Arjun Malhotra
Part 1: The Body at Dalhousie Square
The night had a stillness only Calcutta knew—humid, damp, and swollen with the weight of secrets. The yellow streetlamps around Dalhousie Square flickered, their cones of light glistening against cobblestones darkened by last evening’s rain. At precisely 2:17 a.m., the silence cracked: a night watchman’s whistle trailed off into a hoarse scream.
By the time Sub-Inspector Rohan Mukherjee arrived, the scene was already swarming. A man lay face-down near the fountain, the back of his linen shirt soaked in blood. His right hand clutched a black leather briefcase, its lock broken as if someone had wrenched it open in desperation. The scattered papers around the corpse shimmered with faint ink—ledgers, contracts, bank drafts, their columns of numbers bleeding into the wet stone.
“Who found him?” Rohan asked, adjusting the collar of his rumpled khaki uniform.
“A chowkidar,” replied a constable, nodding toward a terrified old man trembling against the iron gate. “Says he heard a scuffle, then saw the body.”
The victim’s face, when turned over, revealed a man in his late forties. Thin, sharp features, a trimmed mustache, and eyes wide open in frozen disbelief. Rohan recognized him instantly.
“Arvind Ghosh,” he muttered. “Chief accountant of Bengal Mercantile Bank.”
That name hit heavier than the monsoon air. The bank was already under scrutiny—rumors of fraud, whispers of missing funds, whispers that had traveled from backroom bars to the marble halls of the High Court. If Arvind was dead, and his briefcase was full of damning numbers, this wasn’t just murder—it was a message.
Rohan crouched, scanning the ledgers. One page caught his attention: a neat column of deposits, all identical, each for ₹9,99,999. Too deliberate to be coincidence. Too clean to be legal.
The medical examiner arrived, her voice brisk but troubled. “Single stab wound, straight to the heart. Clean, professional. No hesitation marks.”
“Professional killers don’t leave ledgers lying around,” Rohan murmured.
Unless, he thought, someone wanted them found.
By dawn, the press had caught scent of blood. By 8 a.m., headlines screamed “Bank Scandal Turns Deadly—Chief Accountant Murdered in Dalhousie Square.” Rohan’s superior, DCP Satyen Banerjee, summoned him to Lalbazar headquarters.
“You’ll handle this discreetly,” Satyen ordered, lighting a pipe. His eyes were sharp beneath bushy brows. “The bank has friends in high places. This isn’t just a murder—it’s a financial earthquake. Find the killer before the scandal spreads.”
“And if the scandal is the reason for the murder?” Rohan asked.
Satyen exhaled smoke. “Then you’ll find yourself walking on glass. And glass cuts both ways.”
The first visit was to Bengal Mercantile Bank. The grand colonial building loomed over B.B.D. Bagh, its pillars weathered but imposing. Inside, marble floors gleamed beneath chandeliers, but tension crackled like a live wire. Clerks shuffled nervously, avoiding Rohan’s eyes.
He was ushered into the office of Devraj Banerjee, the bank’s managing director. A man in his sixties, with slicked-back silver hair and a voice as smooth as silk sheets.
“Inspector, what a tragedy,” Devraj said, clasping his hands dramatically. “Arvind was… invaluable. We are all in shock.”
Rohan noted the too-practiced grief. “Did he have enemies?”
“Every banker has enemies, Inspector. Debt collectors, spurned clients, rivals…” He leaned forward, lowering his voice. “But Arvind was loyal. He guarded our accounts with his life.”
“Apparently not well enough,” Rohan said flatly. “Do you know anything about these?” He slid the photocopied ledger entries across the mahogany desk.
Devraj’s eyes flickered—just for a second. Then he smiled. “Routine transactions. You wouldn’t understand the intricacies of high finance.”
Rohan tucked the papers back. “Maybe not. But I do understand murder.”
That evening, back at his one-room flat in Park Circus, Rohan pinned photographs and notes to the cracked wall. Arvind’s face stared back at him, next to a copy of the ledger page. The pattern gnawed at him. Nearly one crore split into tiny, identical deposits—classic structuring, a method to launder money without triggering oversight. But whose money?
A knock interrupted his thoughts. It was his neighbor, Meera, a young journalist who freelanced for The Telegraph. She leaned against his doorway, her notebook peeking from her bag.
“Heard about the bank murder?” she asked casually, though her eyes sparkled with curiosity.
Rohan smirked. “You probably know more than I do.”
“Maybe,” she teased. Then, more seriously: “Word is, Arvind was about to turn whistleblower. Said he had proof the bank was washing political money. If that briefcase was full of evidence…”
“…then someone silenced him,” Rohan finished.
Meera nodded. “And whoever it is—they won’t stop here.”
The weight of her words pressed against the damp Calcutta air. Rohan felt it in his gut: this was bigger than a single murder. It was the beginning of a storm.
Outside, thunder cracked, and the first raindrops spattered against the shuttered windows.
The city was listening. And it never forgot.
Part 2: The Missing Briefcase
The rain turned relentless by morning, beating against the tramlines like an impatient drummer. Sub-Inspector Rohan Mukherjee had not slept. He sat with a steaming cup of tea at a roadside stall near Lalbazar, trying to think through the haze. His mind kept circling back to two things: the ledgers, and the missing piece of the puzzle—the briefcase.
At Dalhousie Square, when the crime scene was first secured, the briefcase had been wrenched open. But in the chaos of press, constables, and gawkers, its contents seemed to vanish like smoke. The papers Rohan found scattered were fragments, as if someone had taken what mattered most.
He lit a cigarette and replayed the night’s images in his mind. Arvind’s rigid hand clutching the handle. The clean stab wound. The ledger page with neat deposits. Too much didn’t add up.
By noon, he returned to the morgue at NRS Hospital. The fluorescent lights buzzed faintly as the medical examiner, Dr. Nandini Rao, filled out her report.
“You were right,” she told him, pushing her glasses up her nose. “One wound, directly to the heart. Sharp, narrow blade—something like a stiletto. No struggle, no defensive wounds. Which means…”
“…Arvind knew his killer,” Rohan finished grimly.
Dr. Rao nodded. “Or he was taken by complete surprise. But here’s something else—see this?” She pointed at faint bruises around the victim’s wrist. “Someone pried his hand open. Post-mortem, but not long after death. They wanted whatever he was holding.”
The briefcase.
Rohan clenched his jaw. “So the murder wasn’t just about silencing him—it was about what he carried.”
At Bengal Mercantile Bank, whispers had become louder. Clerks huddled like frightened birds, avoiding his gaze. This time, Rohan sought out Shivani Desai, Arvind’s junior assistant. She was in her late twenties, sharp-eyed, with an air of quiet efficiency.
“I heard you worked closely with Mr. Ghosh,” Rohan began.
Shivani’s lips tightened. “Yes, sir. He trusted me with his schedules, correspondence, even some account reconciliations. He was meticulous. Always careful.”
“Careful men don’t get stabbed in the heart in public squares,” Rohan said dryly. “Did he confide in you about… unusual activity in the bank?”
She hesitated. “Two weeks ago, he asked me to photocopy certain ledgers. He seemed nervous, kept checking if anyone was watching. When I handed them back, he slipped one page into his coat pocket instead of the file. That was the last time he smiled at me.”
“What page?”
Her voice dropped. “Large deposits from an entity called ‘Shakti Exports.’ Always under one crore, split into precise sums. He said if anything happened to him, the truth was hidden in patterns.”
Rohan scribbled the name: Shakti Exports. A shell company, most likely. He’d heard it whispered before, attached to politicians with long shadows.
“Do you know where he kept the originals?”
