Ajay slowly pulled something out of the suitcase.
Not clothes.
Not a laptop.
Not even toiletries.
It was a thick brown folder.
Under it were several smaller envelopes, a digital camera, and what looked disturbingly like printed photographs.
Meera’s throat tightened.
— “What… what is all that?”
Ajay didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he calmly placed the folder on the table and opened it.
The first thing Meera saw made her blood run cold.
A photograph.
Of her.
Walking out of her apartment building two weeks earlier.
Another photo.
Her sitting at a café with her coworker.
Another.
Her buying medicine at a pharmacy.
And then another.
Her standing outside her mother’s house.
Meera staggered backward.
— “W-what is this…?”
Ajay finally looked at her.
His face no longer carried the gentle warmth she had trusted for an entire year.
Now he looked… cold.
Calculated.
Like a stranger wearing Ajay’s face.
— “I needed to be sure,” he said quietly.
— “Sure of WHAT?!”
He slid another paper toward her.
A hospital record.
Her hospital record.
Meera’s eyes widened.
Her hands began shaking uncontrollably.
— “How did you get this?”
Ajay leaned back calmly.
— “You’d be surprised how easy it is when you know the right people.”
Meera felt nausea rise in her stomach.
The room suddenly felt smaller.
The air heavier.
— “You investigated me?”
— “For eleven months.”
That answer hit harder than a slap.
Eleven months.
Almost the entire time she had known him.
Every dinner.
Every thoughtful conversation.
Every comforting message.
Every ride home after work.
Every “good morning” text.
Everything had been part of something else.
Something she didn’t understand.
Meera’s voice cracked.
— “Why?”
Ajay stared at her for several seconds before answering.
— “Because I was looking for someone exactly like you.”
A terrible silence filled the room.
Meera slowly stepped toward the door.
Ajay noticed immediately.
— “Relax. If I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t have waited this long.”
But that didn’t calm her.
Not even slightly.
Her fingers quietly reached for her phone inside her purse.
Ajay noticed that too.
And then he said something that made her freeze completely.
— “Your brother Rohan finishes work at 10:30, right?”
Meera stopped breathing.
Ajay continued softly:
— “And your mother’s blood pressure medication gets delivered every second Thursday.”
Her phone slipped from her trembling fingers onto the carpet.
Ajay knew.
He knew everything.
Not just about her.
About her family.
Her life.
Her routines.
Meera’s voice became barely audible.
— “Who are you?”
Ajay looked down at the folder for a moment.
For the first time that night, something flickered across his face.
Pain.
Real pain.
Then he pulled out one final photograph and handed it to her.
Meera looked down.
The girl in the picture looked almost exactly like her.
Same eyes.
Same smile.
Same long black hair.
But the photo looked old.
At least fifteen years old.
The girl couldn’t have been older than seventeen.
Meera frowned.
— “Who is she?”
Ajay’s jaw tightened.
— “My sister.”
Silence.
— “Her name was Kavya.”
He swallowed hard before continuing.
— “She trusted the wrong man.”
Meera didn’t speak.
Ajay stared at the photo like he had memorized every inch of it.
— “He pretended to love her. Promised marriage. Promised a future.”
His voice became colder with every sentence.
— “Then he filmed private moments without her knowledge.”
Meera felt sick.
Ajay continued:
— “When she tried to leave him, he blackmailed her.”
His hands clenched tightly.
— “Three weeks later, my sister jumped from the sixth floor of her college hostel.”
The room fell silent again.
Meera didn’t know what to say.
Ajay finally looked at her.
— “After she died, I found out something horrifying.”
He pushed the stack of photographs toward Meera.
They were pictures of different women.
Different ages.
Different cities.
Some smiling.
