Ishq hua (Duet 1)

Chapter 43: Arson

Arsh's pov:

The drive to Rishan's house took thirty-four minutes.

I counted. Not deliberately, not consciously, just the way the mind latches onto something small when it's trying to avoid something large. Thirty-four minutes. Vyom was in the passenger seat, smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

The city blurred past the windows, the road lights and exhaust and the kind of night that swallows things whole.

And still, underneath all of it, past the noise and the speed and the cooling adrenaline of the race, the only thing playing on repeat in my head was a single image.

Aira, leaning forward over the railing. And her cheering for my best friend.

Reaper.

My jaw tightened.

She had been cheering for Rishan.

Not even for me. Not even pretending. Standing there in my jacket wrapped around her hips, with her chin tilted up and her eyes bright with that particular kind of aliveness she carried when she thought no one was cataloguing her, and she had been cheering for Rishan Rai Singhania to win.

My hand tightened on the steering wheel until the leather creaked.

I was cheering for Rishan.

She had said it so quickly. Too quickly. That small trip over the first syllable. The way her gaze had shifted sideways. I knew what she had nearly said. I knew exactly who she had really been cheering for.

But Rishan's car had been on that track. Rishan's car, Rishan's name on the entry board, Rishan's race. That was the technicality she would hide behind, and she wasn't entirely wrong, but she wasn't entirely right either, and the distinction was making something unreasonable and dark coil in my chest.

Vyom, because he had the self-preservation instincts of someone who had been with me for long enough to read the silences, said absolutely nothing the entire drive.

When we pulled through the gates of Rishan's property, I didn't go to the house. I went to the garage.

Rishan's garage was a separate building at the far end of the estate, treated with a reverence that most people reserved for places of worship. Twenty-one cars. Each one acquired over years, each one with a history attached to it that Rishan could recite with the same fluency other men used for poetry. He had an almost ridiculous level of attachment with his cars.

I stood in front of it for a moment.

Vyom got out of the car behind me. "Arsh? What are you..."

I walked to the panel beside the garage doors and entered the code. Rishan had given it to me. Rishan giving me the code to one of his most prized possessions said everything about the nature of our friendship, not that he would have ever anticipated this particular use.

I pulled the door open.

The cars gleamed under the automatic lights. All of them. His favorites closest to the front. The vintage Aston Martin on the left. The blacked-out Lamborghini directly center.

"Arsh?" Vyom's voice came from somewhere to my left, calm but edged with curiosity. He straightened from where he had been leaning against one of the cars, his brows pulling together slightly as he took in my expression. "What exactly are we doing here?"

I walked back out without a word.

Vyom followed me to the edge of the garage doors. "Have you gone deaf or what?"

I didn't answer. I went to the back of my car, opened the door, and pulled out the kerosene I had picked up on the way. Two cans.

I carried both cans back toward the garage.