She shook her head. “But he mentioned… a ‘ledger of last resort.’ Said it would outlive him if he couldn’t speak.”
The phrase struck Rohan like a hammer. Somewhere, Arvind had hidden a master record. A ledger too dangerous for the bank, too valuable for his killers to leave behind.
Back at his desk, Rohan pulled case files of Shakti Exports. On paper, it was a textile trading firm based in Howrah. But there were no shipments, no warehouses, no employees beyond a handful of paper directors. Yet, money flowed in and out of its accounts in perfect rhythm. Classic laundering.
A call from constable Das broke his focus. “Sir, we traced the briefcase. Or what’s left of it.”
By dusk, Rohan stood on the banks of the Hooghly near Prinsep Ghat. The river stank of silt and secrets. Constables had pulled out the briefcase, waterlogged and battered. Its lock was twisted open, its insides empty except for a half-dissolved photograph of Arvind’s family. His wife and two teenage daughters smiled through the smudged ink.
The killer had stripped it clean.
Rohan pocketed the photo. Not evidence, but something human to hold onto.
That night, the city grew heavier. The trams rattled with unease, chai stalls buzzed with theories. Was it robbery? Political conspiracy? Or something darker?
Rohan’s instincts screamed it was all three.
When he returned to his flat, he found Meera waiting on the steps. She looked pale, her notebook clutched like a weapon.
“Rohan,” she whispered, glancing over her shoulder. “I think I’m being followed.”
“By whom?”
“A man in a grey Ambassador. Parked near my office all day. Same car near my hostel last night. I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Rohan’s chest tightened. If Meera was digging into the same threads he was, the killers were already circling her too.
“You need to be careful,” he warned. “This isn’t just a bank scandal. It’s blood money. And blood doesn’t wash off easily.”
She looked at him, eyes defiant despite the fear. “Then we expose it. Together.”
Rohan almost smiled, but the weight in his gut didn’t let him.
A knock at the door interrupted them. Rohan opened it to find a small brown envelope on the floor. No sender, just his name scrawled in ink.
Inside was a single sheet of paper—an anonymous note written in block letters:
“Stop digging into Shakti Exports. Or you’ll end up like Ghosh.”
The rain outside intensified, lashing against the windows.
Rohan crumpled the note and threw it aside.
If they wanted him silent, they’d just made a mistake.
Because he had no intention of stopping.
Part 3: The Ledger of Last Resort
The envelope’s threat still sat like acid in Rohan’s mind long after Meera had left his flat. He didn’t tell her the truth: the warning wasn’t just a scare tactic. In Calcutta’s underbelly, Shakti Exports was spoken of with the kind of fear usually reserved for old gods and hired assassins.
He pinned the note to his wall beside Arvind’s photograph. The wall now looked less like an investigation board and more like a battlefield of ghosts. Arvind’s open eyes seemed to accuse him: Find it. Find the ledger.
Rohan didn’t sleep. By dawn, he was at Arvind Ghosh’s house in Salt Lake. The modest two-storied home stood in uneasy silence, its white paint peeling under the monsoon air. Inside, Arvind’s widow, Sumitra, received him with swollen eyes and a shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders.
“Madam,” Rohan said softly, “I know this is painful, but I need to ask… did your husband ever mention something called a ‘ledger of last resort’?”
Sumitra looked startled, then wary. “He used that phrase once… the night before he died. He told me if anything happened to him, I should give you this.”
She disappeared into the bedroom and returned with a small brass key on a string. It was worn smooth with use, the teeth narrow and delicate.
“Where does it fit?” Rohan asked.
“In his locker at the National Archives,” she whispered. “He said the truth was too big for the bank, too dangerous for me. He trusted history more than men.”
Rohan’s pulse quickened. The Archives—an ocean of forgotten records. If Arvind had hidden something there, it must have been damning enough to bury under centuries of dust.
By mid-morning, Rohan stood in the cavernous halls of the National Archives on Council House Street. The smell of paper and mildew was overwhelming, the silence heavy with the weight of colonial memories. A bespectacled clerk led him to Arvind’s locker, tucked behind a row of tax ledgers from the Raj era.
The brass key turned with a reluctant click. Inside was a leather-bound journal, its edges frayed but its lock intact. On the cover, in Arvind’s meticulous hand, were three words: Ledger of Last Resort.
Rohan’s fingers trembled as he opened it. The pages were filled with columns of transactions, names coded in shorthand, amounts that dwarfed ordinary banking. But what froze his breath were the initials scribbled in the margins: D.B. repeated again and again.
Devraj Banerjee.
The Managing Director of Bengal Mercantile Bank wasn’t just complicit—he was orchestrating the laundering. And worse, the ledger linked deposits directly to accounts in Geneva and Dubai, accounts controlled by political operatives whose names were whispered in Parliament’s corridors.
This was more than scandal. This was dynamite.
Rohan barely had time to process before footsteps echoed down the corridor. He slipped the journal into his satchel just as two men in grey suits rounded the corner. Their movements were too deliberate, too sharp for ordinary clerks.
“Inspector Mukherjee?” one asked smoothly. “We’re with the Enforcement Directorate. We’ll take that file off your hands.”
Rohan didn’t blink. “Show me your IDs.”
The man smiled thinly. “No time for bureaucracy. Hand it over.”
The second man’s hand dipped into his coat. Not for an ID. For something metallic.
Rohan’s instincts screamed. He shoved the locker shut, kicked the nearest man in the knee, and bolted. The echo of shoes thundered behind him as he tore through the corridors of the Archives, the journal clutched to his chest.
He crashed through a side door, spilling into the rain-drenched street. A tram screeched as he darted across the tracks, horns blaring. Behind him, the grey suits vanished into the chaos, but not before one of them shouted:
“You can’t hide, Mukherjee! You’ll drown in this city!”
Rohan didn’t stop running until he reached the cluttered safety of College Street. The journal felt heavier than a weapon in his satchel. He had become a target.
That evening, Meera barged into his flat, drenched from the storm. “You won’t believe what I’ve found,” she said, dropping a stack of photographs on his table.
The images showed a warehouse by the docks, its shutter half-open. Men in lungis and vests moved crates stamped with the words Shakti Exports. But the crates, when opened, revealed not textiles but neat bundles of currency wrapped in plastic.
“This is yesterday’s consignment,” Meera said, her voice shaking with both triumph and fear. “Someone tipped me off. They’re moving money through fake exports. Paper records show bales of cotton, but in reality it’s cash. Millions.”
Rohan exhaled. The ledger, the warehouse, the murder—they were all threads of the same tapestry.
But before he could speak, Meera added: “There’s more. I followed one of the trucks. Guess where it went?”
“Where?”
“To Devraj Banerjee’s own bungalow in Ballygunge.”
Rohan’s hands curled into fists. The initials in the ledger were no coincidence. Devraj wasn’t covering up the laundering. He was neck-deep in it.
Later that night, as Rohan studied the journal under the dim light of his table lamp, a single page caught his eye. Unlike the others, it wasn’t filled with numbers but with words.
“If you are reading this, I am already dead. Trust no one in the bank. The trail ends not in the ledgers, but in the river. Follow the black boats at midnight.”
Rohan read it three times, his skin prickling. The Hooghly River—lifeblood of the city, graveyard of secrets. If Arvind had left this clue, it meant the laundering operation wasn’t just paper and warehouses. It was moving under the water too.
A knock on his door made him flinch. He grabbed his service revolver before opening it.
It was Sumitra, her face pale as moonlight. “Inspector… they came to my house.”
“Who?”
“Men in suits. They asked if Arvind left anything behind. They tore the place apart. My daughters are terrified.”
