LONDON.

PRESENT DAY.

The city outside was wrapped in stormlight.

Rain slid down the glass walls of her penthouse like melted silver, the sky painted in smudged greys and cold blue shadows. The kind of London evening that demanded silence, and yet tonight—everything felt too loud.

Shanaya stood barefoot on the marble floor, a glass of red wine in one hand, the other curled around the railing of her balcony. From up here, the world looked small—manageable. As if the chaos inside her chest could be caged by city lights and the height of power.

But it couldn't.

Not tonight.

She had just returned from work—her sleek black coat still tossed over a chair, heels abandoned near the door, hair tied in a low bun that had begun to loosen with the weight of the day. She hadn’t bothered to turn on the lights. The only glow in the room came from the streetlamps below and the quiet flicker of the fireplace behind her.

She was exhausted—mentally, emotionally, soul-deep tired. The kind that sleep couldn’t fix.

Shreya’s call earlier had softened her edges for a moment. That small piece of home, of warmth, of before. But it was fleeting.

Because no matter how many billion-dollar deals she signed… or how many layers of steel she wore like skin, there were some ghosts she could never outrun.

And just as she took another sip, her phone buzzed on the counter.

Private Number.

She froze.

Not because it was rare—people tried, occasionally. Cold calls. Scams. Threats. She usually ignored them.

But something about this one—

Something in her gut coiled tightly.

She walked over slowly, picked it up, thumb hovering above the green icon.

Three rings.

Four.

Then she answered.

“Shanaya Singh.”

Silence.

A soft crackle of static.

Her brows furrowed. “Who is this?”

And then—

A voice.

Low. Familiar. Drenched in the kind of calm that used to ruin her.

“Babygirl…”

Her entire body went still.

The glass slipped from her fingers before her mind could even register it—shattering against the marble like her breath.

“It’s time to come home.”

Her knees nearly buckled.

Not because she was scared.

But because she knew that voice.

She’d never forgotten it.

Not in all these years, not through the noise, not even through the ache of trying to forget.

Kabir.

Her Kabir.

The man who disappeared without warning.

Who walked out of her life like it meant nothing.

Like she meant nothing.

Who never died—but somehow still left her mourning.

“...Kabir?” she whispered, barely trusting herself to breathe.

But the call had already ended.

Static. Silence.

Gone—like smoke in a storm.

She stood there for a long time, heart hammering, wine staining her bare feet, the rain growing heavier outside.

He was back.

Not physically.

But with five words, he had shaken the fortress she had spent years building.

And deep down?

A part of her wanted to run.

The other?

Wanted to burn the whole damn city down to find him.

--------

Her fingers trembled against her thighs, knuckles white as she clenched them into fists. She stood in place for what felt like an eternity, the shattered wine glass at her feet like a grave marker.

Then — like something inside her snapped — she moved.

Fast. Cold. Controlled.

Her bare feet padded across the marble as she grabbed her phone and pressed her finger hard against the side button.

“Call Tech Control,” she barked into the device, voice sharp and slicing through the silence.

The screen flickered. A moment later, a holographic call window opened, casting a soft glow over her face.

It was nearly midnight, but Shanaya Singh didn’t care. And when she called — no one dared to delay.

“Ma’am?” came the startled voice of Marcus, the head of her personal cyber intelligence wing, blinking into the call from his dim-lit control room.

He straightened immediately at the sight of her — hair loose now, eyes storm-dark, glass shards scattered behind her. Her calm was more terrifying than rage.

“I just received a call,” she said, each word deliberate. “Private Number. I want the entire trace run. Immediately.”

He nodded, already typing furiously. “Was it on your secure line?”

“Yes.”

His face paled slightly.

“That line is triple encrypted. No one should even have that number.”

“Exactly,” she snapped. “Yet somehow, they not only called — they knew who I was. And…” Her voice faltered for the briefest second before turning to ice again. “They knew exactly what to say.”

Marcus didn’t ask for details.

Smart man.

“I need a trace, and I want a surveillance report cross-checked against all known network breaches in the last 24 hours. Get in touch with my team in Mumbai and the fallback security server in Zurich. Prioritise ghost signatures.”

“On it,” Marcus said, eyes scanning the data already pouring in.

Shanaya turned, walking into her private study — a room walled in dark walnut shelves, the lighting low, the only sound her own breathing.

She tapped a command into the side panel on her desk.

The screen blinked to life.

Lines of code danced across it — the digital blueprint of her life: her communication grids, office firewalls, GPS shields, even her penthouse security feed.

