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AUTHOR'S POV
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"Every great story begins in the dark.
This one begins in an abandoned building
that smells like rust, rain, and bad decisions."
The building had been empty for years.
Or at least, that was what it looked like from the outside — broken windows, crumbling walls, a rusted padlock on the front door that hadn't been touched in what appeared to be decades. Just another forgotten structure on the forgotten edge of New York, the kind of place that nobody looks at twice.
Which, of course, was exactly the point.
Inside, it was a different story.
Wooden crates stacked floor to ceiling. Narrow corridors lit by single hanging bulbs that swayed in the draft. The sharp chemical scent of something that had no business being transported across state lines. Men moving quietly, efficiently, the practiced rhythm of people who had done this many times before.
They had no idea they were not alone.
Five shadows moved through the darkness of the upper level, silent and precise, hugging the walls. Five members of the Black Squad — New York's most classified detective unit — had been watching this building for eleven days. Tonight, they moved.
Ishani Sharma pressed her back against the cold concrete pillar, gun raised, eyes tracking the two men below.
She held up three fingers to the team.
Two.
One.
"Black Squad! Nobody move!"
Everything happened at once.
Shouting. The crash of crates. Three of the smugglers bolted immediately — scattering like rats through the back corridors, footsteps thundering in every direction. Two others reached for weapons.
They didn't get far.
Ishani dropped from the upper level before anyone could blink, landing clean, moving faster. Her partner Raghav was right behind her. The rest of the team split — two going left, one cutting off the back exit.
A shot fired. Then another.
The building groaned around them, ancient and unhappy about the violence.
"LEFT — left, Ishani—!"
She was already there.
The second smuggler swung at her. She ducked under his arm, spun, had him on the ground in three seconds. She was breathing hard but her hands were steady as she pinned him.
"Hi," she said pleasantly, pressing a knee into his back. "Don't move."
He did not move.
Somewhere in the back of the building, there was a muffled boom — a blast, small but sharp, the sound of someone trying to destroy evidence on their way out. The structure shuddered. Dust rained from the ceiling.
Then silence.
Raghav appeared from the corridor, slightly dusty, slightly winded. "Two down. One in custody. Three got away." He looked at Ishani. "You good?"
"Always." She hauled her catch upright and looked around at the rest of the team. Everyone standing. Nobody bleeding. She exhaled slowly. "Casualties?"
"None of ours." He nodded toward the far corner, where two of the smugglers lay still. "Two of theirs didn't make it. The rest ran."
Ishani looked down at the man she was holding — middle-aged, terrified, sweat gleaming on his forehead. The kind of man who was not the leader. The kind of man who knew just enough to be useful.
She crouched to his eye level.
"Here's how this works," she said, her voice calm and almost conversational. "You tell us who is behind this operation. You tell us right now, clearly, without wasting my time. And things go much better for you than they will for the people who ran." She tilted her head. "Or you don't. And you take the fall for all of it alone." She smiled. It didn't reach her eyes. "Your choice."
The man stared at her.
He looked at the two bodies in the corner.
He looked back at her.
"...Blackwood," he whispered.
The word dropped into the silence of the abandoned building like a stone into still water.
Ishani went very still.
"Say that again," she said quietly.
"Blackwood family." His voice cracked. "This — this is their property. Their route. I just — I just work here, I swear, I don't know anything else, please—"
But Ishani was no longer fully listening.
Blackwood.
She stood slowly, that name turning over in her mind like something with weight to it. Around her, the rest of the team exchanged glances. Raghav's eyebrows had climbed almost to his hairline.
Nobody spoke for a moment.
Then Ishani's earpiece crackled. Senior Officer Mehta's voice came through, steady as always.
"I heard that. Everyone back to base. Now."
The operation room felt smaller than usual with everyone crowded around the central table.
Mehta stood at the front, arms crossed, and for once he did not look surprised. He looked like a man who had suspected something for a long time and had just been handed the first piece of proof.
"The Blackwood family," he said, placing a photograph on the table. A sprawling estate. Iron gates. A name carved in stone above the entrance. "New York's most powerful, most untouchable mafia dynasty. And yes — that building tonight is registered under one of their shell companies."
"You already knew," Ishani said. It wasn't an accusation. Just an observation.
"I suspected." He looked at her. "Now we have confirmation."
"So we move on them?"
"Not yet." He shook his head. "The Blackwoods don't leave evidence. They never have. One terrified lower-level runner telling us a name in a dark building is not enough." He paused. "But it's a start."
Raghav leaned back in his chair — it squeaked, as it always did — and rubbed his face. "Great. So we're going after the most dangerous family in New York with a start."
"We've done more with less," Ishani said.
He looked at her. "That's what worries me."
Mehta raised a hand for quiet. Then he picked up his phone from the table and turned the screen outward without a word.
The headline filled the display.
BREAKING: MALHOTRA-BLACKWOOD UNION CONFIRMED
India's Most Beloved Business Dynasty Announces Wedding Alliance with New York's Blackwood Family
The room stared at it.
"...The Malhotras?" Raghav said.
"The Malhotras," Mehta confirmed.
"The donate-to-orphanages, on-the-cover-of-every-magazine, everybody-loves-them Malhotras?"
"The same."
Another silence. The kind that meant five very smart people were all doing the same mental arithmetic and arriving at the same answer: something is very, very wrong here.
Ishani studied the headline. Then she looked up at Mehta, and she saw it — something behind his eyes that wasn't surprise. Something older than surprise.
"You know something about the Malhotras," she said.
He met her gaze. "I know that a family does not get that clean without trying very hard to look it." He set the phone down. "I have no evidence. I have never had evidence. But a family with that much wealth and that spotless a record tying themselves to the Blackwoods—" He stopped. "It's not a coincidence."
The room absorbed this.
Ishani looked at the headline one more time.
Malhotra. Blackwood.
Two names. One wedding. And somewhere underneath it all, a drug route that had just gotten significantly more complicated.
She felt that familiar pull in her chest — that electric, restless hunger that meant a case was cracking open and she was about to fall into it headfirst.
She didn't step back.
She never stepped back.
"So," she said, straightening in her chair. "What do we do?"
Mehta looked at her for a long moment.
Then he reached into the folder in front of him and slid a single document across the table.
A wedding invitation.
Ishani looked down at it.
You are cordially invited to the union of Vikram Malhotra and Sera Blackwood...
She looked up.
Mehta's expression was perfectly composed.
"We're going to a wedding," he said.