Rohan ushered her inside. “Listen to me. You need to leave town for a few days. Go to your sister’s in Shantiniketan. Don’t tell anyone. Don’t answer unknown calls.”
She clutched his arm. “Will you find who killed my husband?”
Rohan’s voice hardened. “I’ll find them. And I’ll make sure they never sleep again.”
As she left, Meera looked at him from across the room. “The river, the warehouse, the ledger—it’s all pointing somewhere. But if we go after this, we won’t just be hunting criminals. We’ll be at war with the city itself.”
Rohan shut the journal and holstered his revolver. “Then let the city choose sides.”
Outside, the storm surged again, rattling the shutters as if Calcutta itself had secrets it could no longer contain.
Part 4: The Black Boats
The Hooghly River lay restless beneath the moon, its surface rippling with oily reflections of half-dead lamps. Rohan stood on the crumbling ghat steps near Howrah, his raincoat clinging to him, the ledger’s warning echoing in his mind: Follow the black boats at midnight.
It was 11:47 p.m. He had come alone, revolver hidden under his coat. Meera had begged to accompany him, but he’d refused. Journalists chase stories; policemen chase ghosts. Tonight was a hunt for both.
At first, the river was empty save for fishing dinghies bobbing in the dark. Then, from the mist, they appeared—three black-painted motorboats, engines whispering low, moving like predators. Each carried long wooden crates, stacked carefully under tarps. Men stood guard, rifles slung casually, their eyes scanning the shore.
Rohan crouched behind a crumbling pillar. His heart thudded as he counted the boats. The middle one carried something heavier—it dipped lower into the water, straining against the tide.
The boats slowed near the shadow of an abandoned jute mill. A warehouse, its walls covered in moss and broken glass, stood sentinel on the bank. Men onshore waved flashlights in coded signals, guiding the convoy in.
Rohan’s fingers tightened around his revolver. This wasn’t laundering through accounts anymore—this was physical transport of black money, hidden in plain sight on the city’s ancient artery.
He moved closer, hugging the shadows of the embankment wall. The smell of wet hemp and diesel filled his nostrils. As the men unloaded crates, one slipped from a worker’s grip, crashing open. For a brief second, bundles of currency fluttered in the breeze before being shoved back inside.
And then Rohan saw him.
Standing near the warehouse door, dressed in a white silk kurta despite the filth around him, was Devraj Banerjee. His silver hair glinted faintly, his face calm, almost regal, as if orchestrating a symphony of crime.
Rohan’s stomach turned. It was no longer suspicion—it was fact. The Managing Director of Bengal Mercantile Bank wasn’t just signing ledgers in comfort. He was at the dock, watching millions in black money flow like contraband through the veins of the city.
Rohan raised his camera-phone, snapping grainy shots. Evidence. Proof. But just as he steadied for another, a guard’s flashlight beam swept dangerously close. He ducked, heart pounding, but the sharp cry went up anyway:
“Who’s there?”
Shouts erupted. Men rushed with rifles. Rohan bolted, feet splashing through puddles, shots cracking into the night. Bullets sparked off stone as he zigzagged through the ruins of the jute mill. His only thought: Don’t let them trap you against the river.
A figure grabbed his arm from the shadows. He swung, revolver raised—
“It’s me!” Meera hissed, her eyes wide.
Rohan cursed under his breath. “I told you to stay away!”
“And miss this?” she shot back. “You needed backup.”
There was no time to argue. Together, they sprinted through the narrow alleys behind the mill, ducking into an abandoned godown. Breathless, they pressed against the wall as footsteps thundered past outside.
From their hiding place, Rohan peeked out. The men were sweeping the area, but Devraj himself had returned to the boats, his calmness undisturbed. He boarded the middle vessel, speaking into a phone. Whoever he was calling, Rohan knew, had power higher than the police commissioner himself.
“Now you see why this can’t be stopped with just a case file,” Rohan whispered. “This is an empire.”
Meera’s jaw clenched. “Then we tear the empire down.”
By dawn, they returned to Rohan’s flat. Exhaustion dragged at them, but adrenaline still surged. Meera uploaded the photographs she’d taken with her telephoto lens: crates spilling currency, men with rifles, Devraj at the dock. Grainy, but undeniable.
“Why not go to the press immediately?” she asked.
“Because you’ll be dead within a day,” Rohan snapped. “You don’t understand how deep this runs. Politicians, police, businessmen—they’re all tied together. If we make this public too soon, they’ll bury the truth under our bodies.”
Meera bristled, but his words sank in. “Then what do we do?”
Rohan pulled the Ledger of Last Resort from his satchel. “We follow the trail in here. Every code, every initial, every bank transfer. This ledger isn’t just a diary—it’s a map. If we can crack it, we can find where the money ends up. Only then can we bring this down.”
For the next three days, the flat became a war-room. Pages from the ledger were pinned to walls, strings connecting names to companies, companies to politicians. Shakti Exports was only one mask—behind it sprawled half a dozen fake entities: Sunrise Logistics, Eastern Traders, Marigold Shipping. All shells.
But one name recurred like a drumbeat: K.R.
Rohan had no face for the initials, but they were always linked with the largest transfers. Whoever K.R. was, he wasn’t just a client. He was the one pulling Devraj’s strings.
Meera, poring over documents, froze suddenly. “Rohan… look at this.”
She pointed to a margin note in Arvind’s neat hand: “Meeting K.R. at Victoria Memorial, 21st.”
Rohan checked the calendar. The 21st was tomorrow.
“Arvind died before he could make that meeting,” Meera whispered. “But maybe K.R. will still be there.”
The next night, the Victoria Memorial loomed pale under moonlight, its marble dome ghostly against the sky. Lovers strolled lazily in the gardens, unaware of the game about to unfold among them.
Rohan and Meera waited near the reflecting pool, eyes scanning every passerby. Then, precisely at 9 p.m., a black Mercedes rolled up to the gates. Out stepped a tall man in a charcoal suit, his salt-and-pepper hair slicked back, his walk slow and confident.
Meera’s breath caught. “That’s… Cabinet Minister Keshav Rathi.”
Rohan’s blood ran cold. He had seen the man on television, shaking hands with prime ministers, inaugurating highways. If K.R. was Keshav Rathi, then the corruption wasn’t just local—it was national.
They watched as Devraj Banerjee emerged from the other side of the gardens, bowing slightly to Rathi. The two men walked side by side, speaking in low voices. Devraj handed him a slim envelope. Rathi tucked it into his coat with the ease of long practice.
Meera’s hand trembled on her camera. “We have to expose this.”
Rohan grabbed her wrist. “Not yet. We need more than pictures of handshakes. We need to catch them in the act.”
But even as he said it, he knew: they had stepped too close to the fire.
Across the garden, one of Devraj’s guards turned sharply. His eyes locked on them.
Rohan cursed. “Run!”
They bolted, gravel crunching under their shoes, the marble walls echoing with shouts. Bullets cracked, tourists screamed. The sanctity of the Memorial shattered under the violence of power laid bare.
Rohan dragged Meera behind a hedge, firing two shots into the air to force their pursuers back. For a moment, the garden went still. The sound of sirens rose in the distance—someone had already called the police.
Rathi and Devraj slipped into their cars and vanished before the law could touch them.
Rohan and Meera crouched in the darkness, hearts racing, their evidence incomplete but their mission burning brighter.
The game had shifted. The enemy now had a face, a name, and the full weight of the nation behind him.
Back in the flat, Meera stared at the photos she’d managed to take. Blurry, grainy, but enough to show Devraj and Rathi together.
“This is it, Rohan. Proof that Shakti Exports isn’t just laundering money—it’s state-sponsored.”