She wasn’t just a CEO. She was a fortress.

And someone had just found a crack in her walls.

---

Marcus buzzed back in, face grim.

“We’ve got a ping. Location triangulated to a transient tower just outside South Kensington. But the signal was bounced—twice through Iceland, once through Morocco. Classic ghost protocol.”

“So they knew how to disappear,” Shanaya muttered, her jaw tight.

“They wanted you to know they could reach you,” he added quietly.

Her eyes met his through the screen.

“I want visual surveillance pulled from Kensington. Street cams. Private traffic. Anything that could give me a face. A presence. A shadow. I don’t care if it takes all night.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She ended the call.

And for the first time in years — years — she let herself sit down on the edge of her dark leather chair. Slowly. Thoughtfully. Like the moment weighed a thousand kilos.

She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, hands steepled together.

The rain roared louder outside, battering the glass.

The memory of that voice echoed through her like thunder in her bloodstream.

Kabir.

Alive.

Not just alive.

Reaching out.

And yet — after everything he’d left her with… after the silence, the abandonment, the damage — he hadn’t said sorry.

He hadn’t even said her name.

He’d just said one thing.

Her gaze hardened.

"Not until I find you first."

---

The rain was thundering now, drumming against the floor-to-ceiling windows like war drums.

She grabbed the landline from the desk, her fingers trembling as she punched in a number she knew by heart even after all these years.

It rang once.

Twice.

“Shanaya?” came Vansh’s voice, cautious and alert despite the late hour in Australia. Her older brother. Her anchor. Her past.

“Bhai,” she rasped, hand shaking, eyes still fixed on the raindrops racing down the glass.

There was silence on the line.

Something in her voice—maybe the break in it, maybe the fact that she hadn’t called him this late in years—made him serious.

“What happened? Are you okay? Are you safe?”

She swallowed. Hard. Her voice came out hoarse.

“I… I got a call.”

His confusion was audible. “Okay… from whom?”

“It was a private number.”

More silence.

“Shanaya, what are you—?”

“It was him,” she said, voice cracking on the word. “Kabir. He called me.”

The line went dead quiet.

She heard her brother inhale sharply.

“What?”

“I’m not imagining it,” she whispered, pacing now, heart racing. “I know that voice. I’d know it even if I was deaf in both ears. It was him. He said—he called me babygirl. Bhai, you remember, he used to call me that. No one else knew—no one ever—”

“Shanaya, calm down. Breathe.”

“He said it’s time to come home.”

“Come where?”

She shook her head, her vision blurred. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything. I just—Bhai, he’s alive.”

There was a pause.

Then, quietly, “I never said he was dead.”

Shanaya stopped in her tracks.

“What?”

“I said he left. Disappeared. That you needed to move on. That—” he exhaled, frustration leaking in now— “—that he had made a choice.”

Her heart cracked wider. “And you let me believe he was dead?”

“I let you grieve,” Vansh said, voice suddenly harder. “Because grieving Kabir was safer than looking for him. You don’t know what you're—”

“I don’t care!” she snapped, suddenly fierce, eyes wild. “I deserve to know the truth. I deserve answers!”

Before he could respond, she ended the call.

And then?

She called him.

Rohit.

Kabir’s younger brother.

The last link she had to him.

The phone barely rang once before his voice came on, groggy but alert.

“Shanaya?”

She didn't waste a second.

“Where is he?”

Rohit froze. “What?”

“Don’t play dumb,” she said coldly, fury rippling beneath her skin. “He called me. Just now. Said it’s time to come home.”

“Shit,” Rohit whispered under his breath.

“So he is alive.”

A pause.

Then—very quietly: “You were never supposed to know.”

Her throat tightened.

“I mourned him, Rohit. I grieved a man who never even died. Who never even had the fucking decency to tell me goodbye. And you—you all let me rot in silence for years.”

“We were protecting you.”

“From what, exactly? Or from whom?”

He didn’t answer.

But the silence said enough.

“Where is he?” she asked again, quieter this time, like the question hurt her mouth to form.

“I don’t know. I swear.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not. Shanaya—he’s not the same man anymore.”

“I’m not the same girl either,” she said sharply. “He doesn’t get to haunt me and then vanish again. Find him. Tell him if he’s going to summon ghosts—he better be ready to face what he left behind.”

She ended the call.

And this time, she didn’t fall apart.

She stood still.

Breathing. Cold. Alive.

-------

END OF CHAPTER

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