn’t forced. Whoever took the files had a key.” Her words were cautious, but the implication wasn’t. Kabir looked at her, his voice low. “Only four officers have keys. Bhonsle. Me. You. And Sharma.” Rhea’s eyes flickered. Inspector Sharma was a veteran, a man Kabir had trusted for a decade, drinking partner, comrade in raids. The thought soured his stomach. “We need to be sure,” Rhea said. Kabir nodded, though certainty already weighed on him like a stone.
That night, Kabir followed Sharma. He didn’t bother with official tails; he went himself, in the rain-slick alleys of Byculla. Sharma left the station late, walking with the ease of a man who knew shadows wouldn’t touch him. He entered a small bar near the railway tracks, the kind where the beer was warm and the secrets colder. Kabir waited outside, smoke curling from his cigarette. After twenty minutes, Sharma emerged—not alone. A man in a dark suit followed, whispering close. Kabir’s eyes narrowed. The man was one of Khanna’s aides, though Khanna was already in the ground. Which meant the network lived on.
Kabir confronted Sharma in the alley. The older cop stiffened when Kabir stepped from the dark, gun drawn. “What the hell, Mehta?” Kabir’s voice was ice. “You stole from my safe.” Sharma’s eyes darted, searching for exits. “You don’t understand. They own everything. If I didn’t hand it over, I’d be next.” “So you chose me instead.” The betrayal cut deeper than the threat. Sharma’s hand twitched toward his pocket. Kabir’s gun didn’t waver. “Don’t.” For a heartbeat, time held. Then Sharma sagged, the fight leaving him. “It’s bigger than you, Kabir. Bigger than all of us. Walk away.”
Kabir lowered the gun but not his guard. “Tell me who has the Ledger now.” Sharma’s silence was answer enough. Kabir turned, disgust twisting inside him, and disappeared back into the rain. He didn’t shoot. That was the punishment: living with betrayal.
Back at the safehouse, Kabir told Rhea what he had seen. Her face hardened. “So it’s true. Our own bleeding us dry.” Kabir nodded, lighting another cigarette. “Trust no one in uniform. From here, it’s just us.” He felt the city closing in, the walls of law and loyalty collapsing. But beneath the weight of betrayal, a fiercer resolve burned. They had taken his files, his allies, his certainty. They wouldn’t take his fight.
He tapped ash into the tray, his voice steady. “They’ve shown their hand. Now we show ours.”
Part 8 – The Hunt for the Ledger
The storm broke over Mumbai as if the sky itself had been bribed into violence. Kabir Mehta stood on the balcony of his flat, cigarette trembling between his fingers, watching the rain slam the city into a blur. Below, cars hissed like snakes across the highway, their headlights smeared into pale ghosts. His brother Arnav and Rhea were inside, asleep—or pretending to sleep—but Kabir knew rest had left all of them. The Ledger was out of his hands now, stolen from the safe, and somewhere in the dark belly of the city, men were deciding how many lives it was worth.
His phone buzzed at 2:37 a.m. A number he didn’t recognise. He answered anyway. A voice rasped through static: “Inspector Mehta. You want the Ledger? We meet.” Kabir’s pulse quickened. “Who is this?” The caller ignored the question. “Tomorrow. Eleven p.m. CST Bridge. Come alone. Bring no copies. Or your brother dies.” The line went dead. Kabir lit another cigarette from the stub of the first, the ember flaring like defiance. He knew better than to trust bait dangled so openly. But he also knew he had no choice.
The next day dragged, every hour thick with unease. Rhea argued against the meeting. “Sir, it’s a setup. They’ll put two bullets in your head and toss you in the creek.” Kabir shook his head. “If there’s even a chance the Ledger’s there, I have to go. Without it, we’re blind.” Arnav listened silently, fear etched into the lines of his face. Kabir wanted to promise him safety, but promises were luxuries he no longer traded in.
At dusk, Kabir left his flat, the city already glowing with neon reflections in the monsoon puddles. He wore no uniform, only a dark jacket and the kind of calm men wear when they’ve buried too many doubts. CST Bridge loomed ahead, a skeleton of steel and shadows, its arches echoing with the rush of trains below. He stood under a flickering streetlight, cigarette smoke curling around him, waiting.
A figure emerged from the darkness—a thin man in a hoodie, carrying a battered backpack. His eyes darted like a rat’s. “Inspector?” Kabir nodded once. The man unzipped the bag, revealing a laptop covered in stickers. “The Ledger,” he whispered, “I copied fragments before they pulled the plug. It’s not complete, but enough.” Kabir’s hand closed around the bag, but before he could speak, headlights flared. A black SUV roared onto the bridge, doors slamming open. Men spilled out, guns drawn. The thin man’s eyes went wide with betrayal. He tried to run, but a shot cracked the night. His body folded, lifeless, the backpack tumbling from his hands.
