A Death Toll, a 48-Hour Deadline, and a Terrifying Trade
1501 Words
A haunting, suffocating silence now ruled the ransacked apartment, replacing the peaceful sleep of a four-year-old girl. The chilling message scrawled in blood across the vanity mirror looked like an open grave.
And then, shattering that eerie quiet, the black flip phone rang.
Ring... Ring...
Each shrill tone hammered against Prachi’s heart like a physical blow. Her entire body trembled violently. Her vision blurred, turning dark at the edges. She wanted to grab the phone, to scream into it, but her limbs were paralyzed, heavy as lead.
Deva, his eyes burning with a murderous rage, shoved his Glock back into his belt and stepped forward, scooping up the phone. He shot a grim look at Prachi, flipped it open, and hit the speaker button.
"Hello..." Deva’s voice was a paradoxical blend of frozen ice and boiling volcanic ash.
Silence stretched on the other end for several torturous seconds, filled only by the sound of heavy, ragged breathing. Then came a deep, raspy, other-worldly laugh—the sound of the Grim Reaper making a call.
"Deva... my old friend," the voice grated out, enunciating every syllable like it was chewing on glass. "I expected the good doctor to answer my call. But you’ll do. The lapdog of a new master."
Deva’s jaw tightened, the veins in his forehead pulsing. "Rana..." he hissed, barely containing his rage. "You’re alive."
"I am, Deva. Very much alive," Rana’s voice carried a blood-soaked edge. "Buried for four long years in the darkest pit of hell, choking on the blood of my own brother. Did you and your 'Penniless Romeo,' Rishi Malhotra, really think you could play god? That you could shove my car off a cliff and rule this city? You stole my family, Deva... Today, I stole yours."
Suddenly, the high-pitched, terrifying screams of a child ripped through the speaker. “Momma! Momma, I’m scared! Momma, where are you?!”
A gut-wrenching scream tore from Prachi’s throat. "Riya! Riya, my baby! I’m here, sweetie!" Prachi lunged for the phone, ripping it out of Deva’s hands, dropping to her knees on the floor, sobbing uncontrollably.
"Rana! Let my child go! Please! She is an innocent child! Have mercy on her!" Her voice cracked as she begged, the soul-destroying sobs shaking her entire frame. "Take me instead! Take my life! But don't you dare hurt that innocent baby! She is my world... Please!"
A deafening silence fell over the other end of the line. When Rana’s voice returned, it was a cold, detached whisper.
"Dr. Prachi... she is not your world. She is the blood of my younger brother. She is my niece. You didn't do me a favor by raising her; you desecrated the memory of my family by keeping her in the shadow of the very man who slaughtered her parents."
"No! No, I didn’t know!" Prachi pleaded, her voice breaking. "I had no idea who she was! I just saved a baby's life! Please, give me my child back!"
"Oh, I will return her, Doctor... I absolutely will," Rana’s voice now held a sickening, mocking edge. "But I have a condition. And I’ve written it for you, in blood, on your beautiful mirror."
Prachi looked up, her tear-filled eyes scanning the horrific scrawl: If you want your daughter alive... bring me the last beating piece of Rishi Malhotra's heart.
"I... I don't know where he is," Prachi’s voice was a trembling wreck. "He vanished from the hospital ICU... I thought you took him..."
"I didn't kidnap him, Doctor," Rana interrupted, dropping a devastating truth. "If I had him, I wouldn't be calling you. I’d be mailing you his severed head. Who took him, where he’s hiding... that is your and your lapdog Deva's problem. Not mine."
Rana paused, taking a long, heavy breath before dropping the final bombshell. "Listen closely, Doctor. You have forty-eight hours. Exactly forty-eight hours. By midnight after tomorrow, I want Rishi Malhotra—dead or alive. And if you try to get smart, if you go to the cops, or if forty-eight hours pass and you show up empty-handed... I swear on my brother's grave, Dr. Prachi... I will take this girl to that exact highway, and I will burn her alive in the very wreckage you found her in four years ago."
Prachi’s breathing hitched in her throat, the air turning to ice.
