Between 2 Worlds

The man at the top of the terrace staircase had the specific quality of someone who had arrived somewhere he considered beneath him and was managing the condescension with the discipline of someone who needed something.

Kabir Malhotra saw him at the same moment Arjun did — heard the change in Arjun’s breathing, the specific tension of a man who had recognised something, and turned from his position near the sitting room door in time to see the figure at the top of the terrace stairs.

He was in the haveli garden within ninety seconds. Not running — Kabir did not run unless running was the only option, because running communicated panic and panic communicated vulnerability, and neither of these were things he communicated. He moved quickly and with complete purpose and he arrived in the garden to find Arjun standing between Anaya and the stranger, Anaya standing beside Arjun, and the stranger looking at all of this with the assessment of someone cataloguing a situation.

“Who are you?” Kabir said. His voice was the voice he used for situations that required immediate clarity — not loud, not threatening, just absolutely direct.

The man looked at him. He was perhaps forty-five, well-dressed in the specific Mumbai way, with the quality of money that was old enough to be comfortable. He had the Singhania look — Kabir had seen enough of the Mumbai family world over the years to recognise the specific combination of features and bearing that marked a certain kind of inherited power.

“My name is Nikhil,” the man said. “Nikhil Singhania. I believe you know my cousin.”

The name landed in the garden the way names in that world always landed — quietly, with weight.

“Vikram’s cousin,” Arjun said. His voice was completely level. Kabir looked at him and saw that he was managing something — not fear, Arjun did not do fear in the conventional way, but the specific alertness of a man who had been reading the Singhania family for nine years and was reading something new.

“The same,” Nikhil said pleasantly. “Vikram and I have different ideas about how to handle certain situations. He has made his arrangement with you.” He looked at Arjun directly. “I have not.”

Kabir looked at this man — this man who had walked into his family’s house on a Sunday afternoon, who had come up the terrace staircase without invitation, who was standing in his garden as though he had a right to be there — and felt, with the specific clarity that difficult situations produced in him, exactly what needed to happen.

“This is not a conversation we are having in my garden,” he said. “You will come inside. You will sit in the room I indicate. You will speak to me — not to Arjun, not to my sister — to me. And you will do all of this because the alternative is that I call the people I have the ability to call within the next four minutes, and your evening becomes significantly more complicated.”

He held Nikhil’s gaze. He did not look away.

Nikhil looked at him for a long moment. Something moved in his expression — the recalibration of a man who had expected a different kind of reception and was adjusting. He had come expecting the family to be shaken. He had found Kabir Malhotra.

“Of course,” Nikhil said. “I appreciate the hospitality.”

He said it with an irony that was not lost on anyone. Kabir did not respond to it. He turned and walked inside, and Nikhil followed, and Arjun stayed in the garden with Anaya and called Veer.

— ✦ —

The room Kabir chose was the formal sitting room — the one used for business meetings, which was different from the family sitting room in specific ways that communicated something about the nature of the conversation. It was clean and well-lit and had no family photographs on the walls. It communicated: this is professional territory. You are not inside this family.

Kabir sat across from Nikhil. He had asked Dev to find Baba — quietly, without causing alarm — and Baba arrived three minutes into the conversation, which was enough time for Kabir to have established the basic parameters.

Nikhil’s message was, as these messages always were, wrapped in the language of business and mutual interest. He had an operation in Delhi that had been stalled by the Malhotra family’s network — not deliberately, as collateral, simply by existing. He wanted space. He wanted an understanding. He was not his cousin. He had not agreed to Vikram’s truce because Vikram’s truce had been made without consulting him and he did not consider himself bound by it.

He was, in essence, opening a negotiation.

Kabir listened to all of it. He let Nikhil finish. He was quiet for a moment.

“I understand what you’re saying,” he said. “I want to be very clear about what I am saying in response.” He held Nikhil’s gaze. “You came into my house without invitation. You came to my terrace where my sister was sitting. You used her presence as an implicit threat.” He paused. “The Malhotra family does not negotiate under that kind of opening. Not with Vikram. Not with you. Not with anyone.”

Nikhil looked at him. “I wasn’t threatening anyone—”

“You came to the terrace,” Kabir said simply. “You know what that communicated. I know what it communicated. Let’s not insult each other by pretending otherwise.”

