Chapter 1
After her father died, Neha heard the same advice from almost everyone in the family.
Stay away from the agency.
Some said it was too complicated. Others reminded her that her uncle had always been in control of everything. They told her she was young, and that dealing with a business this size would only bring trouble she didn’t need.
Neha listened quietly. She knew what they were really asking her to do.
Give up.
Her father had never asked for his share of the agency. He had never gone to his elder brother and demanded what belonged to him. He’d kept his distance from the family for years, and Neha had grown up knowing there were things about his past he never talked about, a door he kept shut and never once tried to open, not even when he was dying.
But he had never given away his right. Half of the agency belonged to him. And now it belonged to her.
She had no intention of letting anyone convince her otherwise. Whatever had happened between the brothers, she didn’t know the whole story, and she wasn’t going to invent one. She only knew this: if something belonged to her, she would take it. Even if she had to snatch it.
The agency looked nothing like what she’d imagined.
She’d expected a polished office, a busy floor, everything running on rails. Instead there were files stacked on every desk, unanswered emails glowing on three different screens, and editors wandering past with cups of tea like deadlines were a rumor someone else had heard.
Neha sat across from the chief editor, a file open between them.
“How long has this been waiting?”
He glanced at the paper. “Almost three weeks.”
“And nobody did anything?”
An apologetic smile. “We were waiting for approval.”
“From whom?”
He hesitated. “Mr. Zain.”
She closed the file. “Where is he?”
“Not here.”
“Does he come every day?”
The editor almost laughed. “No.”
“Then who runs this place?”
“The team.”
She looked around at the piled desks, the cold tea, the silence where a schedule should have been. That explained a lot.
For years she’d pictured Zain as the kind of man who sat behind a large desk giving orders, making sure everyone remembered whose family the agency belonged to. Apparently she’d imagined wrong. It didn’t change anything. She picked up the next file. “Let’s go through these.”
The meeting ran almost an hour, questions, notes, a growing list of things that needed to change and then the door opened without a knock.
A man walked in like the room already belonged to him. Tall, dark-haired, the kind of handsome that looked unbothered by its own effect. He smiled at the chief editor first, an easy, practiced thing, and Neha caught herself noticing it before she could stop herself.
She immediately wondered why she’d noticed at all.
The smile didn’t survive him turning to her. His eyes went from her face to the files spread across the desk and back again, and whatever had been easy about him a second ago was gone.
“Who are you?”
She set the file down slowly. “I could ask you the same question.”
“You could.” He came further in. “But this is my office.”
“Is it?”
He glanced at the chief editor. “Am I missing something?”
The poor man suddenly found his papers fascinating.
Neha stood. “You should knock before entering.”
“And you should probably stop sitting in offices that aren’t yours.”
“Who said this isn’t my office?”
A pause. Then a smile. “Definitely not someone I know.”
“Maybe introduce yourself before deciding who belongs here.”
He laughed, short and low, and looked at her the way you’d size up a stranger who’d wandered onto your side of a fence. “Zain.”
Something in her went still.
So this was him. She’d never seen his face, only heard the name, and somehow he was nothing like the man she’d built in her head. He looked too relaxed to be dangerous. She picked the file back up.
“Neha.”
He waited. She held his gaze.
“Neha Ahmed.” A breath. “Farooq Ahmed’s daughter.”
The room went quiet enough that she heard the air conditioning cycle on.
Zain stared at her, and for the first time since he’d walked in, he looked like a man who hadn’t planned for something. Whatever he’d expected to find behind that door, it hadn’t been her.
She wasn’t going anywhere.
