It was exactly two o'clock at night. In the valleys of Shimla, the snow hadn't just fallen; it had frozen solid. Max sat at the dining table of his ancestral mansion. Six plates were set on the table, and Six glasses were filled with water, yet there was no one in the room except Max.
Suddenly, the chair opposite him slid back slightly. The sound of wood scraping against the floor—a sharp "charrrrr"—pierced through the silence.
Arjun didn't look up. He said softly, "You're late, Tony."
But Raghav had been dead for three whole years.
As soon as Max picked up his spoon, he noticed something slowly emerging in the empty plate in front of him. It wasn't blood, nor was it water. It was a dark stain that kept spreading, and in the center of that stain lay an old, rusted key. The very same key that Arjun had buried in the ground along with Tony's corpse three years ago.