Rohan looked at the ledger, at the initials K.R. scrawled like a curse.
“No,” he said quietly. “This is just the beginning. We’ve shown they exist. Now we have to prove how deep their empire runs. And to do that, we’ll have to go underground.”
The city outside throbbed with rain and secrets. Somewhere, black boats still moved silently across the Hooghly, carrying the weight of corruption in their bellies.
And now, Rohan knew, the war wasn’t just against killers in the dark. It was against the system itself.
Part 5: The Betrayal
The rain had stopped, but the city felt heavier, as if Calcutta itself was holding its breath. Sub-Inspector Rohan Mukherjee sat at his cluttered table, the Ledger of Last Resort spread open before him. Its pages were no longer just numbers and codes—they were weapons, each entry a loaded bullet aimed at the empire of Devraj Banerjee and Minister Keshav Rathi.
Yet a nagging truth clawed at him. Evidence alone wasn’t enough. Men like Devraj and Rathi didn’t fall because of paper trails; they survived because they had built fortresses of power and silence around themselves. To bring them down, Rohan would need something more—witnesses, allies, a plan that went beyond the law.
Across the room, Meera paced restlessly, clutching her camera. “We can’t sit on this forever. Every day we wait, someone else dies.”
Rohan looked up, his eyes hard. “If we publish now, the press will spin it, the politicians will call it fake, and you’ll be the first casualty. They’ll break you, Meera. I can’t let that happen.”
Her defiance flickered, but only for a moment. “Then what’s the plan?”
“Arvind left clues. The black boats, the ledger, the meeting at Victoria. There has to be one more thread we haven’t pulled.”
He scanned the pages again, and there it was—a margin note he’d overlooked. In faded ink: “Eastern Docks. 27th. Final transfer.”
Rohan checked the calendar. The 27th was tomorrow.
The Eastern Docks were Calcutta’s forgotten skeleton, rusting cranes jutting out like broken bones. By late afternoon, Rohan and Meera slipped through the maze of containers and warehouses. The air reeked of salt, oil, and fear.
They found a vantage point atop a stack of crates. Below, a convoy of trucks backed up to a warehouse, men unloading crates identical to those from the black boats. Armed guards patrolled, their eyes scanning the horizon.
But it wasn’t the crates that froze Rohan’s breath. It was the faces.
Among the men directing the operation was Inspector-General Prakash Sen, Rohan’s own superior in the Economic Offences Wing. A man he’d respected, even trusted.
Rohan’s blood went cold. “He’s in on it…”
Meera’s hand trembled on her camera. “Your own people, Rohan. That’s why Arvind said trust no one.”
Before Rohan could answer, the warehouse door opened and Devraj Banerjee emerged, his silk kurta unblemished by the filth of the docks. Beside him walked Minister Keshav Rathi, flanked by two men carrying briefcases handcuffed to their wrists.
Rathi’s voice carried faintly over the clang of metal. “This shipment leaves tonight. By tomorrow, the funds are in Geneva. Once the election campaign begins, no one will trace a single rupee.”
Devraj bowed slightly. “As always, Minister, your vision is flawless.”
The sheer brazenness of it hit Rohan like a punch. Not only was the laundering operation real—it was sanctioned at the highest levels. And his own department was complicit in protecting it.
Meera’s camera clicked softly, capturing each damning frame. But then her elbow brushed against a loose metal pipe. The clatter rang out like a gunshot.
Heads snapped upward.
“There!” a guard shouted, pointing toward their perch.
Gunfire erupted, bullets sparking off steel. Rohan dragged Meera down, shouting, “Run!”
They scrambled through the labyrinth of containers, bullets whizzing past. Meera tripped but Rohan yanked her up, his revolver barking back at their pursuers. They reached a narrow service passage when a silhouette blocked their path.
Inspector-General Prakash Sen.
His revolver was already raised. “Drop it, Rohan.”
For a moment, time froze. Rohan’s mentor, the man who’d taught him to read financial crimes like stories, now stood as his executioner.
“Sir…” Rohan began, his voice raw. “You’re working with them?”
Prakash’s eyes were cold. “Idealism is for rookies. Do you know how much flows through these docks every year? More than the city’s entire budget. Do you think you can stop it? This is bigger than you, bigger than me.”
“Arvind thought he could stop it,” Rohan spat. “You killed him.”
A flicker, almost guilt, crossed Prakash’s face. “Arvind was a liability. You’re a liability. Give me the ledger and maybe I’ll let you disappear.”
Behind Rohan, Meera whispered, “Don’t.”
Rohan tightened his grip on his revolver. His whole career balanced on that moment—obey the chain of command and die a coward, or fight the system and become an outlaw.
“I’ll see you in hell before I hand it over,” he said.
Prakash’s eyes hardened. The trigger twitched—
A shot rang out. But it wasn’t Prakash’s gun.
Prakash staggered, clutching his thigh. Blood spread through his trousers as he collapsed with a snarl.
Behind him stood Sumitra Ghosh, Arvind’s widow, a small pistol in her trembling hands. Her eyes blazed with grief and fury.
“You killed my husband,” she hissed. “Now you pay.”
Prakash cursed, but his men dragged him away before she could fire again. The air filled with retreating footsteps and shouted orders. Within minutes, the convoy of trucks screeched into the night, leaving only silence and the stench of betrayal behind.
Later, in Rohan’s flat, the three of them sat in heavy silence. Meera cleaned the scrape on her arm, Sumitra’s pistol lay on the table, and the ledger sat between them like an unspoken truth.
“Now you know,” Rohan said grimly. “The rot isn’t just in the bank. It’s in the police. It’s in the government. Arvind tried to fight it and died. If we keep going, we may meet the same fate.”
Sumitra’s voice was steady, though her hands trembled. “Then fight smarter. My husband didn’t give his life so you could give up. He left you that ledger for a reason.”
Meera leaned forward, fire in her eyes. “We have photos. We have eyewitnesses. We have the ledger. What we need is to hit them where it hurts most—public trust. If we can leak this at the right moment, when the money trail is undeniable, they can’t bury it.”
Rohan rubbed his temples. “And until then?”
Meera’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Until then, we go underground. We hide, we plan, and we strike when they least expect it.”
The storm outside had eased, but the air was still heavy with moisture, with the sense of something waiting to break. Rohan looked at the faces of the two women before him—one driven by grief, the other by fire.
He realized then that he wasn’t alone anymore. For better or worse, this was a war they would fight together.
And in that moment, Rohan made a silent vow: Devraj Banerjee, Keshav Rathi, Prakash Sen—they would all fall. No matter how high they sat, no matter how deep the rot ran, the ledger would drag them into the light.
Part 6: The Underground
The days that followed the dockyard betrayal blurred into a haze of shadows. Rohan Mukherjee no longer wore his khaki uniform—he was officially “on leave,” though in truth he was a fugitive within his own force. His photograph had begun circulating through unofficial police channels, marked as a “rogue officer with possible extremist ties.”
It was Devraj’s doing, Rohan knew. Discredit the man, and the evidence dies with him.
He and Meera shifted from safehouse to safehouse, often crashing in shuttered printing presses, half-burnt godowns, even a forgotten attic above a chai stall near Burrabazar. Sumitra stayed with relatives in Shantiniketan for safety, but she remained their unseen anchor, phoning once a day from borrowed numbers.
Rohan felt the ledger’s weight in his satchel with every step. It wasn’t just paper anymore—it was a curse. Everywhere he went, he sensed eyes watching, footsteps following.
One evening, Meera spread a map of Calcutta on the floor, pinning photographs and notes like a war general.
