Chapter 1
The world is evolving fast. In-vitro fertilization has become the go to method for the rich who then hide behind a surrogate. It keeps their perfect bodies intact and free from the inconvenience of pregnancy. The babies arrive in perfect health and the parents arrive in perfect outfits. That is how the elite build their future. A rented womb and a spotless reputation.
I, Maya Verma, am a discoverer of truth. My niche is exposing what the wealthy are hiding. Wealthy people prefer silence. The truth prefers me. I run my own investigative platform and I have already been sued twice for leaking stories that no one else dared to chase.
My life is a strange balance of chaos and routine. I wake up early, pack a school bag, make breakfast, write death threatening emails to corporations, and argue with taxi drivers. Then I take my five year old son to school. No,7 I am not a single mother. His father is very much present in his life. Not mine.
We separated a year after he was born. Something about our careers grinding against each other. He protects the law. I expose it. He calls himself a Police Chief. I call him the man who looks the other way. We were perfect on paper, until paper ripped in half.
People assume I hate him. I don’t. I hate the system that shaped him. He believes in protecting peace. I believe peace is just the end of a story where someone already won and someone has already lost. Truth is my job. And truth never stays clean.
The first story that changed my life came on an ordinary Wednesday morning. I was dropping my son to school when a woman I had never seen before whispered in my ear.
“They are building them underground.”
She disappeared into the crowd before I could even reply. I didn’t understand what she meant at the time. But the universe has a way of handing you pieces of a mystery one at a time. I took my son’s hand. He smiled at me. And I felt the world shift a little under my feet.
Something was not right. The rich were hiding something again. And this time, it was not money or scandals.
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Pickup was my least favorite ritual. Not because of the kids. Because of the parents. The kind who arrive in German cars, wear sunglasses indoors and talk about their child’s vocabulary as if they are raising baby Einsteins. I wait at the gate with my coffee, scrolling through leaked documents on my phone. My son is by the swings, supervising other kids like he is the CEO of playground affairs.
I hear a voice behind me.
“Maya.”
Of course. The universe has terrible timing.
I turn just enough to see him. Raghav Verma. Police Chief. Walking, talking public warning sign. The man who thinks laws are sacred and I think laws are origami for criminals.
“You forgot his jacket again,” he says.
“No he forgot his jacket. I remembered to tell him and he remembered not to listen. Independence. You should try it sometime.”
He hates that answer. He always has.
“You have to stop poking powerful people,” he says.
I take a sip of my coffee. “Why. They poke back. Fair game.”
“That article you wrote today crossed a line.”
I smile. “Which line? The legal one or the moral one. Because those two never meet.”
He steps closer. Not to intimidate. To study me the way he studies crime scenes. “This kind of digging gets people killed.”
“And this kind of lecturing gets people muted,” I say. “Relax. I will survive.”
He folds his arms. “You never ask for protection.”
“That is because I am not a Kardashian.”
A small silence. He looks frustrated. I look unbothered. That is our entire marriage in one photograph.
My son runs up and hugs me. Raghav tries to hand me the lunchbox.
“It’s washed,” he says.
“Congratulations. You can fill that in your performance review.”
He sighs. “You know most people cooperate with law enforcement.”
“And most people don’t know the law is paid for by rich people,” I say. “I expose the truth. You protect the version of it that looks neat on paperwork.”
He opens his mouth to argue, then closes it. Smart choice.
“Call me if something feels off,” he says.
“No.”
“Maya.”
“No. The day I need you, I’ll be dead and filing complaints from the afterlife.”
My son takes my hand. We start walking away. Raghav stays there for a moment like he wants to say more, but I have already turned my back.
I never look back at people who walked away first.
And the city felt different today. Like someone placed a secret under the pavement and dared me to dig it up.
