CHAPTER 7

NOT OJASWINI

She's here.

I watched through the cameras as she unpacked her knives. Good ones. German steel — Wüsthof Classic, the same line I saw in the Crawford Market kitchen store when I was sixteen, when I still thought being a chef was a reasonable ambition before my father crushed that along with everything else. She laid them out on the marble countertop with the precision of a surgeon prepping instruments: longest to shortest, handles aligned, each blade facing the same direction.

It told me everything about who she is. A planner. Methodical. Someone who believes the world responds to preparation and order and the right tool for the right moment.

Poor thing.

She doesn't know that the most dangerous situations are the ones you prepare for with the wrong map. She's planned for a cooking weekend. She's prepared for difficult clients and rainy weather and maybe a bad kitchen. She hasn't prepared for me.

Nobody ever does.

I checked the weather forecast on my tablet. The room I'm in — fourth floor, behind the linen closet, through a door disguised as wall paneling — is invisible. My father's mother showed it to me when I was eleven, the summer after my parents' divorce was finalized. This is my secret room, she'd said. For when the world is too loud. You can use it whenever you need to disappear. She'd died three years ago without telling anyone else it existed.

Monsoon intensifying. Wind speeds climbing to 65 kmph. The ferry services between Malvan and Devbagh suspended operations this morning. Sameer's weather app confirms: the crossing will be dangerous until Monday at the earliest.

Forty-eight hours.

That's all I need.

I switched camera feeds. Kitchen — empty now, Ojju's knives gleaming under the pendant lights. Drawing room — Deven pouring himself a Glenfiddich, swirling it like it's a personality trait, like the amber liquid and the cut crystal glass are extensions of his identity rather than props. He does this every evening. Tapsee on the veranda, pretending to read a Jhumpa Lahiri novel she's held open to the same page for twenty minutes, one ear tilted toward the kitchen.

I know what she's listening for. The sounds of routine. Of normalcy. She needs to believe this is a normal birthday weekend so she can execute her plan — the crushed pills, the raita, the slow poisoning she thinks is working.

It isn't.

I switched those pills eight weeks ago. Replaced her clontriptyline with lactose tablets that look identical. Cost me ₹3,000 at a compounding pharmacy in Pune — walked in, said I needed placebo pills for a medical study, paid cash, no questions asked. The pharmacist was a third-year student who didn't even check my ID.

So Tapsee has been feeding my father sugar for two months. And she doesn't know.

And my father has been feeding Tapsee real clontriptyline — extra doses, ground into her evening gimlets with a mortar and pestle he keeps in his bedside drawer. He thinks he's the only one with a plan. He thinks the chef is just a convenient scapegoat.

Two predators circling the same prey.

And neither one knows I'm the one who drew the circle.

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