Chapter 10 — Naina Builds the Case

Geneva / London / Delhi. November 20th — 25th.She spent five days not sleeping.Later, when she thought about those five days, what she remembered was the specific quality of her own focus — the thing that happened when a case became total, when every other frequency dropped out and there was only the work. She had experienced it before, on complex cases, but never with this particular personal weight underneath it.She had a rule: the personal weight didn't change the work. The work was the work. You did it because it was the right thing, and the fact that it was also your husband didn't make it more right, it just made it harder.She built the case file.This was the thing she knew how to do better than almost anything else: assembling evidence into a structure that could survive legal scrutiny. She had spent nine years doing it for crimes that were significantly smaller than this. She brought to it the same methodology — evidence hierarchy, chain of custody, source reliability, corroboration.The case had four components.COMPONENT 1: KAVACH-DAGGER. Technical documentation from the drive. Verified by Rohan at IISc. Chain of custody: Arjun to physical drive to Naina to Rohan. The documentation established that the system existed, what it could do, and who its clients were.COMPONENT 2: THE KILLINGS. Three deaths — Preethi Anand, Kenji's Tokyo contact, and a third name from the SUBJECTS folder she had confirmed independently — all linked to DAGGER access logs. The logs showed remote vehicle access in the hour before each crash. The logs were authenticated by their own encryption signatures — they had not been altered.COMPONENT 3: THE FINANCIAL CHAIN. Philippe Mauret's financial analysis. Vayu to Meridian Strategic Solutions to Richard Hayworth's operation inside CipherNet. This was the organisational map of the conspiracy.COMPONENT 4: THE M4. The fabricated dental records. The DAGGER access log for Thomas Webb's vehicle. The timeline proving that Hayworth had arranged the identification before the police requested records. This was attempted murder — of Arjun — and actual murder — of Thomas Webb — directly linked to Richard Hayworth.She worked with three lawyers across two jurisdictions, coordinated through Philippe, who knew which lawyers to call and how to talk to them. A UK barrister who specialised in corporate crime. An Indian advocate who had handled international cooperation cases. A Geneva-based international law specialist.By November 25th, she had a package.