That’s when she heard it. A faint sound, growing audibly louder and clearer with every second. Oh fuck she thought, as the siren screamed and lights flashed, the stripes of colour lining her face like something out of a horror move. The police patrol car came to a rolling halt before her, doors opening to eject two angry cops.
“Oh fuck!” she whispered aloud this time. “Dad is going to kill me.”
“Us,” Rehaan corrected grimly, coming to stand beside her.
“Your father might grant you a quick death,” Vikram muttered. “Mine will bury me alive.”
“Please,” Advik snapped. “That’s nothing compared to what my dad will do to me.”
“What?” Tani asked, her throat dry, her pulse pounding in her throat.
“He’ll bedisappointed. And, then, he’ll sit me down to talk to me about any unhealed trauma from my past. Before,” he adds darkly, “launching into a speech on responsibility and a strong moral code of conduct being the pillars of life.”
“Okay,” Tani said, as the cops walked towards them. “You win.” She swung her leg over the bike and stepped forward, conscious of Vikram mirroring her move.
“Who is responsible for this? Who organised it?” The moustachioed cop in the front glared at them. “Chalo, naam batao.”
Before any of the others could open their mouths, Tani spoke, “Me. Tanisha Bakshi. It was all me.”
CHAPTER 25
KABIR
Fatigue draggedat his body and mind as he stood under the shower, water streaming down his head and body. Steam rose in the cubicle obscuring his vision and he took a moment to gratefully close his eyes, trying to empty his mind of the thoughts whispering and tangling in a toxic mess.
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know, Dad. I don’t have the lifestyle to adopt a little girl. I don’t know what the hell I am going to do.”
“But?”
“I’m not walking away. I can’t.”
His eyes snapped open, breath catching in his chest as his conversation with Ved played in his skull like an echo he couldn’t outrun. He wasn’t walking away, he couldn’t, not from a ten-year-old girl who needed him but he’d be damned if he knew how the hell he was supposed todothis.
He was barely managing his own life. Twenty days a month on the road. Ten days pretending New York was home. Zero daysknowing how to be anyone’s guardian. He could barely guardian himself.
He turned off the shower, water still dripping down his back in cold trails as he stepped onto the glossy tile of the bathroom. The mirror greeted him with a stranger, sunken eyes, cheekbones too sharp, a jaw clenched hard enough to crack.
His reflection was gaunt and haunted. He looked like a man drowning slowly. His phone buzzed distantly from the bedroom. He ignored it. His aunt could wait. The world could wait. He needed a moment to catch his breath, just one fucking moment.
From whatever his aunt’s doctors had said, she had months left to torment him, months to draw blood from a child she’d already broken, months to drag him through mud that wasn’t his, months to remind him of the bloodline he wished he didn’t have.
His mother, a mafia boss. His father, her enforcer. A lineage carved in violence, addiction, and rot. And wasn’t that a kicker? The ultimate fucking irony.
Most people thought rockstars drowned in drugs. Kabir had always stayed the hell away. He’d valued his health, sure, but mostly, he’d known the people who raised him, the only ones who mattered, would have flown down to New York, dug a grave in his backyard, and buried him alive if he’d ever touched the stuff.
But genetics didn’t care about discipline. Addiction lived in his veins whether he let it out or not. This was stamped into his DNA and he couldn’t burn it out of himself.
The phone buzzed again. His jaw ticked as the muscles in his shoulders bunched painfully. His pulse pounded in his temples. What the fuck did she want?
Was she dying tonight? Throwing another tantrum? Threatening him? The kid? Herself?
With a rough breath, he wrapped the towel around his waist and walked out, strides sharp, controlled only by fury. He reached the bed just as the phone fell silent. Of course. Of course she’d stop calling the second he reached out to help. Well, good riddance, he thought, swearing under his breath.
He changed direction, shoulders slumping with exhaustion. Grabbing tracks and a t-shirt from his open suitcase, he pulled them on mechanically and let himself fall back onto the bed. The ceiling blurred above him.
And his mind, weak, traitorous thing that it was, went where it always went.
