Page 134 of Since You Stole My Heart

A corner of his mouth tugged upwards. ‘I left him alive as a courtesy to Swayam. If that man wasn’t his cousin, I wouldn’t have stopped where I did.’

Kashvi gasped, her eyes going wide with disbelief. ‘I told you about… Viraj?’

When he nodded, she surged forward to grab his arm. ‘Dhruv, what did you do?’

He gave her an unimpressed look. ‘How about I ask you the questions now? Why didn’t you tell us what was happening? Not even Siya or Swayam?’

Kashvi shook her head urgently. ‘Dhruv, you can’t tell anyone. Not Di, and especially not… Swayam. If Viraj finds out that I told you…’

‘Hey, just relax,’ he said gently.

‘Relax?’ she echoed, fear breaking through her voice. ‘He has my pictures! Do you understand what that means? And if he decides to...’

‘I took care of it.’

His words sliced cleanly through her spiral. ‘What?’ she asked, trying to process them.

‘I took care of it,’ he repeated firmly.

‘Wetook care of it,’ Vihaan corrected.

‘Yeah, yeah, team effort,’ Dhruv muttered, waving him off.

‘What does that mean? What did you guys do?’ she asked, looking between them.

Dhruv reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out a phone. She gasped when she recognised the devil sticker on the back of the phone case.

It was Viraj’s phone, shattered beyond repair.

She struggled to process the shock. ‘How did you even... how do you have his phone? I don’t understand.’

Before Dhruv could answer, Vihaan spoke up. ‘You see, Kashvi, we’re part of a vigilante group, and we believe in aggression against men who forget basic morality when it comes to women.’

Her mind stalled as she tried to decide whether he was serious. Vihaan pointed at the phone in Dhruv’s hand. ‘What you’re looking at is justice.’

She glanced back at Dhruv, bewildered. ‘Okay, what the hell is he talking about?’

Dhruv glared at his friend, then shook his head. ‘Don’t listen to him, Kashvi. How we got it doesn’t matter. What matters is that everything he had on you is out of his hands.’

‘So he has nothing on me?’

‘Nothing,’ Dhruv said, meeting her gaze without hesitation.

‘What if he has backups? What if he has copies stored somewhere else?’ she asked, spiralling because she was too scared to believe it.

‘We made sure to ask, more than once,’ Dhruv assured her. ‘He didn’t break, which means we get to hope there aren’t any more copies.’

A strange, fragile sense of hope began to bloom in her chest. Finally, she forced the words out. ‘So... I’m free?’

‘Yes,’ Dhruv said, gripping her shoulders firmly. ‘I promise.’

The chokehold around her heart finally loosened, and she threw her arms around him as the words tumbled out. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’

The short-lived relief quickly vanished when she felt Dhruv flinch.

Kashvi pulled back immediately. ‘Oh my God. What did I do?’

Dhruv shook his head, though one hand instinctively rubbed over his stomach. ‘I’m fine,’ he said, brushing it off.