“Look,” she said, stabbing her pen at the river. “The black boats run along these ghats. But the money isn’t staying in warehouses. It’s moving further—to rail junctions, to airports. If we track the logistics, we can choke their pipeline.”
Rohan crouched beside her, weary but alert. “We can’t fight an empire by ourselves. We need allies.”
“Who?” she challenged. “Your department? They’re owned. The courts? Bought. The media? Controlled.”
“Not everyone,” Rohan replied quietly. “There’s one man.”
He pulled out his phone and dialed a number he had memorized long ago but never used. After two rings, a gruff voice answered.
“Who is this?”
“It’s Mukherjee. I need a favor.”
There was a pause. Then: “You’ve gone mad, Rohan. Do you know the kind of storm you’ve walked into?”
“Then help me weather it, Sir,” Rohan said. “You owe me that much.”
The line went dead. For a moment Rohan thought he had been abandoned. Then a message pinged: “Meet me at Mullick Bazaar, midnight. Come alone.”
The marketplace at Mullick Bazaar was deserted at that hour, its stalls shuttered, its usual chaos replaced by silence. Rohan waited under the ghostly glow of a broken streetlamp until a black Ambassador rolled up.
Out stepped Retired Justice Haran Chatterjee, a man once feared for his incorruptible judgments, now living quietly in exile from power. His frail body leaned on a cane, but his eyes still burned sharp.
“You’re reckless,” Chatterjee rasped. “I told you long ago—never touch the hydra’s head. Cut one, ten grow back.”
“Justice,” Rohan said, bowing slightly. “I don’t want to cut heads. I want to burn the whole body.”
Chatterjee studied him, then sighed. “Show me what you have.”
In the dim light of a tea stall, Rohan laid out the ledger, the photographs of Devraj and Rathi, the notes from Arvind’s files. Chatterjee’s hand trembled as he turned the pages.
“This isn’t laundering,” he whispered. “This is state capture. Elections funded by black money, campaigns run by dirty cash. If this comes out, governments will fall.”
“Then let them fall,” Rohan said coldly.
Chatterjee tapped his cane thoughtfully. “You can’t leak this outright. They’ll bury it as disinformation. But there is one chance—the People’s Tribunal.”
Rohan frowned. “That’s a student circus.”
“Not anymore,” Chatterjee said. “It’s where the last scraps of truth live. Independent journalists, activists, lawyers—people who still believe. If we deliver this ledger to them, with evidence, they’ll make it public. Loud. Unstoppable.”
Rohan’s pulse quickened. “Where?”
“Sealdah Station. Two nights from now. A gathering in the old parcels hall. Dangerous, but it’s your only chance.”
When Rohan returned to Meera with the plan, she was already typing furiously on her laptop, securing encrypted backups of every file.
“If we go to this Tribunal,” she said, “they’ll know. They’ll come for us before we reach Sealdah.”
“Then we go prepared,” Rohan said. “No more hiding. If they want a war, we give them one.”
Meera smirked faintly. “Finally. The cop decides to become the outlaw.”
The next day, the war struck first.
As they exited a safehouse near Maniktala, a black SUV screeched into the alley. Gunmen spilled out, rifles blazing. Rohan shoved Meera behind a wall, returning fire with his revolver. The alley erupted into chaos, bullets ricocheting off tin roofs.
Rohan dropped two of them before the SUV roared away, leaving the air reeking of cordite and fear. But in the dust, something glittered—a torn insignia from one gunman’s jacket. It wasn’t criminal. It was official.
The crest of the Kolkata Police Special Task Force.
Meera’s face went pale. “Your own brothers are hunting us now.”
Rohan’s hands shook as he pocketed the insignia. “No. Not brothers. Dogs on a leash.”
That night, as they patched wounds and reloaded weapons, Meera looked at him across the flickering lamplight.
“Rohan… why are you still fighting? You could have walked away. Let the city rot.”
He looked at her, his eyes tired but fierce. “Because if we all walk away, then Calcutta belongs only to men like Devraj. I can’t let that happen. Not while I can still breathe.”
Something in his voice silenced her. For the first time, Meera realized this wasn’t just about justice for Rohan. It was about identity, belonging, a city he refused to surrender.
The following night, they disguised themselves—Rohan in a porter’s uniform, Meera in a sari and thick glasses. Sealdah Station was a storm of humanity, trains groaning, vendors shouting, the air heavy with sweat and coal dust. Amid the chaos, they slipped into the old parcels hall.
Inside, candles flickered on a long wooden table. Around it sat a dozen men and women—students, retired professors, lawyers, and journalists. And at the head of the table, Justice Chatterjee.
“You’ve brought the storm with you,” Chatterjee murmured as Rohan laid the ledger on the table. “Now let’s see if we can survive it.”
But before the first page could be read, the hall’s doors slammed open.
A squad of armed men stormed in—faces covered, weapons raised. Behind them strode a figure in plain clothes, his limp still visible from Sumitra’s bullet.
Inspector-General Prakash Sen.
His voice boomed in the candlelight. “Game’s over, Mukherjee. Hand over the ledger, or I’ll burn this hall to the ground with every idealist inside it.”
The Tribunal froze. Fear rippled through the room.
Rohan rose slowly, his revolver hidden under the table. His heart pounded, but his voice was steady.
“Prakash,” he said. “You betrayed your badge. But tonight, I promise you—you won’t leave here with that ledger.”
Part 7: Fire in the Tribunal
The parcels hall of Sealdah Station froze in a tableau of fear. Candlelight flickered against rifles, shadows stretched like claws across the crumbling walls. Inspector-General Prakash Sen stood tall despite his limp, flanked by masked men whose weapons gleamed cold.
“Hand it over,” Prakash growled, his gaze locked on Rohan. “The ledger, or the Tribunal burns tonight.”
For a moment, silence smothered the room. The students at the table stared at one another, their bravado shriveling under the weight of real violence. Even Justice Chatterjee’s knuckles whitened on his cane.
Rohan rose slowly, his hand resting on the satchel that held the Ledger of Last Resort. His voice cut through the fear like steel.
“You can shoot me, Prakash. But if you kill everyone here, this city will remember you not as a cop but as a butcher. And even Devraj can’t protect a butcher.”
Prakash’s lip curled. “You think this city remembers anything? It forgets by dawn, Mukherjee. That’s why men like me survive.”
He motioned to his men. Two advanced, rifles aimed.
Then, from the far corner, a voice rang out—fierce, shaking but defiant.
“You killed my husband!”
It was Sumitra. She had come against Rohan’s orders, pistol in hand. Her shot cracked through the hall, striking one of the masked gunmen square in the chest. Chaos erupted.
Rifles roared. Candles toppled, plunging the room into half-darkness. Tribunal members scrambled for cover as bullets shredded wooden benches. Rohan shoved the ledger into Meera’s hands.
“Go!” he shouted. “Get it out of here!”
“But—”
“Now!”
He fired his revolver, dropping another gunman. Meera sprinted toward a side door, clutching the satchel. Behind her, Justice Chatterjee barked orders, shepherding terrified students toward safety.
Prakash stormed forward, his own revolver flashing. The shot grazed Rohan’s arm, burning hot. He staggered but kept firing, his mind narrowed to survival.
Sumitra stood her ground, emptying her pistol at the advancing men until she was dragged back by a Tribunal lawyer. Her face blazed with grief and fury, her screams drowned in gunfire.
The hall became a battlefield. Smoke filled the air, mingling with the acrid stench of gunpowder. Rohan ducked behind a toppled table, counting his remaining rounds. Two bullets left.
He spotted Meera struggling to pry open the side door. A masked gunman closed in on her, blade gleaming. Rohan took the shot, his last round, dropping the man inches from her.
