The gallery was too quiet for a Friday night.

Soft piano music floated in the air, the kind that made the silence feel deliberate. White walls. Dim golden spotlights. Expensive wine. People pretending to admire art while secretly admiring themselves.

Anaya Sharma exhaled as she adjusted her camera strap and walked deeper inside.

She wasn’t here for the wine or the crowd — she was here for one perfect photograph. The kind that would get her selected for the National Art Fellowship.

Her professor’s words still echoed in her mind.

“Capture emotion, Anaya. Something real.”

She lifted her camera, scanning faces — bored, smug, glittering with old money.

Nothing real.

Not yet.

She moved toward the last hall, away from the main exhibition. The air grew cooler. Quieter. Almost too quiet.

And then she froze.

He stood alone near a painting — a tall, sharply built man in a tailored black suit. His back to her. His posture still, composed in a way she’d never seen in anyone her age.

There was something about the way he held himself… a quiet dominance, a silent tension that pulled the eye to him without effort.

She felt her fingers tighten around the camera.

This — this was emotion.

Intensity. Solitude. Power.

She didn’t mean to lift the camera.

She didn’t mean to click.

But the shutter snapped anyway.

He turned.

Slowly.

As if he had heard the breath she didn’t take.

And Anaya’s world stilled.

His eyes — dark, controlled, piercing — locked on hers with a sharpness that made her heart jolt. She couldn’t look away. Something about his gaze felt… dangerous. As if he saw more than she intended to show. As if he saw through her.

He didn’t speak.

He didn’t frown.

He only watched her.

Studied her.

Until her pulse hammered in her throat.

She lowered the camera, suddenly hyper-aware of her breathing.

People were around them, but it felt like the entire hall belonged to his gaze.

A waiter passed between them, breaking the spell.

She blinked and stepped back, embarrassed.

He didn’t move, yet his presence followed her like a shadow.

She forced herself to leave before she stared any longer.

But as she turned around the corner, she felt it —

His eyes still on her.

Not curious.

Not annoyed.

Something else.

Something unreadable.

Something that felt like the beginning of a thread wrapping around her life.

---

Anaya left the gallery earlier than she planned, heart still thudding. She didn’t know why she felt shaken. She didn’t even know his name.

Outside, the Mumbai night was cool, breezy, glittering with neon lights and distant traffic. She walked toward the road to call an auto.

Her phone buzzed — a message from her friend, asking if she got any good shots.

She smiled faintly and opened her camera preview.

And her breath hitched.

The photograph she had taken — the accidental one — filled the screen.

The man in the suit.

Emotion carved into stillness.

Eyes that held storms.

A presence too powerful for the frame.

It was perfect.

Award-winning.

Unrepeatable.

But it was the second thing that made her heart skip.

He wasn’t looking at the painting.

He was looking straight at the camera.

Straight at her.

As if he knew she would take the picture before she even clicked.

A shiver crawled down her spine.

Who was he?

But she didn’t delete the photo.

She couldn’t.

---

Across the street, in the backseat of a matte-black car parked under a streetlamp, the same man watched her through tinted glass.

His jaw clenched once — the only sign of emotion he allowed.

“Sir?” his driver asked quietly.

The man didn’t answer.

He watched Anaya tuck her hair behind her ear, watched her lift her phone again to look at the photograph — his photograph — and a slow, dangerous calm settled over his features.

Aditya Oberoi never liked being seen.

He hated being photographed.

Yet he let her.

Why?

He didn’t know.

Not yet.

But he intended to find out.

His voice was low, controlled, lethal as he finally spoke.

“Find out who she is.”

And the car pulled away, leaving Anaya untouched, unaware, and already caught in the beginning of a storm she didn’t see coming.