Book 4 in the Proposal Series.
YUGANTIKA IYENGAR
"You cannot fight your doom. It will fucking destroy you, Pookie."
She laughed, wrecking it deep within her guts. A voice that could slice through all the weak hearts. "No one can bring doom on me."...
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Trigger warning⚠️: Mention of Assault, murder, blood, and human torture ahead. You can quit reading or skip if not comfortable.
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15 deaths in 6 months and counting.
Scattered surveillance-grade images lay all over the walls, threads connecting each board pin with notes of information on every person he could get hold of. If not for being citizens of the same country, there was nothing common between these men.
They came in manila envelopes Tushar had come to abhor. Each envelope, arriving every two weeks, brought him a wary piece of the puzzle he had no way to match.
Until Daivik.
Wagering the ethics of his grandfather's business, Tushar had given in to his conditions, hoping it would lead them somewhere after three months of relentless agony, witnessing innocents losing their lives over a psychopath's sick game. Their search had stopped at a name, one he had least expected.
It was a 6-year-old kid whose alcoholic parent commanded him to deliver a package to Tushar's place. Moving backward along the chain, they traced it to a flower basket used by the temple cleaner, who emptied its contents to the kid. Backtracking further, they found a homeless boy being paid a bundle of notes each week to collect the envelopes from a tinted black van and drop them at the temple.
It was a chain that they had found, each link woven in ways that left them flabbergasted at every step.
Searching through the database of vehicles and security footage, they caught the vehicle with its number plate registered under the name of a man.
Utkarsh Gowda, the scum, was working as a chauffeur for the guests of an annual business conference. Tushar had traveled around his vehicle and seen him then, unaware of his identity.
"Did someone tell you to follow Tushar Subramaniam?" Daivik had asked the man tied to the brass chair, his fingers bleeding after an hour of torture when he admitted to being the driver.
Tushar stood in the shadows, watching the interrogation lead to a dead end with the man's whimpers and lack of answers.
"Please... leave me," he begged. His nails had been pulled out by their men, and he shouldn't have expected mercy.
Daivik clicked his tongue in annoyance. "Did I not tell you why I am personally doing the dirty work here? I am the boss, darling. I don't usually step down here, but you seem to be a part of serial murders. It is my moral duty to clean up scum like you to make the world a better place."
The man flinched as the sleek blade touched the right side of his face.
"Now be a sweetheart and tell me, who do you work for?" Daivik repeated the question. "I know a coward like you cannot execute a string of murders alone. You are just a pawn in this chessboard. Won't you tell me who the king is?"