Their eyes met across the smoke. She hesitated, torn between fleeing and fighting. Rohan shouted hoarsely:
“Run, Meera! If the ledger survives, we all survive!”
She vanished into the night, the satchel clutched tight. Relief surged through him—until a hand like iron grabbed his collar and slammed him against the wall.
Prakash’s face loomed inches from his, sweat and fury dripping. “You think you’ve won? That girl won’t last an hour out there. The city belongs to us.”
Rohan spat blood. “Not for long.”
Prakash’s fist smashed into his jaw. Darkness threatened to pull him under.
When Rohan came to, the hall was wreckage—bullet holes pocked the walls, candles smoldered in pools of wax. Tribunal members huddled, shaken but alive. Sumitra knelt beside him, pressing a cloth to his bleeding arm.
“They took Chatterjee,” she whispered, voice breaking. “Prakash’s men dragged him away. Said he’ll ‘stand trial in silence.’”
Rohan’s stomach twisted. Justice Chatterjee—their only powerful ally—now a hostage.
“And Meera?”
Sumitra’s eyes dropped. “She got out. But Prakash sent cars after her. I don’t know if she made it.”
Rohan forced himself upright, pain screaming through his body. He clenched his fists. If Meera fell into their hands, the ledger would be gone. Everything would be gone.
Hours later, limping through the rain-slick alleys of Sealdah, Rohan followed faint whispers of news. A witness at the tram depot swore they’d seen a young woman chased by black SUVs. Another said gunfire erupted near the tram sheds, then silence.
Every word felt like a nail hammering into Rohan’s chest. He pushed on, half-mad with exhaustion and rage, until he reached the edge of the river again.
There, on the embankment, lay a clue: Meera’s camera, cracked but not destroyed. Inside, the memory card blinked red. He slipped it into his pocket, praying she’d escaped before they could silence her.
The Hooghly’s waves slapped against the stones, carrying secrets as old as the city itself. Somewhere in its darkness, Meera was either alive—or drowned in the empire’s reach.
Back at the ruined safehouse, Sumitra lit a single lamp. Rohan examined the camera’s card on a battered laptop. Photographs flickered onscreen—grainy shots of the Tribunal, the gunfight, Prakash’s men storming the hall. Proof of the attack. Proof that Devraj’s empire wasn’t just laundering money—it was silencing the last voices of truth.
But the final file froze him. A blurred image of Meera, running toward the river, a satchel clutched to her chest. Behind her loomed two masked men. The photo ended in a streak, as if the camera had been smashed mid-flight.
Rohan’s throat tightened. She had the ledger when she disappeared. If she was alive, she still carried their last hope. If not…
He slammed his fist against the table. “They’ve taken Chatterjee. They may have Meera. And Prakash won’t stop until I’m dead.”
Sumitra’s voice was steady. “Then we stop waiting for them to strike. We strike first.”
Rohan looked at her, startled by the steel in her tone.
“My husband believed in you,” she said. “I saw it in his eyes before he died. If you give up now, his death means nothing.”
Rohan inhaled sharply, forcing the despair down. He wasn’t done. Not yet.
“Then we hunt,” he said. “Devraj, Rathi, Prakash—they think they own this city. Let’s remind them whose blood runs in its streets.”
That night, Rohan dreamed of fire—the Tribunal hall collapsing in flames, Meera’s voice screaming his name across the river. He woke drenched in sweat, but his resolve had sharpened.
He pinned the broken camera beside Arvind’s photograph on his wall. The ghosts were gathering: Arvind, Chatterjee, perhaps even Meera. All demanding one thing.
Justice.
Rohan strapped on his revolver, ignoring the pain in his arm. He looked at Sumitra, her eyes blazing with the same fire.
“Tomorrow,” he said, “we take the war to them.”
Outside, Calcutta’s rain began again, soft but insistent, as if the city itself was whispering: Don’t stop. Don’t stop until the ledger burns the empire down.
Part 8: Counter-Strike
For the first time in weeks, Sub-Inspector Rohan Mukherjee wasn’t reacting. He was planning. The hunted had decided to become the hunter.
At dawn, he and Sumitra walked through the lanes of Bowbazar, their faces hooded. The air smelled of burnt incense and damp bricks. They entered a crumbling printing press, its machines rusted, its floor thick with dust. Inside, two men waited—old friends of Rohan from his earliest days in uniform.
One was Satyajit “Satya” Roy, a disgraced constable thrown out for exposing a bribery racket. The other, Iqbal Khan, once part of the detective branch, now a private investigator scraping by on small cases. Both had been chewed up and spat out by the system Rohan was fighting.
“You sure about this, Rohan?” Satya asked, his scarred face grim. “This isn’t a case anymore. This is war.”
“That’s exactly why I came to you,” Rohan said. He unrolled photographs, the ledger’s coded entries, and the cracked camera Meera had left behind. “We hit Devraj where it hurts—his money flow. If we can choke his pipeline, Rathi will panic. And when powerful men panic, they make mistakes.”
Iqbal whistled low. “You’re talking about sabotage.”
“I’m talking about justice,” Rohan replied.
The plan was brutal in its simplicity: strike the black boats before they reached the docks. Cut off one artery of the empire.
That night, under a moon choked by clouds, Rohan, Sumitra, Satya, and Iqbal crouched near the ghats of Kidderpore. The river was restless, its waves slapping against mossy stone.
“Three boats,” Satya muttered, peering through binoculars. “Same as last time.”
Rohan checked his revolver, then the Molotovs they had prepared—glass bottles filled with petrol, rags knotted at the neck. Crude, but fire spoke louder than bullets on water.
As the boats approached, their engines purring, Rohan felt his pulse quicken. He remembered Arvind’s dead eyes, Chatterjee’s abduction, Meera’s vanishing figure. This wasn’t just an operation—it was revenge.
“Now,” he whispered.
They hurled the Molotovs. Fire arced through the night, smashing onto two boats. Flames erupted, devouring tarps and crates. Men screamed, diving into the water. Gunfire erupted from the third boat, bullets spraying wild across the waves.
Rohan fired back, covering Satya and Iqbal as they lobbed another bottle. The third boat ignited, an inferno painting the river red and gold.
For a moment, it was victory.
Then came the roar of engines.
From upriver, larger vessels appeared—patrol boats, black and gleaming, mounted with machine guns. Not police. Private security, Devraj’s personal army.
“Run!” Rohan shouted.
They scrambled up the embankment as bullets tore into the stone. Flames reflected in Rohan’s eyes as he fired his last rounds, not to kill but to buy time. They disappeared into the maze of alleys, the river behind them ablaze.
News of the attack spread by dawn. The papers screamed “Unknown Militants Torch Vessels on Hooghly—Black Money at Risk?” The government called it terrorism. Devraj appeared on television, his silver hair immaculate, condemning “anti-national forces out to destabilize the economy.”
Rohan watched the broadcast from a dingy tea stall, fury burning in his chest. “He plays victim while he bleeds the country dry.”
Iqbal spat into the gutter. “You’ve rattled him, though. He’s tightening his security. Men like him only overreact when they’re scared.”
Satya leaned closer. “Word on the street is Chatterjee’s being held at a farmhouse outside the city. Guarded, but not impenetrable.”
Rohan’s jaw tightened. “Then that’s our next move. We get him back.”
The farmhouse lay beyond the Eastern Bypass, hidden among mango orchards. That night, under a moonless sky, the four of them crept through fields damp with dew.
Through binoculars, they saw guards pacing, rifles slung. Floodlights swept across the courtyard. Inside, a lone figure sat by a barred window—Justice Haran Chatterjee, alive but frail.
