Chapter 10: Confessions and Crossroads
Narrated by Aanya Kapoor
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I didn't sleep.
Not even a little.
The file sat untouched on my laptop, its presence screaming at me from the corner of the screen. The subject line, "Isha: Confidential," pulsed in my brain like a time bomb.
I kept staring at it, heart pounding, mind racing.
What if opening it shattered everything?
What if not opening it left me blind?
At 3:27 a.m., I threw off the covers and sat up in bed. Moonlight spilled through the blinds, painting silver streaks across my walls. I padded barefoot to my desk, my laptop glowing like a quiet threat in the dark.
My finger hovered over the trackpad.
Open. Or don't.
Either choice changed things.
Forever.
---
I clicked.
The folder contained exactly three files.
1. A PDF titled "Patent Proposal 2019_IshaTech"
2. A ZIP file of emails.
3. A scanned letter. Handwritten.
I opened the PDF first.
It was a tech document. Detailed, dense — describing an early behavioral algorithm that looked... hauntingly familiar. Too familiar.
A core feature matched Nudge's exact architecture.
I read the contributor name.
Lead Developer: Isha Sen.
Collaborator: Rohan Malhotra.
My heart stuttered.
He had worked with her. That part wasn't a surprise. But the timeline didn't match what he told me.
He said Isha's concept was half-formed. That he'd built Nudge from scratch after she'd left.
But this?
This was a nearly complete prototype. Dated six months before she vanished.
I swallowed hard and clicked the email ZIP.
---
The messages were messy. Fragmented.
Isha to Rohan.
Some formal, some playful.
Then they got intense.
Accusatory.
I don't trust you anymore.
I saw the files on your drive.
Why are you copying my work?
The last email chilled me.
"You promised me you'd never use this without me. If you do… I'll make sure no one ever believes a word you say again."
It was dated a week before she went missing.
I froze.
Fingers trembling, I clicked the last document — the handwritten letter.
It was scanned poorly, parts of it hard to read. But what I could see was raw.
Dear Rohan,
I hope you never have to read this. I hope I'm wrong about you.
But if you betrayed me… know this: I will not be erased.
— Isha
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I closed the file.
The room spun.
I felt sick.
Betrayal clawed at my chest. Doubt, sharper now, buried its hooks deeper.
I couldn't sit with it.
I needed answers.
Real ones.
I needed to look Rohan in the eye and ask him: Who are you really?
---
By 7 a.m., I was outside his place.
He opened the door, hair messy, eyes groggy, in a white T-shirt that should've been illegal for how good he looked in it.
My stomach twisted.
"Hey," he said, voice husky. "You okay?"
"No," I said. "Can I come in?"
He stepped aside.
I walked past him, into his apartment — minimal, neat, warm. There were books on behavioral science stacked on the coffee table. A half-built mechanical puzzle on the shelf. A polaroid of him and someone I assumed was his younger sister, both laughing.
It made everything worse.
Made him real.
Made what I was about to ask even harder.
He turned toward me. "What happened?"
I met his eyes.
And asked the question I'd been dreading all night.
"Who was Isha to you?"
---
He blinked.
Caught.
"Where is this coming from?"
I didn't blink.
"Just answer."
He looked away.
Then sat down slowly on the couch.
"Isha was… everything," he said quietly.
My heart cracked.
"She was my mentor. My friend. And for a while, maybe more."
He ran a hand through his hair.
"We built something brilliant together. But it was always unstable. She was brilliant — and paranoid. She didn't trust people. Especially not in tech."
"And did you betray her?"
That hit him like a slap.
He looked up, eyes raw.
"No," he said firmly. "I didn't."
I pulled out my phone, showed him the email.
His face paled.
"I didn't steal from her," he said again, voice harder. "She left. She ghosted everyone. I tried to find her. I waited. I even offered to co-sign everything if she ever came back."
"Then why didn't you tell me about this?" I asked.
Silence.
Because that was the heart of it, wasn't it?
Not just what happened.
But what he hid.
He sighed.
"Because it's messy. And complicated. And I didn't want you thinking everything I've built was someone else's dream."
I stared at him.
I wanted to believe him.
But trust wasn't built on wanting.
It was built on truth.
All of it.
---
"I need space," I said finally.
His expression crumpled.
"Aanya…"
"I can't think clearly around you right now," I whispered. "I need to figure out what I believe."
He didn't try to stop me.
Didn't say another word.
Just stood there, eyes full of things I didn't want to see.
And I walked out.
---
The next few days blurred.
I buried myself in Nudge — fixing bugs, responding to testers, trying to pretend my heart wasn't unraveling.
But it was.
Every time my phone lit up and it wasn't Rohan, it hurt.
Every time it was Rohan and I didn't respond, it hurt worse.
I was spiraling.
So I did the only thing I could think of.
I found Isha's old academic advisor.
And begged for ten minutes of his time.
---
Professor Amitabh Rao was a quiet man with sharp eyes and a habit of sipping tea mid-sentence.
"She was brilliant," he said, after I explained who I was and what I was looking for. "But scared of being invisible. She was always looking over her shoulder."
"Do you know why she left?"
He hesitated.
"I think she was threatened by her own success. She said once, 'If I publish this, they'll take it from me.'"
I frowned. "Who's they?"
"She never said. Just… they."
"Did she ever accuse Rohan? Of anything?"
Professor Rao looked surprised.
"No. She admired him. Said he was the only one who saw her, really saw her. Then one day, she just stopped showing up."
He leaned forward.
"You're building something with her code, aren't you?"
I swallowed. "Maybe."
He smiled sadly.
"Then make it count. Give it purpose. She was terrified her work would be corrupted."
---
When I left, I felt lighter.
Not clearer — not yet — but closer to something solid.
Rohan wasn't perfect.
He'd made mistakes.
So had I.
But maybe, just maybe, he wasn't a thief.
Maybe he was a builder.
Like me.
---
That night, I opened our old Slack channel.
The one we hadn't used since the pitch.
I typed a single message.
Aanya:
Can we talk?
Rohan replied within seconds.
Rohan:
Always.
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End of Chapter 10
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Teaser for Chapter 11:
A late-night rooftop meeting
Secrets revealed under stars
And a moment that might change everything