Chapter Five: Under One Roof
Saturday, 5:30 p.m.
Evening traffic crawled through Mumbai as the black-and-yellow auto-rickshaw sputtered to a halt outside the grand gates of the Tandon estate in Sparkling Heights. Aarambhi stepped out of the auto, paying the driver quickly.
The front entrance of the house was a war zone. Uniformed florists maneuvered towering arrangements of white orchids up the steps while caterers in crisp black aprons hurried through the heavy doors carrying silver serving trays. Staff moved in every direction, preparing for the evening's guests.
"Mamma!"
A high-pitched, joyful shout broke through the chaos. Aarambhi turned, and the tight, defensive lines around her mouth vanished instantly, replaced by a warm, radiant smile. Vihaan came skidding down the lawn, his shoelaces trailing in the grass, fresh off his afternoon playdate.
Aarambhi knelt on the paver stones, completely unbothered by the dust as she pulled the eight-year-old into a tight, protective hug. She laughed softly—a sound completely reserved for him—as she smoothed down his rumpled collar.
"Did you have fun, my big boy?" Aarambhi whispered, her voice a calm oasis in the middle of the noise.
"Yes! We built a giant fort, and I was the captain!" Vihaan chirped, puffing out his chest proudly.
"Of course you were," she smiled warmly, kissing his cheek. "Now, listen to Mamma. I want you to go inside and go straight upstairs to the media room. Sundhirya has your favorite dinner ready. Stay upstairs tonight while the grown-ups have their meeting, okay?"
"Okay, Mamma!" Vihaan said before racing through the front entrance.
For a fleeting moment, the weight she carried disappeared with him. Then, the warmth vanished from her face, her features locking back into a cool, guarded mask. She crossed the threshold into the grand foyer, trying to slip toward the staircase, but Dimple Tandon was already waiting, snapping her fingers at a passing server.
"Aarambhi! Look at you." Dimple’s voice cut through the air, low and heavy with disapproval. "The board members will be here in less than an hour, and my daughter-in-law looks as though she has just walked out of a government ward. Go upstairs. Change immediately. I will not have you looking like an outsider tonight."
"Yes, Mummyji," Aarambhi replied smoothly before passing her mother-in-law and heading upstairs.
---
Saturday, 8:15 p.m.
Sunil Tandon sat at the head of the table, guiding the discussion toward NeoPulse's proposed surgical expansion while the board members listened with practiced attention. The long mahogany table gleamed beneath the massive crystal chandelier, surrounded by elite senior administrators and potential institutional investors.
Aarambhi remained on her feet, quietly supervising the catering staff and ensuring the courses were seamlessly distributed. She played the role of the dutiful Tandon daughter-in-law to perfection, her exhaustion masked by the pristine royal blue silk sari, keeping her distance as she monitored the room.
Only then did she allow herself to observe.
Dr. Avantika Mehta looked perfectly at ease among the hospital's leadership. Dressed in an elegant emerald ensemble, she spoke confidently about departmental staffing and future fellowship programs, earning approving nods from several board members.
They behaved exactly as everyone expected. Hospital leadership. Board members. Family friends. But Aarambhi wasn't watching what they said. She was watching what they didn't realize they were doing.
Whenever a server approached, Dimple automatically reached for the wine bottle before anyone else could, refilling Avantika's glass without asking. It wasn't polite courtesy shown to a guest. It was a habit.
"Thank you, Dimple Auntie," Avantika said absentmindedly before returning to the discussion with Sunil about the proposed surgical wing. Dimple smiled, giving Avantika's wrist a brief, affectionate squeeze before turning back to the conversation.
Dimple Auntie. Not Mrs. Tandon. Not Chairwoman. Just... Dimple Auntie. The familiarity was effortless. Comfortable. Practiced.
A few moments later, Vishwas reached across the table to pass Avantika the heavy silver condiment platter before she even had to ask for it. Their fingers touched over the polished metal, remaining there just a heartbeat longer than necessary. Vishwas smiled, a subtle, smug curve of his lips, completely oblivious to the room around him. Avantika smiled back.
