He found Vikram the next morning.
Not through investigation. Through instinct — the instinct of a photographer, which is really just the instinct of someone who notices where light falls and follows it.
Vikram was at the lake palace viewpoint at 7 AM, drinking black coffee from a thermos, watching the water the way people watch things they're trying to memorize before they lose them.
Riaan sat beside him without asking.
Vikram glanced over. Unsurprised.
"I wondered when you'd come," he said.
"You've been waiting?"
"I've been patient; different thing." He poured a second cup from somewhere—a second thermos cup, already ready. He handed it to Riaan. "I saw your photographs once. In a magazine. Three years ago. Before all this."
Riaan took the cup. "And?"
"And I thought—this man sees things accurately. Not beautifully. Accurately." He paused. "I thought that was rare."
"What do you want from the gallery?" Riaan asked.
"One painting," Vikram said. "The last one. The one Devika carried out of the fire."
"It's not for sale."
"Everything is for sale. The question is whether the price is money or something else."
Riaan looked at him. "Why that painting specifically?"
Vikram was quiet for a moment. The lake shimmered. A bird called once and went silent.
"Because I'm in it," he said.
He told it slowly. Like a man who had rehearsed the story enough times that the pain had worn smooth, like river stone.
He had come to the Haveli in 1998 at Nikhil's invitation. Old friends. A celebration—some political victory, some ministry appointment. Devika had been everything people said. Beautiful, magnetic, the kind of woman who made a room rearrange itself around her.
And she had looked at Vikram the way she would later look at Riaan.
"I didn't understand it then," Vikram said. "I thought it was attraction. Mutual. Adult." He paused. "It wasn't. She was studying me. Measuring me against Nikhil. Seeing what fit and what didn't."
"Did Nikhil know?"
"Nikhil knew everything and nothing. He worshipped her. When you worship someone, you see what the worship allows."
"What happened?"
"I left. I had enough self-preservation left to leave." He looked down at his cup. "Three months later, Nikhil disappeared. Officially a heart attack in his sleep. Devika never requested an independent autopsy." He paused. "Then Aarav came. Then the photographer. Then the Haveli closed. And then twenty years of silence."
"Why come back now?"
Vikram looked at him directly. "Because Aarav's daughter opened a gallery. Because she signed her name to it. Because she made herself visible. " He held Riaan's gaze. "And because I need to know — did she come here to finish what Devika started? Or to end it?"
The question sat between them like smoke.
Riaan thought about Meher's eyes on the staircase. The fear in them. The realness of it.
Then he thought about the lie.
Just that.
"I don't know yet," he said honestly.
Vikram nodded, as if that was the right answer.
"Neither do I," he said.
That afternoon, Riaan went to Meher's studio.
She was working on charcoal on large paper, something architectural, a doorway or a ruin. She looked up when he entered. Smiled. But the smile read him first, the way it always did.
"You look tired," she said.
"I spoke to Raghav," he said.
She set down her charcoal. Slowly. Carefully. The way people set things down when they need their hands free.
"Okay," she said.
"The DNA confirmation came through."
She didn't flinch. She just looked at him with those eyes—steady now, no pretense of surprise.
"Okay," she said again.
"Meher." His voice was quiet. Controlled. "Why didn't you tell me?"
She was silent for a long moment. Outside, a vendor called something in the street. A motorcycle passed.
"Because you would have looked at me differently," she said.
"I deserved to know—"
"You would have seen the mission," she said, her voice firmer now. "Not me. The daughter of a dead man with an agenda." She looked at him. "I didn't want to be that to you."
"What did you want to be?"
She picked up her charcoal again. Turned back to the paper. Her hand hovered but didn't draw.
"Real," she said quietly. "Just once. To someone. Real."
He stood there.
The word hung between them—real—and he didn't know what to do with it because it was exactly what he'd wanted to believe. Which made it either the most honest thing she'd ever said or the most dangerous.
"And Vikram?" he asked.
Her hand dropped.
She turned.
And this time, the steadiness in her eyes flickered — just slightly, just enough.
"He was at the gallery," she said carefully.
"You knew him. I saw it."
A long pause.
"He knew my father," she said. "I've known his name since I was twelve years old. When I saw him at the gallery—" She stopped. Breathed. "I panicked. I didn't know why he was there. I didn't know whose side he was on."
"There are sides?"
"There are always sides," she said. "In Devika's world, there were always sides."
He crossed the room. Stopped in front of her. Close enough to see the tension in her jaw, the deliberate stillness of someone holding themselves together.
"Tell me everything," he said. "From the beginning. Not the version that protects you. The true one."
She looked at him for a long time.
Then she set down the charcoal, wiped her hands on a cloth, and sat down on the studio floor—cross-legged, like a child about to confess something enormous.
And she began.