The heat outside felt harsher than it should have.
Kashvi slid her sunglasses on, masking the flicker in her eyes.
Someone else was playing.
Fine.
She would let them think they were ahead.
Her car pulled up. She didn't get in immediately. Instead, she scanned the street—reflections in glass buildings, slow-moving pedestrians, a parked black SUV across the road.
Still.
Watching?
Or just coincidence?
She got in.
"Drive," she said calmly.
As the car merged into traffic, her phone lit up again.
Not a call.
A photo.
Sent from the same unknown number.
Her breath didn't change.
But her fingers tightened slightly around the phone.
It was a zoomed-in still image from the wedding night.
Not the phera.
Not the gunshot.
Earlier.
Ten minutes before.
Ved standing near the mandap—
Looking directly at someone off-camera.
Not at her.
Not at Krish.
At someone positioned behind the floral pillars.
The next message came.
"Look at his eyes."
She did.
And for the first time—
She noticed it.
He wasn't surprised that night.
He wasn't relaxed either.
He looked—
Prepared.
Another message.
"He knew something."
Her mind recalculated.
If Ved had sensed danger…
If he had been watching someone else…
Then the night hadn't begun with her plan.
It had begun earlier.
The car stopped at a signal.
Her screen lit up again.
Final message:
"You planned the ending."
A pause.
"But someone else planned the beginning."
The light turned green.
Traffic moved.
And inside the moving car, Kashvi finally leaned back against the seat.
Not shaken.
Not broken.
But thinking deeper than she had in five years.
Because if someone else had started the chain—
Then this wasn't blackmail.
It was positioning.
And whoever it was—
They didn't just know the truth.
They knew her.
Far too well.