All four of them stood crowded into the lift as it dropped floor by floor.
Sheetal stared down at the empty flask in her hands, turning it over in some silent calculation only she understood.
Priya kept shooting Robin a look sharp enough to draw blood, and Robin had suddenly developed an intense fascination with his own shoes. Nobody spoke.
The silence rode down with them like a fifth passenger.
Rohit watched the floor numbers tick downward, but his mind wasn't on the lift at all.
He'd had the opening. The timing. The moment handed to him on a plate — ripe, undefended, exactly the kind he never let slip past. Sheetal, freshly broken, clearly vulnerable, her breathing and her gaze giving away more than she probably realized herself. She'd wanted it. He'd felt it. One real kiss on the lips and the last wall between them would have come down — and with it, a door into Arya's inner circle that money couldn't buy.
Instead he'd redirected to her cheek.
