Heir of Blood and Silence

I didn’t notice him at first. Not really. He was just another man in black at the back of the courtroom, silent while my father spoke, still while everyone else shifted under the weight of truth. That was three years ago. The last time my father wore his advocate’s robes. The last time he said Malhotra out loud. They found him dead two weeks later. No marks. No signs of struggle. Just… gone. Officially: cardiac arrest. Unofficially? People in power don’t die like that unless someone made it look peaceful. After that, I stopped speaking publicly about justice. Started interpreting instead. Silence felt safer than words. Now I work at Shanti Nivas, a trauma center tucked behind Connaught place’s Delhi bungalows where politicians donate money but never show their faces. My job? Translate pain for those who can no longer speak he abused women who flinch at male voices, children too terrified to cry aloud. Most days are quiet. Predictable. Safe. Until today. My phone buzzed during lunch break a message from an unknown number: Your rent has been paid for six months. – Anonymous I stared at it. No subject line. No explanation. Just cold factuality wrapped in impossibility. I hadn't told anyone about nearly losing my flat after missing one payment last month not even my mother. But here it was: Six months cleared, Bank reference attached, Real as blood on paper. And beneath: You do good work. Keep doing it. That night, driving home through Connaught Place lanes, fog thickening around streetlights, I saw them again the black BMW M8 Coupe parked half-hidden under neem trees. Same model as the one outside court three years ago. Same tinted windows. One window rolled down slightly as if testing whether I’d look I did and there he was. Not young, not old. Early thirties maybe, face carved by restraint rather than rage. Eyes dark as kohl-lined silence. A suit so expensive it didn’t need logos to prove itself. Aarav Malhotra? Impossible. Don’t be ridiculous. He was probably just some rich brat who thought silence was a flex and power a personality. The kind who played with people’s lives like chess pieces and didn’t even care when they shattered. And me? I wasn’t about to let my paranoia turn some random stranger into a ghost from my past. It had to be nothing. A shadow. A coincidence. The kind of overactive imagination you get when your father dies too young and no one gives you answers. My hands didn’t tremble because of him. They trembled because Delhi winters are sharp on the bones and I’ve always hated driving in fog. That man in the BMW M8 Just another silhouette behind glass. Another nameless face in this city full of monsters who wear silk instead of skin.