chapter 11

Chapter TenThe Red ThreadThe desert was quieter at night.Too quiet. All people seemed dead.It had rained earlier, just a little—enough to stain the sand dark and make the stones sweat. Enough to hide footprints.Enough for a perfect ambush.Rani sat inside the armored SUV, flanked by silence and a single pistol resting on her lap. Her hair was tied back. Her earrings small. No saree. Just black—head to toe—like a shadow cut from the dark itself.Dev sat beside her, tense. Focused.She hadn’t spoken much since they left the haveli.Not about Sircar. Not about trust. Not even about the risk.Only this:“We’re not going to find him. We’re going to pull him out from his mom's womb.”Twenty kilometers outside Jodhpur, they reached the edge of an abandoned refinery. The atmosphere looked too good for a desert-date.Dust-covered tanks.Shattered windows.A perfect skeleton for secrets.Rani stepped out first. Gun drawn. Maya’s team already in place—silent snipers tucked into high ground, two drones in the sky. Just like a shooting set of a high budget bollywood movie.Dev followed her into the belly of the building, flashlight in hand.“Still think he’ll show?” he whispered.“He won’t have a choice,” Rani replied. “I leaked intel. Sircar thinks I’m smuggling weapons for the border. He’ll come to intercept.”“And when he does?”“I want you beside me.”Dev paused. “To prove myself?”“No,” she said. “To choose.”The trap was perfect.The bait: three decoy crates marked with red thread—Rani’s signature move from the old days.The location: isolated. No signal interference. One exit.The team: elite. Handpicked. Loyal.But even perfect traps bleed.And this one did.The first gunshot wasn’t loud.But it was close.Too close.Maya’s voice crackled through the comm:“Sniper down. We’ve been compromised.”Rani didn’t flinch.“Positions hold,” she ordered. “No movement unless I give the word.”Dev drew his weapon, eyes scanning shadows.He saw it before she did—A figure in the rafters.Gun drawn.Aimed straight for her.“Rani—!”He tackled her to the ground just as the shot fired.It missed.Barely.The sound shattered the silence, and then the building exploded into chaos.Ten minutes of war.That’s all it took.Gunfire. Smoke. Screams.One of Rani’s men went down—Ajay. Bullet to the chest. No time to save him.Maya dragged two more to cover, barking orders through blood-streaked lips.And Rani—calm, precise—took three men down herself, two to the chest, one to the leg.Dev stuck close. Covered her back.Didn’t flinch once.But she was watching.Every move. Every hesitation.And when the dust cleared…Sircar wasn’t there.Only a message.Spray-painted across the wall in red:“THE CROWN WILL BURN.”Back in the SUV, no one spoke for the first few minutes.Rani wiped blood from her sleeve — not hers.Dev finally broke the silence. “You still think this was worth it?”She didn’t look at him.“I didn’t come here to kill him.”“Then what did you come for?”“To see who’d take the bullet.”She turned then.Met his eyes.“And you did.”Dev exhaled slowly. “I told you. I’m not here to destroy you.”“No,” she said. “But you’re still deciding whether to love me or fear me.”He didn’t answer.She leaned in.Kissed his cheek—soft, sudden, cruelly intimate.“Figure it out soon, Dev,” she whispered. “Because the next man who hesitates… dies.”That night, back at the haveli, Rani stood in front of the mirror again.Same cracked glass.Same quiet.But something inside her had shifted.Sircar had made his move. She’d survived it.Now she was going to answer.Not with guns.With war.(Nxt)