Fire and lace

It was raining the night when Parineeti Gupta stepped into the lion’s den. The iron gates of Singhania Estate creaked open slowly, like the city itself holding its breath. Her heels echoed against the marble, steady and sharp, as if daring the silence to flinch. Every instinct told her to turn back. But that wasn’t her style. She didn’t run from men like Vikram Singhania. She faced them head-on—and made them blink first. Inside, the air was thick with quiet opulence and the scent of sandalwood. Vyom led her through a corridor that stretched longer than a courtroom argument. At the end of it, behind doors carved with stories no one ever dared to read aloud, he waited. Vikram. The man behind the controversy. The face behind a billion-dollar empire. And the shadow behind something darker—something whispered about in back alleys and corporate files that vanished without a trace. He stood by the window, one hand wrapped around a glass of whiskey, the other resting on a file that bore her name. "You're late," he said without turning. “I wasn’t aware I owed you punctuality,” she replied coolly. His eyes met hers then—stormy, unreadable, dangerous. "You don't. But you owe me the truth.” She didn’t flinch. Not even when he took a step closer, closing the distance like a man used to getting answers—or obedience. “You asked me to be your legal advisor, not your confessor.” “Sometimes,” Vikram said, voice low, “they’re the same thing.” For a moment, neither of them spoke. The thunder outside cracked like a warning, or a promise. And in that silence, something shifted—something that had nothing to do with the case files, or law, or power. It was the beginning. Or the beginning of the end.