Three tables away from where Kundan Oberoi sat, a man sat alone with two glasses of cold milk and a kind of gloomy aura that had nothing to do with anyone in that café.
He was the kind of man that made a room feel smaller just by being in it.
Not in the way of expensive suits or careful grooming , but by just existing.
His dark hair was long, nearly to his shoulders, the kind of black that swallowed light, and it had the look of something that had simply been left alone to do whatever it wanted.
It shouldn't have worked. On a face like that , all dark eyes and a jaw that had clearly never entertained a soft thought in its life , it shouldn't have worked at all.
But..it just worked.
He was broad in a way that made the word feel insufficient. The kind of frame you didn't design in a gym but the kind you earned somewhere that didn't make it onto a résumé.
He sat the way very large, very tired things sit, still...completely and unself-consciously still.
Occupying his space without apology, without performance, without any apparent awareness that he was the kind of person people looked at.
Next to him, the most eligible bachelor in the South Indian community , with his charcoal suit and his architectural jawline , would have looked like a very expensive boy.
He wasn't looking at his phone, he was holding it to his ear, his other hand wrapped loosely around one of the glasses, his eyes fixed at nowhere in particular looking like he was zoning out in deep thought.
Then, for approximately three seconds, the café went quiet.
Not exactly silence... just... something softer. The way a room does when everyone's attention tilts toward a single point all at once, like a field of grass bending to the same wind.
But He didn't look up, unbothered by whatever was happening.
"I know," he said into the phone. His voice was low, the kind that arrived in your sternum slightly before your ears caught up. There was something in it , worn thin at the edges, like a rope that had been pulled too many times in the same spot. "I know she was old."
His jaw tightened as he proceeded whatever the person on the other side was saying.
" Did she die naturally tho?... That guy murdered her.." His words were delivered with an apparent calmness despite the true way he was feeling which could only be grasped by the tightness of his jaw muscles.
"Arjun." The voice from the phone was audible even pressed against his ear. Faintly desperate and pleading. "Don't do anything rash, think about Annie."
"I'm not going to do anything," he said quietly but he didn't sound entirely convincing....
...
Radhika set the contract down on the table and folded her hands as she smiled at him.
" "Excuse me a moment" Radhika said while standing up as she moved to the direction of the washroom under Kundan''s watchful gaze.
'There it is.' Kundan leaned back slightly as he shook his head in disdain.
He'd caught it the second her expression shifted , that particular shine in a woman's eyes when the weight of the Oberoi name finally settled on her.They always needed a moment to breathe,to call their mothers,to cry a little in a bathroom stall and compose themselves before coming back out and saying yes, it was just too predictable.
Kundan picked up his tablet while checking his watch, he'd give her four minutes, five if she was the type to redo her lipstick.
Meanwhile, in the bathroom, Radhika was doing none of those things.
She was standing at the sink, both palms flat on the cool marble, staring at her own reflection. She wasn't panicking nor was she crying... she just needed a few moments away from that man's face before she did something that couldn't be undone.
Like flipping the table, stabbing him with a fork , break a plate on top of his smug head or worse just straight up commuting murder.
Because the thing was, the more she thought about it , the printed contract, the five-year timeline, the sheer audacity of a man who had scheduled her future between his 2 PM call and his 4 PM board review , the situation was just ridiculous and insulting.
She took a slow breath trying to compose herself as she gazed at the mirror, her reflection staring back at her a scowl fixed on it.
"Okay," she said quietly to no one as she opened her clutch to check the inside and the vial sat there perfectly like it was just waiting for the right moment and she brushed her fingertips against the glass container her heart hammering against her chest.
She had never tried alcohol before and had heard her friends talk about drinking capacity or something, and how some people might be drunk form just a single glass while others can drink a dozen and still hold their liquor.
Radhika liked to believe she was the latter and even if she wasn't it was just a small glass vial , what could go wrong ?...
...
...
...
As it turns out ... Everything...