Riaan gave her three days.
He wasn't sure why. Maybe because he wanted to be wrong. Maybe because four months of something real — something that had felt like oxygen after drowning — deserved the benefit of doubt.
But on the third day, he called Raghav.
Inspector Raghav Suri had been transferred to Jaipur after the Haveli case, which was officially still under forensic review — a phrase that meant the system had found something it didn't know how to categorize yet.
He met Riaan at a tea stall near the old clock tower. Out of uniform. Which meant this was personal.
"Vikram Malaviya," Riaan said, sliding the name across like a card.
Raghav stirred his chai slowly. "Where did you see him?"
"Gallery opening. He knew Meher. Or knew of her. She said he was just a collector."
"He is a collector," Raghav said. "Among other things." He set down his spoon. "Vikram Malaviya is sixty-one, not fifty. Ages well, apparently. He was based in Udaipur until 2001. Left suddenly. No stated reason."
"And before 2001?"
Raghav looked at him. "He was Nikhil Rana's closest friend. Best man at the wedding. And three months before Nikhil disappeared—he was a guest at the Haveli."
The tea stall noise continued around them. A pressure cooker hissed. A child laughed somewhere.
"He was there," Riaan said flatly.
"For two weeks. Then he left. Then Nikhil disappeared. Then Aarav Mehta disappeared. Then Devika closed the Haveli." Raghav paused. "Vikram never came back. Never gave a statement. We couldn't compel one—he had connections. Political ones. Nikhil's old network."
"Why is he back now?"
"That," Raghav said, "is the question I've been sitting with since your call this morning."
He reached into his jacket and placed a folded document on the table.
"Forensic results from the Haveli excavation," he said. "Took four months because the fire compromised most of the site. But they found remains in the crawlspace beneath the music room."
Riaan's throat tightened.
"Aarav?" he asked.
"Partial. Enough for a DNA match." Raghav's voice was careful and measured. "We needed a family sample to confirm. We submitted a request to Aarav Mehta's only known living relative."
He looked at Riaan steadily.
"His daughter," he said.
Silence.
"His daughter gave the sample two weeks ago," Raghav continued. "DNA confirmed. Those are Aarav Mehta's remains."
Riaan stared at the table.
"What's her name?" he asked, though somewhere beneath the question, he already knew.
Raghav's expression didn't change.
"Meher," he said. "Meher Rathi. Rathi was her mother's name. She took it after her father disappeared. He paused. "She was twelve when he vanished."
Riaan walked back through the old city alone.
The lanes were busy with evening—vendors, tourists, schoolchildren, the smell of frying batter, and marigold garlands.
He walked through it like a man in a different city entirely.
She was Aarav's daughter.
She came to the Haveli on purpose.
The soft cotton kurti. The carelessly hanging dupatta. The anklets. The wide, startled, burning eyes on the staircase.
Had any of it been real?
Or had he been—like Aarav, like the unnamed photographer, like all of them—exactly what someone needed him to be?
He stopped at the edge of the lake.
The water was still and dark and enormous.
He thought about Meher's lips on his in the hospital. The way she'd said it, I thought I'd lose you. The tremble in it.
Then he thought about the wine glass going still.
Just that, she'd said.
He took out his phone. Opened her contact. Stared at it.
Then put it away.
Not yet.
He needed to know one more thing first.
He needed to know what Vikram wanted.