Chapter 2: The Feast of Shadows

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 05:59:35 +0000

The Langham's grand ballroom was a pressure chamber of perfumed ambition. Chandni Deshpande entered it like a blade being slid silently into a sheath—smooth, inevitable, and lethal. The heavy silk of her emerald lehenga did not rustle; it whispered, a sound like money being counted in a distant, secure vault. She paused on the threshold, allowing the room to sense her. It was a tactic. The hum of conversation dipped, not into silence, but into a lower, more wary register. Heads turned, not to greet, but to assess. Eyes flickered over her—the impossible dress, the severe elegance of her coiled hair, the face that was more a work of arresting architecture than a window to a soul. She saw the calculations in their gazes: net worth, influence, threat level. She was accustomed to being the apex predator in this particular jungle.