Vikram didn't answer.
Priya stepped into the doorway.
"Let her go, Vikram."
He turned. Not startled — he'd expected this. The part of him that had studied Priya for two years had probably predicted the exact minute she'd arrive.
"Ma'am." He said it the way he'd said it a hundred times in the office. Respectful. Professional. The mask so deeply embedded it was almost not a mask anymore.
"This is over. Ajay is in custody. Deshmukh is suspended. The Tiwari case is being reopened. And I swear to you — I will reopen every single one of those seven cases. Every one. Including Rhea's. Including your cousin."
"Promises from the same system that failed us."
"Not from the system. From me. Personally."
"Your personal promises mean nothing, ma'am. You promised Rhea's family three years ago that you'd find her. You didn't."
"I know." Her weapon was aimed at his centre mass. Her hands were steady. Her voice was not. "I know I failed. And I will carry that for the rest of my life. But taking my daughter doesn't bring Rhea back. It doesn't heal your family. It just creates more of the same pain you're drowning in."
Vikram's hand moved toward his holster. Priya's finger tightened on the trigger.
"Don't," she said.
His hand stopped. He looked at Ananya. At Priya. At the weapon. And something in his face collapsed — not dramatically, not like a dam breaking, but slowly, like a building settling into its own foundation. The rage that had held him together for three years was letting go, and what was underneath was just a twenty-nine-year-old man who missed his cousin and didn't know how to grieve.
His hand dropped to his side.
"She was going to be a teacher," he said. "Rhea. She wanted to teach little kids. First standard. She said they still believed the world was good."
Priya lowered her weapon one inch. "Tell me about her. I want to know."
Vikram sat down on the floor. Not gracefully — he just folded, like someone whose legs had decided they were done. He put his head in his hands.
Priya moved to Ananya, pulled her from the chair, and held her. Her daughter's body was shaking — the adrenaline wearing off, the fear catching up. Priya held her tight, one arm around her child, the other still holding the weapon.
Rajan arrived fourteen minutes later with the Pune police. Vikram was still sitting on the floor. He didn't resist arrest. He walked to the police vehicle with the blank, emptied expression of a man who had finally reached the end of his plan and found nothing there.
In the car, heading back to Pune, Ananya fell asleep against her mother's shoulder. Priya drove one-handed, the other resting on her daughter's head.
The sun was setting. The Sahyadri hills were silhouetted against a sky that was turning the colour of wounds healing — amber, then rose, then the deep purple that comes just before dark.
Case No. 7 of 7. Closed.