"Your time starts now."
Click. The line went dead.
The phone slipped from Prachi’s numb hand, clattering onto the hardwood floor. She sat on the ground, turned into a statue of pure grief and terror. Forty-eight hours. Only forty-eight hours left in her child’s life. And in exchange, she was being demanded to sacrifice the one man who had given her this entire life.
Deva grabbed Prachi by the shoulders and forcefully pulled her to her feet.
"You have to listen to me very carefully, Prachi!" Deva demanded, lockings his eyes with hers, his voice steel. "Rana has snapped. He’s a psychopath. He won't let that girl live, even if you hand Rishi over. We need to find Rishi... and we need to find him before Rana does."
"But where do we even begin to look, Deva?!" Prachi practically screamed, bordering on insanity. "How can he just vanish from a high-security ICU? You said it yourself—the door was sealed, the monitors hacked! If Rana didn't abduct him, then who took him?!"
Deva grabbed his head, his sharp mind working at warp speed, analyzing every single detail. Suddenly, his eyes fell upon the blood-smeared plastic doll they had brought back from the hospital.
"That doll..." Deva muttered, a realization dawning. He sprinted over to the knocked-over toy bin and began violently emptying it onto the floor.
"What are you doing?" Prachi asked, baffled and desperate.
Fumbling through the scatter of toys, Deva said, "Prachi, when I broke into the hospital room, I thought Rana had kidn*pped Rishi and left that doll as a twisted message that your daughter was next."
Deva stopped dead. In his hand was another plastic doll, identical to the one in the ICU. But this doll's neck was bare. There was no ribbon.
Deva stood up slowly. A new, terrifying understanding was washing over his features.
"Prachi... that blood-smeared doll in the hospital... that wasn't Riya’s doll," Deva’s voice was heavy with dread.
"What do you mean?" Prachi’s skin began to crawl. "Of course it was hers, Deva! I recognized it! I was the one who tied that specific blue ribbon on its neck myself!"
"That’s exactly the point, Prachi," Deva said, a grim expression on his face as he held up the ribbon-less doll. "Riya’s doll is right here. The one you tied the ribbon on is right here, in this house. So then, the doll we found in the hospital... whose doll was it?"
Prachi felt the room begin to spin again. "If Rana didn’t take Rishi... and that doll wasn't from Rana... then who the hell kidn*pped Rishi from a sealed ICU?!"
Just then, in the suffocating silence of the apartment, Prachi’s eyes locked onto the b****y message on the vanity mirror again.
Your precious Rishi Malhotra stole my family, Dr. Prachi...
Prachi’s eyes went impossibly wide. Her entire body turned completely numb, cold as ice.
"Deva..." Prachi’s voice barely escaped her lips, a terrified whisper. With violently shaking hands, she reached out and touched the thick, crimson-red substance scrawled on the mirror, rubbing it between her fingertips.
"What is it, Prachi?" Deva asked, growing alarmed.
Prachi turned her red-stained finger toward Deva.
"This... this isn't blood, Deva," Prachi’s voice held a raw, terrifying dread. "This is... Sindoor (Sacred Vermilion Powder). Thick, dark sindoor, mixed with water to look like dried blood."
The temperature in the room plummeted.
Rana was a mafia don, an underworld psychopathological murderer. The mafia writes their messages in actual human blood. They don't use sacred ritualistic powders.
"There is a third person involved, Deva," Prachi said, tears welling up as she looked at him, her entire worldview shifting. "Someone far more cunning, far more dangerous than Rana. Someone... who is pulling the strings of this entire b****y game from the shadows. And they didn't just disappear Rishi... they’ve made Rana a pawn too."
Suddenly...
Shattering that terrifying realization, Prachi’s phone lit up again from inside her coat pocket. A new message was flashing on the screen from an 'Unknown Number'.
Deva snatched the phone and unlocked it. On the screen was a single line of text:
"Your 'Penniless Romeo's' heartbeats are safe with me, Doctor. If you want to see him alive... come to the old tree by the riverbank. The place where he first fed you raw mangoes. Come alone."
- Writer