Rohan outlined the plan in a whisper. Satya would disable the generator. Iqbal would draw the guards. Rohan and Sumitra would slip inside.
They moved like shadows. Satya’s knife cut through the generator’s cables, plunging the farmhouse into darkness. Panic erupted—guards shouting, lights flickering. Iqbal fired two shots into the air from the orchard, drawing half the men toward him.
Rohan and Sumitra slipped in through the kitchen, the stench of stale rice heavy in the air. They found Chatterjee bound to a chair, bruised but unbroken.
“Rohan,” he rasped, eyes widening. “You shouldn’t have come.”
“Neither should you be here,” Rohan muttered, cutting his ropes.
But just as they turned, a voice froze them.
“Well, well. The prodigal cop.”
Devraj Banerjee himself stepped from the shadows, flanked by armed guards. His silk kurta shimmered even in the dim light. His smile was cold.
“You’ve been a thorn in my side for too long, Mukherjee. Burning my boats? That was a mistake. Tonight, I finish this.”
Rohan raised his revolver, but Devraj only laughed. “Empty, isn’t it? I keep count, Inspector.”
The guards closed in. Sumitra raised her pistol, defiant, but Rohan pushed her behind him. “Go!” he shouted. “Get Chatterjee out!”
Gunfire exploded. Rohan dove behind a pillar, grabbing a fallen rifle. Bullets screamed through plaster, splintering wood. He fired back, cutting down two guards.
Satya and Iqbal burst in through the courtyard, guns blazing. The farmhouse erupted into chaos, smoke and fire swallowing the air.
In the melee, Devraj slipped away, his silk silhouette vanishing into the orchard. Rohan cursed, firing after him, but it was too late.
They escaped with Chatterjee, battered and bleeding, but alive.
At dawn, as they lay low in an abandoned school, Chatterjee sipped water with trembling hands. His eyes burned despite his exhaustion.
“You’ve crossed the Rubicon now, Rohan,” he whispered. “Devraj will unleash hell. But so will we. The city will soon have to choose.”
Rohan nodded grimly. He knew the war was escalating beyond control.
Then Satya brought news that made his blood freeze. “Rohan… I found this on one of the guards.”
He handed over a folded paper. Inside was a grainy photograph—Meera, bound and blindfolded, bruises on her face.
Scrawled across the bottom in block letters:
“The ledger or the girl dies.”
Rohan’s hands shook as he read it. For the first time since Arvind’s death, he felt the abyss of helplessness yawning beneath him.
Meera was alive. But she was bait.
Sumitra touched his arm gently. “What will you do?”
Rohan’s jaw set like stone. “What I should have done from the start.”
He looked at the ledger, its pages fluttering in the morning breeze, heavy with truth and blood.
“We take the fight to the heart of the empire. Devraj, Rathi, Prakash—all of them. No more hiding. No more running.”
He stood, eyes blazing with the fire of a man who had lost too much to stop now.
“This city has been silent too long. It’s time it screamed.”
Part 9: The Hostage
The photograph of Meera haunted Rohan. Her bruised face, her blindfold, the crude scrawl: The ledger or the girl dies. He had stared at it for hours, his knuckles white against the paper. He had sworn to protect her, and now she was bait in Devraj’s trap.
In the dim classroom of the abandoned school where they hid, the group argued. Satya slammed his fist against the desk. “It’s a setup. They’ll kill her even if you hand the ledger over.”
“But if we do nothing, she dies anyway,” Sumitra shot back, her eyes blazing.
Chatterjee’s voice cut through the tension, steady despite his frailty. “This is no longer just about one girl or one ledger. This is about exposing the rot at its core. But… sometimes justice demands sacrifice.”
Rohan’s glare silenced him. “Not her. Not Meera. She risked everything for this. I won’t let them break her.”
He took the ledger in his hands. Its weight was unbearable. It was more than paper; it was a key to both truth and death.
“We’ll get her back,” he said finally. “And we’ll burn their empire while we do it.”
The message had given a place: Victoria Docks, midnight.
It was a fitting stage—remote, decaying warehouses, the stink of salt and rust. A graveyard for ships and men alike.
That night, Rohan and his allies approached through the fog. Satya carried a stolen rifle, Iqbal a satchel of explosives, Sumitra her pistol. Chatterjee remained behind; his body was too frail for battle, though his spirit urged otherwise.
Rohan’s heart pounded as the docks emerged from the mist. Floodlights blazed across the yard, illuminating rows of containers. At the center, tied to a post like a lamb for slaughter, was Meera. Her face was swollen, her blouse torn, but she stood upright, unbroken.
Rohan exhaled sharply. She was alive.
A slow clap echoed through the yard.
From the shadows stepped Devraj Banerjee, silk kurta immaculate despite the grime. Behind him loomed Minister Keshav Rathi, his suit pressed, his smile shark-like. And to one side, leaning on a cane, was Inspector-General Prakash Sen, his limp pronounced but his gun steady.
“The hero arrives,” Devraj purred. “Ledger in hand, like a dutiful servant. Did you really think you could burn my empire with Molotovs, Mukherjee?”
Rathi’s voice was colder. “Give us the ledger. Walk away alive. Refuse… and she dies screaming.”
Rohan raised the ledger high, his voice carrying across the yard. “This? This is your empire’s death warrant. Every rupee laundered, every name bought, every soul sold—it’s all here. And the city will read it.”
Prakash snarled. “Not if you die tonight.”
He signaled. Armed men stepped from behind containers, rifles trained. The yard bristled with steel.
Satya cursed under his breath. “Outnumbered ten to one.”
Rohan’s mind raced. Surrender meant death. Fighting meant slaughter. Unless…
He glanced at Iqbal. The man gave a faint nod, hand brushing the satchel of explosives. The real plan.
Rohan stepped forward slowly, holding the ledger. “Let her go first.”
Devraj’s smile widened. “You’re in no position to bargain.”
“Then at least let her die knowing the truth.” Rohan tossed the ledger toward them. It landed at Devraj’s feet.
The silk man bent to pick it up, triumphant. That was the moment Iqbal moved. He hurled the satchel beneath a fuel tank and fired.
The explosion split the night, a roar of fire and steel. The ground shook as containers toppled, flames racing along the dock. Gunmen screamed, scattered, their formation broken.
Rohan dashed forward, bullets whipping past. He reached Meera, cutting her bonds with a knife.
“Can you run?” he shouted.
Her voice was raw but fierce. “Just untie me and find me a camera later.”
Together they bolted, dodging between burning crates. Satya’s rifle cracked, dropping pursuers. Sumitra’s pistol barked in sharp bursts, her grief sharpened into precision.
But Devraj and Rathi remained calm amid the chaos, retreating toward a waiting car. Prakash covered them with ruthless fire, his limp not slowing his aim.
Rohan dragged Meera behind cover, then turned, fury blazing. He fired at Prakash, the shot grazing the man’s shoulder. The inspector-general cursed, returning fire, bullets sparking against steel.
“Go!” Rohan shouted at his allies. “Get her out!”
“But—” Meera began.
“Now!”
She hesitated, then obeyed, running with Satya and Sumitra toward the shadows.
Rohan remained, revolver empty, staring at the three men who had turned the city into a cesspool. Devraj’s silk shimmered in the firelight, Rathi’s eyes gleamed with political arrogance, Prakash’s face twisted in hate.
“You think this city belongs to you,” Rohan shouted over the roar of flames. “But tonight, it remembers Arvind. It remembers Chatterjee. It remembers every man and woman you crushed for profit.”
Rathi sneered. “Cities don’t remember. They obey.”
