under the wraps

introduction of characters

This story is complete, though it carries the imperfections of its beginning.

I first wrote it during my school years, when I was discovering storytelling for the first time—learning through instinct, curiosity, and countless hours of research and imagination. At that time, I was certain of one thing: I wanted to be a writer. Looking back now, I can see the flaws more clearly, and yes, sometimes that makes me smile, sometimes it makes me cringe—but it also reminds me where it all began.

I am not sharing this novel for validation or wide recognition. I am sharing it because it is deeply personal. It holds pieces of my younger self—her effort, her dreams, her persistence. This story stayed with me through days of planning, nights of rewriting, and moments where it felt more real than the world around me. For that alone, it deserves a place where it can exist.

The editing process is ongoing, and while the story may evolve slightly, its heart will remain unchanged.

If you choose to read it, I hope it entertains you, resonates with you, or simply keeps you company for a while. And if it doesn't, thank you for giving it a chance nonetheless.

This novel is a work of complete fiction. Any resemblance to real persons, living or deceased, is purely coincidental.

Thank you for reading—and for being part of this journey.

Female Lead

Name: Vera Rajput
Age: 27 years
Occupation: SSP

Introduction:

Vera Rajput had learned early that life did not move gently. From birth through her personal and social life, every stage demanded resilience, and she responded by becoming relentless. Scholarships were not privileges to her; they were lifelines. Achievement was not ambition—it was survival. Step by step, without favors or shortcuts, she rose to become a self-made SSP.

Emotion was something Vera kept under strict control. She was often mistaken for cold, even cruel, because she did not soften for lectures, insults, or praise. Gratitude made her uncomfortable. Sympathy irritated her. It wasn't that she lacked feelings—quite the opposite. She felt deeply, but kindness was something she practiced quietly, never publicly, never for credit.

Love, affection, and relationships were concepts she acknowledged but did not entertain. To her, attachment was a vulnerability she could not afford. She trusted discipline more than people, silence more than promises, and control more than comfort.

This is not a story about warmth.

This is the story of a woman who survived by becoming untouchable.

Welcome to her journey.

Male Lead

Name: Rudra Singh
Age: 28 years
Occupation: DIG

Introduction:

Rudra Singh was born into a legacy that expected excellence and tolerated nothing less. With a professor for a mother and both his father and grandfather respected doctors, intelligence was not an accident—it was inheritance. Discipline came early, ambition even earlier. Success was assumed, but complacency was never an option.

He was undeniably attractive in a way that came from confidence rather than effort. He carried himself with ease, spoke with certainty, and rarely doubted his own capabilities. Yet beneath the polish was a fiercely competitive nature. Rudra did not merely want to succeed—he wanted the crown, and he had no intention of watching someone else wear it.

As Vera Rajput's senior, he understood her better than most, perhaps because he recognized the same hunger in her that drove him. He knew exactly how to unsettle her calm, how to push past her defenses with a single remark or a well-timed challenge. Where she relied on restraint, he relied on pressure. Where she chose silence, he chose confrontation.

Their dynamic was never simple.

Rudra admired her brilliance even as he competed with it, respected her strength even while testing it. He was the one person who could get under her skin—not because he underestimated her, but because he never did.

And that, more than anything else, made him dangerous.

Prologue

Some deaths are loud.
Others are designed to look like silence.

This story begins with a murderer who never wanted to be seen. His crimes did not announce themselves with blood-soaked scenes or frantic witnesses. They arrived quietly—classified as suicides, sealed in files, forgotten by systems trained to look away. Each death was deliberate, precise, and carefully disguised.

For years, the police never noticed him.

Until one mistake changed everything.

A single case drew suspicion where there should have been none. Patterns emerged where coincidence had once been assumed. What followed was not an investigation built on evidence, but on doubt. No fingerprints. No identity. No proof that the killer even existed. Only a theory—fragile, unsettling, and impossible to dismiss.

Yet this is not merely the story of a psychopath.

It is a story of hidden lives. Of victims whose endings were recorded, but whose truths were never known. Each death carries a secret, each silence a history waiting to be uncovered. As their stories unravel, the line between guilt and innocence, victim and villain, begins to blur.

Running parallel to this darkness are three lives bound together since high school—entangled by fate, fractured by misunderstandings, and tested by time. Their relationships shift between loyalty and betrayal, hatred and love, separation and reunion. Each of them carries their own truth. Each of them is hiding something.

As the investigation deepens, the past refuses to stay buried.

This journey is layered with camaraderie and treachery, ambition and tragedy, love and loss—twists unfolding one after another, demanding that you question every certainty.

So step carefully.

Because in this story, even silence can be staged.

And some truths are deadlier than lies.

Thank you for taking a chance on this journey.