The thrill of the hunt, that pure, exhilarating rush, had evaporated, leaving a bitter, metallic taste in its wake. My smile was gone. An army. Living inside my walls, feeding on my kingdom. This wasn't a clever thief I could unmask with a flourish. This was an occupation. The numbers on my screen were no longer a puzzle; they were a body count waiting to happen. For the first time in a long time, I felt the cold, unfamiliar touch of fear.
My first instinct was to burn it all down. To send a single, devastating email to every executive in this bank, exposing the rot. But that was the move of a pawn, not a king. A king does not sacrifice himself for a temporary victory. He consolidates power. He finds his allies.
Mr. Rao was out of the question; the man's spine was made of jelly. Saleem was a useful tool, but his loyalty could be bought with a plate of biryani—a vulnerability my enemies could surely afford to exploit. No, I needed someone from the old guard. Someone who understood that this bank wasn't just built on glass and steel, but on secrets and bones. Someone whose power wasn't just a title on a business card, but a reputation forged in the fires of a hundred corporate wars.
I needed to see Mrs. Shanti Iyer.
The Head of Internal Audit. They called her the Iron Lady of Orion Tower. A woman who had joined the bank back when it was just a single, dusty branch in Abids and had risen through the ranks on a diet of pure competence and the fear of her subordinates. Her office on the 10th floor was a journey back in time. No glass walls or minimalist furniture here. Just heavy, dark-wood desks and steel filing cabinets that stood like silent, grey soldiers. The air smelled of old paper, strong filter coffee, and a faint, intimidating scent of Mysore Sandal soap.
I stood at her open door. She was poring over a thick file, her silver-streaked hair tied in a severe bun, her spectacles perched on the end of her nose.
"Mrs. Iyer," I began, my voice a smooth, respectful tenor. "My name is Ravi Kiran. I'm a Senior Analyst from the fourteenth floor. I believe you and I have a common interest: the financial purity of this institution."
She looked up, her eyes, magnified by her glasses, were as sharp and penetrating as a hawk's. "Ah, yes. Ravi Kiran. The boy genius who thinks my audit team's reports are 'a commendable first draft'." She didn't smile. "Rao complains about you. He says your ego requires its own cubicle."
I gave her a dazzling smile. "My ego is directly proportional to my results, ma'am. And my latest result is something you need to see."
"Is that so?" she said, her tone laced with the skepticism of a woman who had heard it all before. "I have the quarterly reports from three divisions to dissect. They are, to use your term, a 'commendable first draft' of a disaster. You have five minutes."
"I'll only need three," I said, stepping inside.
I didn't sit. I placed my laptop on the edge of her desk and turned it to face her. I showed her everything. The three paisa. The elegant, insidious pattern of the siphon. The hunter-killer script and its terrifying results. The army of ghosts. I presented it not as a problem, but as an elegant, horrifying discovery, a masterpiece of criminal code that I, and only I, had been brilliant enough to uncover.
She listened, her expression unreadable, her fingers steepled under her chin. When I finished, she didn't praise my brilliance. She didn't question my data. She simply looked at me, her gaze intense, and said one word.
"Again."
"Ma'am?"
"The signature," she clarified, her voice a low, dangerous hum. "The code used for the diagnostic handshake. Show me the core signature again."
I pulled up the line of code. She leaned in, her eyes narrowing. A flicker of something—recognition? fear?—passed across her face, so fleeting I almost missed it.
"I've seen this before," she whispered, more to herself than to me.
She turned in her chair, a slow, deliberate motion, and faced a hulking, beige filing cabinet in the corner. It was an ancient, ugly thing, a relic from another era. She unlocked it with a key from a chain she wore around her neck. From the very back, she pulled a thick, dust-covered file bound in red tape. On it, written in a fading marker, were two words: SEALED – GUPTA.
"Five years ago," she began, her voice now devoid of all emotion, "there was another analyst. Brilliant boy. A bit like you, full of himself, but very, very good. His name was Alok Gupta."
She opened the file on her desk. It was filled with old printouts, the dot-matrix paper yellowed with age, and handwritten notes. "Gupta found something similar. A less sophisticated version of this, but the same principle. A slow, systematic bleed from the system. He found the money was being funneled into a shell corporation."
She looked up, her eyes locking onto mine. "He brought his findings to the board. He was praised for his diligence. He was told it was a minor issue, to be handled 'at the executive level'. He was ordered, for his own good, to drop it."
The air in the room grew cold.
"Two weeks later," Mrs. Iyer continued, her voice as brittle as old paper, "Gupta was killed. A hit-and-run on the Outer Ring Road. A drunk driver in a lorry who was never found. The case was closed. A tragic accident."
She tapped a single page in the file. It was a printout of a single transaction. A payment from the shell company Gupta was tracking, made one week after his death. The payment was for 'logistical services'. The recipient was a company in Dubai.
"A week after that payment," she said, her voice barely a whisper, "a prominent shipping magnate, our bank's biggest rival at the time, died in an 'unfortunate' yacht explosion near Colombo. Nothing was ever proven."
She closed the file. The sound was like a gunshot in the silent office.
"What you have found, Mr. Kiran," she said, her words precise and deadly, "is not a leak. It's a weapon. A private, for-profit assassination fund living in our servers. And the people who wield it are very, very good at tying up loose ends." She stared at me, her message brutally clear. "You are now a loose end."
I walked out of her office in a daze. The charm, the confidence, the arrogance—it had all evaporated, leaving me hollowed out. The king had just discovered that his kingdom was built on a graveyard.
I couldn't go home. My apartment, with its perfect angles and sterile order, felt like a tomb. I ended up at Chutneys, the noise and chaos of the place a welcome shield. I ordered a plate of Guntur idli, hoping the fiery spice could burn away the cold dread in my soul.
"Well, well. Look what the cat dragged in."
I looked up. It was Maya. She was sitting two tables away, a sketchbook open in front of her. She picked up her plate and, to my alarm, moved to my table.
"You look like you've seen a ghost," she said, her usual teasing tone gone, replaced by a note of genuine concern.
I tried to summon my usual witty retort, my charismatic shield. But the words wouldn't come. I just stared at her, the mask shattered.
"Ravi?" she asked, her brow furrowed. "What happened?"
I looked at this woman, this chaotic variable I couldn't quantify. And for the first time in my life, the king of the numbers had to admit he needed help.
"My ghost," I said, my voice hoarse. "It has a body count."