Kabir dove, dragging the bag with him as bullets sparked off the steel girders. He rolled behind a concrete pillar, firing back with cold precision. Two men dropped, the others retreating into the SUV. Tyres screeched, the vehicle vanishing into the night. Kabir crouched over the thin man’s body, rain soaking the blood into the concrete. He whispered a curse, lit another cigarette, and slung the backpack over his shoulder. Whatever the man had managed to copy, it had cost him his life.
Back at the safehouse, Rhea helped him crack open the laptop. The screen blinked to life, half-broken, keys sticky with blood. Files opened slowly, but there it was: a directory labelled LEDGER_FRAG. Inside, spreadsheets full of names, transfers, offshore accounts. Politicians. Contractors. Even senior police officers. Kabir scrolled until his own precinct came into view. His hands froze. Among the entries was ACP Bhonsle’s name, tied to millions routed through a charity trust. Rhea’s face hardened as she read over his shoulder. “Sir… it’s all here. Proof.”
Kabir leaned back, smoke rising around him. “Proof is nothing without power. They’ll bury this unless we take it outside.” Rhea frowned. “To who? Journalists? Courts? They’re all compromised.” Kabir tapped ash into an empty glass. “Not all. I have someone. Old contact. If we get this to her, the city burns.” He didn’t add that he wasn’t sure if even burning would be enough.
As dawn crept grey over the city, Kabir stared out the window, the laptop warm against his arm. The hunt had changed shape. He wasn’t chasing the Ledger anymore—it was chasing him. And somewhere in the wires and shadows, a name kept whispering back: Palladium. The architect behind the blood and the numbers. Kabir closed his eyes, exhaling smoke into the morning light. “We hunt the hunter now,” he said.
Part 9 – The Trap at the Docks
The docks were always a graveyard for the city’s secrets. Rusting cranes leaned like broken crosses, ships long abandoned rotted into the tide, and rats gnawed at sacks of forgotten grain. Kabir Mehta had spent half his career chasing smugglers through these alleys of steel and salt, but tonight he walked them as prey. The message had arrived that morning—another envelope shoved under his flat’s door. Inside: a single line, block letters scrawled in haste. DOCK 17. MIDNIGHT. COME ALONE. LEDGER FOR FREEDOM. Below it, a photograph of Arnav’s wife and child, smiling outside a school gate.
Kabir crushed the photo in his fist, rage and fear twisting together. Rhea had tried to stop him. “Sir, it’s a trap. They won’t give you the Ledger—they’ll bury you with it.” Kabir’s reply had been flat. “Then I die standing. But if there’s even a chance to end this…” He left her behind, ordering her to guard Arnav and the family. He carried only his pistol, two spare magazines, and the copy of the Ledger fragments on a pen drive hidden in his boot.
Dock 17 lay at the far edge, where the sea smelled of oil and rot. Floodlights burned overhead, throwing harsh cones of white onto the wet concrete. Kabir stepped forward, every sound amplified—the creak of chains, the drip of water, his own breath. From the shadows, figures emerged. Six men at least, faces obscured by scarves, guns glinting in the light. Behind them, a black SUV idled, its engine growling low. A tall figure stepped out, dressed in a grey suit that looked absurd against the decay. ACP Bhonsle.
Kabir’s chest tightened, though he had expected it. Bhonsle’s voice was almost gentle. “Mehta, you should have walked away. You think you’re the first to stumble on the Ledger? Many better men tried. They’re bones at the bottom of this water now.” Kabir’s hand brushed the grip of his pistol. “You killed your own men. For what? A file?” Bhonsle smiled thinly. “Not a file. A throne. The Ledger is power, Inspector. It doesn’t matter who holds office. It matters who controls the numbers. And now, that’s me.”
He gestured, and one of the masked men dragged forward a small figure—Arnav’s wife, gagged, wrists bound. Her eyes widened when she saw Kabir. He felt the ground tilt beneath him, the world narrowing to her fear. Bhonsle spread his arms. “Give me the pen drive. Or she drowns before your eyes.”
Kabir’s mind raced. He had hidden the drive in his boot, but they didn’t know that. He pulled the empty pen drive case from his pocket, holding it up. “Let her go first.” Bhonsle chuckled. “Still bargaining? You haven’t learned, Mehta. This city doesn’t bargain. It buys and it kills.” He nodded to his men. One pressed a gun to the woman’s head.
Kabir dropped the case onto the concrete, letting it clatter. As Bhonsle’s attention flicked, Kabir moved. His pistol cleared leather in a blink. The first shot dropped the gunman beside the hostage; the second tore into another’s shoulder. Chaos erupted, bullets sparking off crates, the SUV’s headlights flaring. Kabir rolled behind a stack of containers, firing methodically, every shot a calculation. Two men fell screaming, the others scattering for cover.
