He should answer with a joke. He knows that. A light, teasing deflection, something smooth and harmless. That is his usual move when the line gets too close. But Nandita is looking at him in a way that makes the room feel smaller than it is, and suddenly the practiced answers seem cheap.
Instead he says, “Honesty isn’t always the point.”
No smile from her this time. “In business, it usually is.”
“In business,” he says softly, “people say ‘honesty’ when they mean control.”
That earns him the smallest shift in her posture. Not retreat. Interest.
Outside the glass, someone passes and glances in. The figure moves on. The conference room keeps breathing its quiet, private air.
Nandita folds her arms. “Are you always this philosophical before ten?”
“Only when I’m being bullied by my team lead.”
“I haven’t bullied you.”
“Not yet.”
“You’re enjoying this too much.”
He holds her gaze and lets the corner of his mouth lift. “You noticed.”
Something flickers in her face then, quick as static. Not amusement. Not exactly. More like the brief, involuntary awareness of a pulse under the skin.
She looks away first.
He feels it like a victory, and the victory is immediately tainted by how much he wants more of it.
They work through the grid line by line. She challenges every lazy phrase. He answers with alternatives that are cleaner, smarter, more dangerous in their restraint. It is an exchange they have fallen into often now: her pressure, his adaptation, her suspicion, his calm. On paper, it looks like a healthy working rhythm. In the body, it feels less innocent.
At one point she reaches across the table to slide a sheet toward him, and her wrist passes close enough for him to catch the clean, expensive scent of her perfume—something understated, green and dry, like cedar after rain. It should be nothing. It is not nothing. He registers the exact angle of her hand, the neatness of her nails, the pulse at the inside of her wrist. He is aware of his own breathing and resentful that it has changed.
Nandita notices.
Of course she does.
Her eyes lift to his face, cool and unreadable. “Focus.”
He gives her a mild look. “I am focused.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He holds still for a beat, then lowers his gaze to the papers with deliberate care. “Then you should be more careful with your hand.”
The silence after that is immediate and charged.
For a second it seems she might call him out, right there, on the insolence of it. Instead she looks at him with a kind of precision that is almost worse than anger. As if she is measuring the exact distance between professional warning and something else she refuses to name.
Then, very evenly, she says, “You speak like that to everyone?”
He smiles without showing teeth. “Only the women who can fire me.”
And there it is—the smallest crack, the first true fracture in the room. Not in her face, not fully, but in the atmosphere. A tension sharpened by recognition. He has seen that look before in other women, the one that comes when a man says too much with too little shame and they decide, unwillingly, to remember it.
Nandita reaches for the marker and taps the whiteboard once. “We are not discussing your death wish. We are discussing the campaign.”
“Of course.”
But her voice has lowered a fraction. So has his.
They finish the meeting with the messaging grid amended, tighter and smarter than before. Business first. Always. Yet when she gathers the papers, there is a pause before she stacks them. He notices because he notices everything that matters.
“You’re good at this,” she says, not looking at him.
“At marketing?”
“At making people feel as if they’re the only one in the room.”
His smile is lazy, but his eyes sharpen. “Maybe they are.”
Nandita’s gaze rises and catches him. No warmth. No surrender. Just a look so direct it feels almost physical.
“That,” she says quietly, “is exactly what worries me.”
For an instant he thinks she might say more. Something private. Something that would move this from tension to trouble. Her face gives nothing away, but the room has shifted again, and he is suddenly aware of the possibility of a sentence that would change the shape of both of them.
Then her phone buzzes.
She glances down.
The interruption is small. Ordinary. But it enters the room like a blade.
Her expression changes first—not dramatically, just enough to let him know the call is not one she wants. She answers anyway. “Yes?”
He sees the slight tightening at her jaw as she listens. A voice on the other end, faint and tinny, carries through in broken fragments. Her eyes move to the glass wall. Not at him. Past him.
“Where?” she says.
A pause.
Her mouth firms. “Who told you that?”
Another pause. The pen in her hand stills.
Aalekh watches her with the stillness of a man who understands that power rarely arrives as a shout. It usually comes as a quiet change in tone.
Nandita’s eyes flick briefly toward him, and in that one glance he knows. Something has been said. Something about him.
Her voice remains perfectly level when she speaks again. “No. Do not escalate it yet. Send me the name and the exact wording.”
She ends the call and looks at the screen a moment too long before setting the phone down.
“What happened?” he asks, carefully casual.
She does not answer immediately. When she finally looks at him, the temperature in the room seems to drop.
“Someone in sales,” she says, “has been talking.”
He leans back in his chair, expression controlled. “About what?”
Nandita studies him. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend you don’t know.”
He lets out a soft breath through his nose. “I know a lot of things. You’ll need to narrow it down.”
Her eyes harden. “There are comments. Questions. The sort of questions people ask when they’re bored, or jealous, or trying to build a story out of fragments.”
He is still for one beat too long.
That is enough.
Nandita sees it. Her look becomes colder, more exacting. “So you do know.”
“Rumours happen in every office.”
“Not like this.”
He tilts his head. “Like what?”
She does not take the bait. “Don’t make me say it.”
He could laugh. He could soften it. He could make a joke that would make her roll her eyes and move on. Instead he says, with just enough honesty to be useful and just enough charm to be dangerous, “If you’re asking whether I’ve noticed people watching me, yes. I have. That doesn’t mean there’s anything to watch.”
Nandita’s gaze does not move.
“You’ve been spending a lot of time with senior leadership,” she says. “Too much time for the comfort of the floor.”
He gives a slight shrug. “I’m useful.”
“You’re visible.”
“That’s the job.”
“Is it?” Her voice is low now. “Or is that what you want?”