The screen flickered in hues of blue and grey, casting cold light across the leather of the dark office. The room was silent except for the low hum of the television and the soft clinking of ice in a crystal glass. Murtasim Khan leaned back in his chair, eyes sharp and fixated on the woman gracing the screen.
Meerab Wali.
Primetime. 9:00 PM. Channel 24.
A woman who spoke with fire tucked beneath every syllable, whose gaze didn’t flinch even when she stared straight into the face of crime.
His crime.
"Good evening. I’m Meerab Wali, and tonight on Crimson Lines, we expose the untouchables—the men who rule the shadows of this city..."
A smirk lifted the corner of Murtasim’s mouth. "That's me, sweetheart," he murmured under his breath.
Behind that camera lens, Meerab wore her righteousness like armor. In a world where men like him bought judges, buried bodies, and turned blood into currency, she dared to stand with a mic and a truth no one wanted to hear.
And every night, Murtasim watched her. Religiously. Devoutly. Not out of guilt—he’d lost that long ago—but fascination. She was everything he wasn’t.
Unbendable.
Unpaid.
Uncorrupted.
And yet... one day, she would fall. Not to bullets. Not to bribes.
To him.
It started as an obsession. Watching her walk through crime scenes, demanding answers from trembling cops. How her brows arched with disdain whenever she uttered “Murtasim Khan’s cartel”. The first time he saw her in person was through the tinted windows of his black SUV. She was interviewing a grieving widow outside a warehouse his men had torched.
She wore black that day. No makeup. Just burning questions and stormy eyes.
“Do you think justice will ever reach them?” she asked the camera.
Murtasim had chuckled.
“No,” he whispered. “But I will.”
He had her followed—not to harm, only to learn. What she ate. Where she jogged. The coffee shop she liked where she scribbled notes in a leather journal. What scent she wore—something woody with a whisper of jasmine.
By the end of the month, he knew her schedule better than his own men’s.
"You're in deep," his right-hand man, Rauf, muttered as they watched her on the flat screen again.
"I'm not in anything," Murtasim said coldly.
But he was.
And when she aired an explosive segment linking his cartel to a recent smuggling ring, he didn’t blink.
“I’m naming the man no one dares to,” Meerab said, staring straight into the camera. “Murtasim Khan. You are not invisible anymore. We see you. And we’re coming.”
He leaned forward, lacing his fingers.
“Oh, Meerab,” he whispered, voice like silk laced with steel. “You don’t need to come. I’ll bring myself to you.”
The opportunity came sooner than expected.
She was covering a police raid at one of his warehouses. Cameras weren’t allowed inside, but she slipped through the shadows with her press badge. And then she saw something—more than just boxes. She saw men with rifles. Names in ledgers. Guns not registered to any known dealer.
