December 26th, 2029. Mumbai.
The day after war is declared always begins too quietly.
There were no more fires. No ambushes. No anonymous calls.
Just rain.
Thin and consistent. The kind that slicked the streets and blurred the skyline but didn't wash anything clean.
Aanya sat at the long table in the underground command room of the new safehouse. A wall of monitors buzzed behind her, blinking with city-wide surveillance data, rerouted corporate feeds, and Dev's scattered pulse trails.
The REDCODE was still active. But it had gone silent after midnight. Which meant one of two things: they were preparing something big… or they were already inside.
Dev returned at 9:43 AM, soaked to the bone, expression unreadable.
He dropped a drive on the table.
"They breached the firewall."
Aanya's spine straightened. "Which one?"
"Your internal."
She rose. "That's not possible."
"It is when someone opens the door."
She stared at him. "A mole?"
He nodded. "From your board. High-level clearance. Time-stamped six hours before your speech."
"Who?"
"I'm not sure yet. But the signature trails back to someone using Level-9 access clearance."
Aanya froze.
Level-9 was restricted to three people.
Herself. Rishad.
And one more.
She met with Rishad in the back wing of her grandfather's villa, where the marble always smelled faintly of jasmine and dust.
"Do you know who has Level-9 clearance apart from us?" she asked.
Rishad looked older than usual. More tired. "Your father gave that to one more person before he died."
"Who?"
He looked up slowly. "Mrinal."
Her jaw tightened.
Mrinal Sharma. CFO. Mentor. Family friend. The man who held the keys to every financial artery in Rathore Tech. He had been with her family since before she could spell 'acquisition.'
"Why?"
"Because he was the one person your father believed would protect the bloodline."
"And now he's selling us out."
Rishad hesitated. "He wouldn't—"
"He already has."
She turned on her heel and walked out.
Dev was waiting in the car.
"He's in Goa," he said. "At the secondary estate. I've already arranged a team."
"No team," she replied. "I'm going."
Dev blinked. "You shouldn't—"
"I'm not asking."
They flew out by private jet at 3:00 PM. Landed in Dabolim by 4:15. By 5:00 PM, they were driving through the coastal roads of South Goa, where the air smelled like sea salt and old secrets.
The estate rose like a colonial ghost—white stone and stained glass, shrouded in silence.
Mrinal was waiting.
He wasn't surprised.
He opened the doors himself. Guided them to the drawing room. Offered no excuses, no greetings.
Just said: "I thought you would've come sooner."
Aanya didn't sit.
"You broke the firewall."
"Yes."
"You opened us to REDCODE."
"I had no choice."
"There's always a choice."
He stood, walked to the fireplace.
"You think you're fighting corruption, Aanya. You think you're disrupting empires. But you're threatening ecosystems that have kept the world balanced for a century."
"Balanced?" she snapped. "Is that what we call manipulation now?"
Mrinal didn't raise his voice.
"If they take you out, someone worse will rise. Someone reckless. Someone who doesn't understand restraint. They don't want you dead, Aanya. They want you redirected."
"I don't need direction. I need loyalty."
"I gave your father mine. I gave you the empire. But I won't let you destroy everything he built out of pride."
"This isn't pride," she said coldly. "It's war."
"Then you've already lost."
Aanya turned to Dev. "Let's go."
Mrinal's voice followed them as they walked away.
"They will offer you one last chance. Take it. Or drown in it."
Back in Mumbai by midnight, Dev ran the full access logs from Mrinal's Goa servers.
"He's not working alone," he said. "There are bounce points from Zurich and Dubai. Real-time relays. They're building something."
"What?"
"Financial collapse protocol. A mirror attack. If they can't break you physically, they'll bankrupt you morally."
Aanya sat down slowly.
"They want the public to turn."
"They want you to fall before they ever touch you."
She reached for her notebook.
Wrote:
"Loyalty is louder than betrayal. But betrayal echoes longer."
Then she looked at Dev.
"Get me my board."
At 3:00 AM, every board member received a direct summon. Emergency closed-room meeting. No assistants. No excuses.
By 4:00 AM, eleven of the twelve sat in the main conference room of Rathore Tower.
Aanya walked in wearing all black. No makeup. No guards.
Just presence.
She placed a single document on the table.
"This is the breach report."
She let the words settle.
"No one is above suspicion. Including me. But the breach signature matches one ID."
She didn't say the name.
But the room shifted.
And when Mrinal entered the room at 4:07, silence dropped like a blade.
He sat without a word.
Aanya stood.
"I'm invoking Article 11-B of the Rathore Charter."
Gasps. Eyes widened.
Dev, watching from the side wall, didn't blink.
It was the clause her father had created.
The only one never used.
Emergency Board Disbandment.
Effective only if the CEO faced an imminent internal threat validated by breach-level intelligence.
It meant: She was dissolving the entire board.
Every seat.
Every vote.
Resetting the power.
Mrinal stood.
"You can't—"
"I just did."
The vote was ceremonial.
It passed.
Eight to four.
He left without a word.
But Aanya saw his eyes.
And she knew.
He wouldn't walk away empty-handed.
Dev joined her in the elevator down.
"You just set fire to your own legacy," he said.
"No," she replied. "I just made room for a new one."
And as the elevator descended, Mumbai's skyline glittered behind them like a crown no one had earned—yet.