Baba, in the chair to Kabir’s left, was quiet in the way he was quiet when he was thinking something important. He looked at Nikhil with the specific expression he used for people he was assessing — complete and without hurry.

“You will leave my home,” Baba said. His voice was mild. It was the mildness of someone who had spent decades being the most powerful person in the room without ever needing to demonstrate it loudly. “You will not return without an invitation. If you have business to discuss with this family, you will do it through the appropriate channels, and you will do it on terms that do not involve my children.” He paused. “Those are my terms. They are not negotiable.”

Nikhil looked at Baba. He looked at Kabir. He understood, Kabir thought, that he had miscalculated something about this family. He had expected them to be rattled by the gesture of walking onto the terrace. He had found instead a family that had been managing threats from people significantly more dangerous than him for considerably longer than he had been in this business.

“We’ll speak again,” Nikhil said. Standing.

“Perhaps,” Kabir said. “On different terms.”

Nikhil left. Kabir sat in the formal sitting room and listened to the sound of the front door and then the sound of a car in the drive, and then the specific quiet that followed the departure of a problem that had not been resolved but had been, for this evening, contained.

He looked at Baba.

“That’s not Vikram’s operation,” Baba said. “That’s something else.”

“Yes,” Kabir said.

“How much do you know about Nikhil Singhania?”

“Less than I should,” Kabir said. “I’ll know more by tomorrow morning.”

Baba nodded. He was quiet for a moment. Then: “Call everyone in. Tonight. I want the family together.”

Kabir nodded. He picked up his phone.

He called Veer first. Then Arjun. Then he paused, looking at his phone, and thought about a woman who was not in this house tonight, who was in her apartment on the other side of the city, who had spent the last several months having dinner with him on alternate Saturdays and who was — he had not said this word to himself before, not directly — who was someone he had not expected and did not know what to do with.

He called her last.

She answered on the second ring. “Kabir.”

“Something happened tonight,” he said. “It’s connected to the Singhania situation. I need you to know about it.” He paused. “Are you somewhere safe?”

A brief silence. “I’m at home,” she said. “I’m fine. Tell me.”

He told her the essential facts. She listened without interrupting — she always listened without interrupting, which was one of the things about her that he had come to understand was a professional skill deployed personally, a quality of attention that she had developed for the courtroom and that she brought to everything that mattered.

“Nikhil Singhania,” she said, when he had finished. “Not Vikram.”

“No.”

“Different faction. Different agenda.”

“Yes.”

“And he went to the terrace specifically. Where Anaya was.”

“Yes.”

He heard her breath. Not fear — she was not someone who fear-breathed. Something else. The specific quality of someone arriving at a conclusion.

“He was mapping vulnerabilities,” she said. “The people you care about. He wasn’t threatening Anaya specifically. He was demonstrating that he knows who the family cares about and where they can be found.”

“Yes,” Kabir said. “That’s my assessment.”

“Then he knows about me,” she said.

He was quiet for a moment. “Probably,” he said. “Yes.”

She was quiet on her end. He waited.

“Okay,” she said. “What do you need from me?”

This was — he was aware of it, sitting in the formal sitting room with the phone in his hand — not the question he had expected. He had expected her to be alarmed. To ask questions about her own safety. To recalibrate what she was willing to be near, given what she now knew was near it.

Instead she had said: what do you need from me.

He looked at the wall. At the formal sitting room that communicated professional territory. At the room where he sat alone after the family had been called in and the plans had been made and the immediate situation had been handled.

“Nothing tonight,” he said. “I wanted you to know. I wanted you to be careful.”

“I’m always careful,” she said.

“I know,” he said. “But be more careful.”

A brief pause. “Kabir.”

“Yes.”

“The next Saturday dinner,” she said. “Don’t cancel it.”

He looked at the phone. “I wasn’t going to cancel it.”

“Good,” she said. “Because I’ve already decided where we’re going and it requires a reservation and I’m not giving it up because of the Singhanias.”

He almost smiled. It happened rarely enough that he was always aware of it when it did. “Alright,” he said.

“Alright,” she said. “Go be with your family.”

He put the phone down. He sat in the formal sitting room for another moment, and then he went to find his family, who had gathered in the main sitting room with the specific energy of a family that had been here before — threatened, circled, and choosing together how to respond.

He was the eldest son. This was his function. He went to them.