Bhonsle ducked behind the SUV, shouting orders. The hostage crawled toward the shadows, her gag slipping free. Kabir’s pulse hammered, smoke and salt choking the air. He could hear the sea slapping against the dock, the city’s eternal witness. Rhea’s voice crackled suddenly in his earpiece—he hadn’t even realised she’d slipped a tracker into his jacket. “Sir, hold your ground. Backup en route.” Relief surged, tempered by fury. She had disobeyed him, and it might have saved them all.
Bhonsle’s voice rang out again. “You can’t win, Mehta! Even if you kill me, the Ledger will never see daylight. Too many names in it, too many hands dirty. You’ll die a criminal, not a hero.” Kabir reloaded, his knuckles slick with rain and sweat. He shouted back, “Better a dead cop than a living traitor.”
Then he moved. Charging low, he fired through the SUV’s windshield, glass exploding into shards. Bhonsle staggered, blood blossoming across his suit. The remaining gunmen broke, retreating into the night. The dock echoed with sirens—Rhea arriving with a team loyal enough, or desperate enough, to stand by Kabir.
When the smoke cleared, Bhonsle lay gasping on the wet concrete, eyes burning with hate. Kabir stood over him, pistol steady. Bhonsle coughed, crimson spilling from his lips. “You think you’ve won? The Ledger will bury you. It’s not a weapon, Mehta. It’s a curse.” His head lolled, breath rattling out, and then he was still.
The hostage sobbed against Kabir’s chest as he untied her wrists. He glanced at the black water lapping the dock, feeling Bhonsle’s words sink deeper than the corpse that would soon follow. The trap had failed, but the war was far from over. The Ledger still lived, and it was hungry.
Part 10 – Justice or Silence
The city did not pause for the dead. By morning, newspapers splashed headlines of a “gang shootout at the docks,” Bhonsle’s name nowhere in print. The official line was a skirmish between rival smugglers. The uniform had washed his betrayal clean. Kabir Mehta sat at his desk, the taste of salt and gunpowder still in his mouth, the pen drive warm against his skin where it hid in his boot. He had lived through the night, but the Ledger still pulsed like a second heart in the shadows, waiting to decide whether Mumbai bled or healed.
Rhea entered with two cups of tea, her face pale, her eyes older than her years. “Sir, they’ve sealed the dock report. No mention of Bhonsle. The Commissioner wants you silent.” Kabir accepted the cup, staring at the rising steam. “They think silence will save them.” Rhea leaned closer, her voice taut. “Then what do we do? Take this to the press? To the courts? They’ll bury it before ink hits paper.”
Kabir thought of the journalist he had once trusted, the one who owed him more favours than she cared to admit. He dialled her number. When she answered, her voice was dry as smoke. “Mehta. You still breathing?” “Barely,” he said. “I’ve got something. If I hand it to you, the city burns.” She was quiet for a beat, then: “Send it.” He looked at Rhea, at the pen drive. His thumb traced its edge like a trigger. “If this goes public, they’ll come for everyone. Arnav. His family. You.” Rhea’s reply was firm. “They’re already coming. At least this way we choose the ground.”
That evening, Kabir walked the length of Marine Drive, the sea roaring like an audience that had seen every play before. He carried the pen drive in his pocket, feeling its weight. The city’s skyline glittered—towers, hotels, billboards—all built on numbers inked into ledgers now soaked in blood. He stopped under a lamppost, the journalist waiting in a car across the road. Their eyes met through the windshield, a silent transaction of trust and doom. Kabir’s fingers tightened around the drive.
But he didn’t move. Not yet. A voice whispered from the dark corners of his mind—Bhonsle’s voice, mocking. The Ledger is not a weapon, it’s a curse. If he released it, the city might implode. If he buried it, the killings would never stop. Justice or silence. There was no middle road.
Rhea’s words echoed—at least this way we choose the ground. Kabir crossed the street, opened the car door, and placed the pen drive on the seat beside the journalist. Her eyes widened. “This…this is dynamite.” “Handle it like dynamite,” Kabir said. “And don’t trust anyone.” He turned before she could answer, melting back into the crowd of night walkers.
Hours later, his phone buzzed with a single message: Broadcast in 12 hours. Be ready. Kabir stood on his balcony, cigarette ember glowing against the darkness, the city stretched before him like a ledger of sins. Somewhere behind those glittering windows, men were already plotting his death. He exhaled smoke into the heavy monsoon air.
The choice was made. Justice, silence—maybe both. By dawn, the Ledger would speak for itself, and the city would decide whether to listen or to bury truth beneath another tide of blood. Kabir Mehta flicked his cigarette into the night, watching the spark vanish into rain. For the first time in months, his shoulders felt lighter, though he knew the weight would return. The hunt was not over. It never would be.
And somewhere in the silence that followed, Mumbai held its breath.