Rohan raised his empty revolver anyway, daring them to pull the trigger.
But before they could, fresh gunfire erupted—from the rooftops. Snipers. Shadows moving with precision.
Devraj’s face paled for the first time. “Who—?”
From the darkness stepped a squad of men in plain clothes, badges glinting faintly. At their head: Deputy Commissioner Satyen Banerjee—Rohan’s old superior, thought to have turned a blind eye.
“Drop your weapons!” Satyen roared.
For a moment, Devraj, Rathi, and Prakash stood frozen. Then, like snakes, they slipped into the car as their men covered them. Tires screeched, bullets sparked off metal, and the black sedan vanished into the night.
The docks burned behind them, smoke rising like a warning to the heavens.
Later, in the safety of the safehouse, Meera sat beside Rohan, her voice hoarse but steady.
“You came for me,” she whispered.
“Always,” he said.
Satya and Iqbal cleaned weapons, Sumitra bandaged her bruises. Justice Chatterjee, though frail, managed a thin smile. “The empire bleeds now. But to end it, you must strike at its head.”
Rohan knew he was right. Devraj had slipped away. Rathi still sat in Parliament. Prakash still wore his badge. The ledger was in their hands again.
But they were cornered now. Their empire had been dragged into the open.
And tomorrow, Rohan vowed, would be the day the city itself chose sides.
Part 10: The Fall
Calcutta awoke to smoke. The Victoria Docks still smoldered, a black scar on the river’s skin. Rumors spread faster than trams—gunfire at the docks, explosions, whispers of ministers fleeing in the night. The city, long silenced by fear, was beginning to murmur again.
Inside the abandoned school, Rohan Mukherjee stood before his ragtag band—Meera, Satya, Iqbal, Sumitra, and Justice Chatterjee. Their faces bore exhaustion, but their eyes burned with something stronger than survival.
“The empire still stands,” Rohan said, voice raw from smoke. “Devraj has the ledger. Rathi still sits in Parliament. Prakash commands the police. But last night, we showed them something they never expected—resistance.”
Meera leaned forward, her bruised face lit by determination. “So what’s the next move? We can’t fight them with bullets alone.”
Rohan nodded. “No. We fight them with truth. We take the fight public.”
Chatterjee’s cane struck the floor. “Then we must broadcast it. Not to the courts—they’re compromised. Not to the papers—they’ll be bought. We take it to the people, live and unfiltered.”
“But the ledger is gone,” Satya reminded grimly.
“Not entirely,” Rohan said. He lifted Meera’s cracked camera. “Before she was taken, she captured pages. Enough to prove the laundering. Enough to link Devraj and Rathi. And with witnesses here, we can finish what Arvind started.”
Meera’s eyes widened. “A live broadcast. Straight to the city.”
By nightfall, they had seized a pirate radio frequency with Iqbal’s help. The signal was weak, but it could ride the airwaves across Calcutta. In a hidden basement near College Street, they prepared. Meera sat before a microphone, her voice steady despite the weight of what she carried.
“This is not your evening news,” she began. “This is truth. Tonight, we tell you why Arvind Ghosh was murdered, why Justice Haran Chatterjee was kidnapped, why money flows through our city in black boats while you starve.”
She read the names from the captured images, the coded initials that matched bank accounts, the photographs of Devraj at the docks, the evidence of laundering. Satya and Iqbal broadcast live footage from burning warehouses, from testimonies of dockworkers willing to speak.
Chatterjee’s voice thundered through the mic: “I am Haran Chatterjee, once a judge of this land. And I testify: what you hear tonight is real. The empire of Devraj Banerjee and Minister Keshav Rathi is built on blood money. And it will fall.”
But they weren’t alone on the airwaves.
Prakash Sen had tracked the frequency. At Lalbazar, he stormed into the control room, barking orders. “Jam that signal! Find the source!”
“Sir,” a technician stammered, “the frequency’s bouncing. We can’t pinpoint—”
Prakash slammed his cane on the floor. “Then burn the city if you have to!”
Meanwhile, Devraj and Rathi sat in a safehouse in Ballygunge, listening to the broadcast through gritted teeth.
“They’ve turned the city against us,” Devraj hissed, his silk kurta damp with sweat.
Rathi’s jaw clenched. “Calcutta forgets quickly. We crush this rebellion, and they’ll forget tomorrow.”
But even as he spoke, horns blared outside. Crowds were gathering in the streets, chanting Arvind’s name, demanding answers. For the first time, the empire trembled.
At the basement, as Meera’s voice carried across the city, the door burst open. Prakash stormed in with armed men.
“Enough!” he roared. “This ends now!”
Gunfire erupted. Satya returned fire, dropping two men before falling himself, a bullet tearing through his chest. Iqbal hurled a smoke grenade, filling the room with choking haze.
Rohan charged through the smoke, tackling Prakash. The two men crashed against the wall, fists and fury flying.
“You betrayed everything the badge stood for!” Rohan snarled, landing a blow.
Prakash’s cane cracked against his ribs. “The badge is power! And power belongs to those who take it!”
They grappled, blood and smoke blinding them. Finally, Rohan wrenched the cane away and drove it into Prakash’s chest. The inspector-general gasped, eyes wide, then crumpled to the floor, lifeless.
But Devraj wasn’t finished. He appeared at the doorway, pistol raised, eyes blazing.
“You think you’ve won?” he spat. “This city will always belong to men like me!”
Before he could fire, Sumitra stepped from the smoke, pistol steady. Her voice was quiet but sharp as glass.
“No. This city belongs to men like my husband.”
Her shot struck Devraj square in the chest. The silk man staggered, eyes wide with shock, then collapsed, his empire dying with him.
Rathi fled. He slipped into a convoy, racing toward the airport, hoping to vanish into the safety of foreign shores. But the crowds had risen. At the gates of the city, protesters swarmed his car, blocking the road. Cameras flashed. Voices roared.
“Thief!” they shouted. “Murderer!”
Rathi’s face, once broadcast on campaign posters, was now lit by the torches of his people’s rage. He was dragged from the car, his screams drowned in the tide of fury.
By dawn, he was no longer a minister, but a prisoner of the same city he had betrayed.
The broadcast ended with Meera’s voice, weary but victorious.
“Arvind Ghosh’s truth lives. Justice has spoken. Tonight, Calcutta remembers.”
The city erupted. Crowds filled College Street, Dalhousie, Howrah Bridge. Black boats burned on the river. The empire had fallen.
Later, in the quiet aftermath, Rohan stood on the steps of Victoria Memorial. The rain had eased, the marble gleamed pale under dawn light. Beside him, Meera leaned on his shoulder, her voice soft.
“We did it.”
Rohan’s eyes were distant. “We began it. Justice is never the end. It’s the fight we keep alive.”
Chatterjee approached, cane tapping softly. “You’ve given the city its memory back. Don’t underestimate what that means.”
Sumitra placed a garland of jasmine on the steps, her tears falling quietly. “For Arvind,” she whispered.
Rohan looked at them—Meera, Sumitra, Chatterjee, the few survivors of a war that had consumed so much. His heart was heavy with loss, but also with something unfamiliar. Hope.
For the first time, Calcutta breathed freely.
That night, as the city celebrated, Rohan sat alone by the river. The Hooghly flowed dark and eternal, carrying ashes, secrets, and dreams alike. He lit a cigarette, the smoke curling into the humid air.
Arvind’s photograph rested in his pocket. He pulled it out, staring at the frozen smile of a man who had dared to challenge giants.
“We did it,” he murmured. “Your ledger burned the empire.”
A faint smile touched his lips. The city would never forget again.
And neither would he.