Once, moments like these would have broken her. Tonight, they became something else. Just another observation. Her husband's betrayal was no longer the mystery she was trying to solve. Every relationship told a story, and she was learning to read them.
"Aarambhi, the mint chutney," Vishwas muttered suddenly, not even looking in her direction as he pointed vaguely at a dish near the sideboard where she stood.
Aarambhi stepped forward and passed it smoothly. He took it from her hand without a glance, continuing his conversation with the board member to his left as if she were merely an extension of the catering staff.
"I must say, Dr. Sunil," one of the older institutional investors remarked, leaning forward. "The recent orbital reconstruction cases coming out of NeoPulse have been spectacular. I believe Dr. Aarambhi assisted on the landmark case last Tuesday?"
Avantika smiled gracefully, a soft, polite ripple of laughter escaping her lips before Aarambhi could speak. "Assisted. Yes. Dr. Aarambhi is still developing her foundational baseline on the surgical floor. She's learning."
The word hung in the air, dripping with effortless contempt masked as professional mentorship.
Across the table, DC sat in quiet, imposing stillness. While he casually partook in the elite medical chatter, his dark eyes barely left Aarambhi as she stood near the sideboard. He watched the absolute poise with which she took the strike, his quiet gaze anchoring her position in the room.
Dimple Tandon seized the opening like a predator, her tone shifting into a carefully calculated sigh of public martyrdom. "Learning is well and good, but standard hospitality demands excellence at home first. Though I must confess to the table, I had to outsource to an entire catering team at the absolute last minute tonight."
She paused, casting a sharp, heavy look toward Aarambhi. "When your daughter-in-law prioritizes her little residency schedule over her family obligations, one is forced to rely on external staff to keep the estate from looking completely disorganized."
Vishwas scoffed softly in agreement, confident that his public strike was entirely covert. "Mother is right. Aarambhi operates entirely on her own timeline. The hospital seems to be her escape from actual family duties."
Aarambhi caught the micro-expression on Avantika's face—pure, quiet satisfaction at the public humiliation.
A heavy, uncomfortable silence fell over the immediate section of the table. Raj opened his mouth to defend her, his eyes flashing with anger, but Aarambhi stepped closer and touched his shoulder gently to stop him.
Sunil Tandon didn't look up from his plate. He simply lowered his fork.
"Enough."
The single word cut through the room with absolute, terrifying hierarchy. Vishwas immediately cut his laughter short. Dimple froze, smoothing her sari pallu with a sudden, tight composure.
Sunil looked down the length of the table toward Aarambhi, his voice cool but fair. "Aarambhi has been on the surgical floor managing our operational readiness since early morning. The staff can handle the rest of the service now. Aarambhi, come and sit."
"Yes, Papaji," Aarambhi replied smoothly, finally moving to her designated seat and lowering her linen napkin onto her lap, her face a mask of serene composure.
As she settled in, the older board member tried to permanently clear the heavy air by turning toward Raj. "Speaking of the surgical staff, Raj, how is Dr. Manmeet doing these days? I heard she took a sudden medical leave."
"She's doing much better," Raj answered warmly, casting a protective glance across the table. "She should be back on rotation soon."
Then, Dimple spoke again, her voice casual, almost dismissive as she elegantly cut into her food. "Some women never truly escape their past. No matter how hard they try to hide behind a professional title, it always catches up to them."
The comment passed over the heads of the board members as generic high-society gossip. But Aarambhi lowered her fork.
The comment settled somewhere deep inside her, cold and heavy. Dimple wasn't a hospital staff member. She didn't supervise residents, and she shouldn't know anything about Dr. Manmeet's private life. Those records were strictly confidential.
Then why did that sentence sound so incredibly personal?
---
Saturday, 10:15 p.m.
The dinner finally concluded, but guests remained chatting over their preference of coffee or chai. For Aarambhi, the claustrophobia of the Tandon house became too much to bear. She slipped out through the front doors, stepping into the cool, dark expanses of the manicured gardens to let the night air clear her thoughts.
