"Mr. Rathore," Malhotra said. "Your firm comes very well recommended."
"Thank you, sir. What can you tell us about the incidents?"
Malhotra assessed the directness, calibrated it. Then he nodded — the nod of a man who preferred directness and encountered it rarely. He spent twenty minutes going through the file, with additions: Priya's reaction to each incident (calm, dismissive of the severity, insistent on not disrupting her routine), the household security team's assessment (external, politically motivated, manageable), his own assessment (different, quieter, the one he had not shared with anyone).
"You disagree with your security team," Arjun said.
"Yes."
"Why?"
Malhotra looked at the chai he hadn't touched. "Twenty-three years in politics. Eleven of them at this level. I know what politically motivated threats look like. I have received many. They look different from this." He paused. "These feel personal. Not against me. Against her."
"Has anything changed in her life in the past six months?" Arjun asked, his voice carefully neutral.
Malhotra looked at him — deciding how much to say, how much to hold back. A man whose entire professional existence involved the exact management of information. "She got engaged," he said finally.
"Are you happy about the engagement?"
A very long pause. The question was personal and slightly outside the scope of the meeting. What it produced was: nothing. Malhotra's face gave him nothing. And in the absence of something there was the answer.
"The Kapoor family is powerful and the alliance is advantageous," he said carefully. "Priya chose Rohit. She is not the kind of woman who is pushed into anything. But she chose him quickly, which is unusual for her. She is a careful person." He stopped. "And since the engagement, the incidents began."
Dev, who had been almost motionless in the other chair and whom Arjun suspected Malhotra had nearly forgotten was in the room, said very quietly: "Have you told Priya that you think the threat is internal?"