"You know, Miss Chid Chid, for a woman wearing enough royal silk to anchor a small kingdom, you move remarkably like a thief in the night."
Aarambhi turned quickly, the silk rustling around her ankles. DC emerged from the shadows of the veranda. His suit jacket was gone, his sleeves rolled up. In one hand, he carried a heavy mug of dark, steaming black coffee.
In the other, he held a delicate ceramic teacup, a fragrant curl of steam rising from the spiced, milky liquid inside.
He walked over, extending the teacup toward her with a faint, knowing smirk.
Aarambhi blinked, looking from the cup up to his dark eyes. The rich, familiar scent of cardamom and ginger cut through the midnight jasmine.
"Mr. Dheet Chawla," Aarambhi said, her defensive posture softening by a fraction as her fingers wrapped around the warm ceramic. "I came out here for some quiet. Not for another one of your interrogations. And how did you..."
"Interrogation? Yar, give me some credit," DC teased, leaning back casually against the stone balustrade. He took a slow sip of his black coffee, the bitter aroma contrasting sharply with her sweet tea. "I merely notice things. You didn't touch your dinner. Your eyes never left the head of the table tonight. That's unusual."
Aarambhi raised her chin, taking a slow, comforting sip of the chai. It was perfect. "I have a lot on my mind. A difficult patient."
"A patient? Right," DC said, his tone dropping into a lower, more private register. He stepped closer, his dark eyes trapping hers with intense gravity. "Everyone else came here to listen to the conversation tonight."
He paused, a dangerous spark of admiration coloring his words.
"You were listening to the people."
Aarambhi froze.
DC smiled faintly, a low, enigmatic murmur humming between them in the midnight air. "Very different things."
He held her gaze for one long, electric heartbeat. Then, before she could find her voice, DC gave her a small, knowing nod, and walked back toward the lights of the house—leaving her alone in the dark, the warm cup of chai in her hands the only proof that he had been there at all.
---
Saturday, 11:30 p.m.
The Tandon house was finally silent. The guests had left, and Sundhirya had already carried the sleeping Vihaan to his room.
Upstairs in her bedroom, the grand royal blue silk sari sat discarded on a chair. Aarambhi sat at her small writing desk, dressed in a simple cotton tunic, the yellow light of the desk lamp illuminating the crisp pages of her clinical notebook.
She picked up her pen, her hand steady but determined as she pressed the ink to the paper. At the very top of the page was the date she wrote from the day before:
May 18.
Directly beneath it:
Dr. Manmeet Arora
Protection Order
System Log: Printed
Now Aarambhi added a timeline:
Avantika Mehta prints file
↓
???
↓
Sunny suddenly appears
↓
Manmeet is attacked
She stared at the timeline. The question that haunted the page was why. What did the Tandons gain from destroying a resident? Why would Avantika risk her career to pull a confidential protection order, and what was the transaction that moved it into the hands of a violent abuser?
She raised her pen, her hand hovering right over the blank space beneath Avantika's name.
Knock. Knock.
The sound was sharp, fracturing the absolute silence of the room.
Aarambhi’s hand went completely still. She glanced up at the clock. It was past midnight. No one in the Tandon estate knocked on her door at this hour.
Setting the pen down, she crossed the room smoothly, her bare feet silent against the hardwood. She unlocked the heavy door and pulled it open, expecting to see a servant, or perhaps Vishwas.
The hallway was entirely empty. The long, cavernous corridor stretched out in the dim night-lights, silent and perfectly still.
Aarambhi frowned, stepping out onto the threshold. As she looked down, her eyes caught something resting squarely on the floorboards directly in front of her feet.
It was a small, plain manila envelope, completely unlabelled. No name, no markings, no return address.
A cold prickle of unease rippled down her spine. She hadn't left anything in the hallway. Someone had just been standing right outside her bedroom door.
Slowly, she knelt down and picked it up.
---
TO BE CONTINUED...
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