Seven years since the robbery.
To most people it was old news by now — the kind of thing that stopped making the local paper years ago.
For Joy, Sarthok, and Sayan, it had never really gone anywhere.
They’d just gotten used to living around it.
It came apart on a rainy Friday, in Sarthok’s kitchen, over a plate of fried onions and rice.
Rain against the window.
The tap dripping into the sink, same as always.
Then the television on the wall bracket cut to the evening news, the anchor’s voice sharpening into something urgent.
A prison break.
The facility near the bypass.
The screen changed to four mugshots — old, grainy, official.
Joy’s fork stopped an inch above his plate.
Sayan’s eyes locked onto the screen, his breath catching audibly.
Sarthok set his phone down flat on the counter, the glass clicking against the laminate.
Nobody said anything.
The tap kept dripping.
“That’s them,” Sayan said finally, his voice gone rough.
“From the van.”
Joy didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.
He was already reading the same faces off the screen.
Sarthok grabbed the remote and hit mute.
The anchor’s mouth kept moving, silent now, the mugshots still frozen in the corner of the frame.
“They’re out,” Sayan said.
“In the sectors.
Right now.”
“I can see that, Sayan.”
“So what do we do if they check the old registry—”
“I don’t know.” Joy dragged both hands down his face.
Sarthok turned toward the window.
Down on the street, people were walking home under umbrellas, a delivery bike backfiring at the corner, someone haggling over jaggery at the sweet stall.
All of it is completely normal.
Somehow that made it worse.
“They could have our names,” Sayan said, quieter now, his knuckles white around his glass.
“Don’t say it like it’s already happened.”
“You think men like that just forget who put them there?”
“No.” Joy said it flat, immediate.
Nobody argued with that.
They didn’t need to spell it out further — what it meant if those four remembered the intersection, remembered which faces belonged to which names, and went looking.
Sarthok leaned back in his chair, eyes on the ceiling.
“My wife doesn’t know any of it.”
“Neither does mine,” Sayan said.
“She thinks I was just some clerk back then.”
Joy said nothing.
His wife didn’t know either.
None of them had ever broken that agreement — made years ago, the week they graduated — that the less the people they loved knew, the safer it was for everyone.
It made sense then.
Now, with four men loose in the city, it felt like something else entirely.
Sayan glanced at the muted screen again.
“What if they come here?
To our block?”
“Then we deal with it,” Joy said, his jaw tight.
We don’t have anything left to deal with it with.”
Sayan let out a short breath that wasn’t quite a laugh.
“That’s the whole problem.”
Joy pushed his chair back and walked to the window.
His reflection sat faintly in the glass, rain running down the other side of it.
Seven years he’d spent building this — a job people relied on him for, a home, a family none of this was supposed to touch.
He wasn’t ready to lose any of it.
“What about Goutam,” Sarthok said.
The kitchen went quiet again, differently this time.
“He doesn’t remember it properly,” Sayan said.
“The memory block held.”
“That’s supposed to be a good thing,” Sarthok added, adjusting his glasses.
Joy shook his head slowly, his hand still on the window latch.
“Not anymore, it isn’t.”
Sayan looked up at him.
“He’s happy,” Joy said, quietly.
“He doesn’t even remember why they might come looking.”
None of them pushed back on it.
Goutam had spent seven years putting an ordinary life back together, without ever quite understanding why some dates, or the sight of a white van, still made his chest tighten for no reason he could name.
Somehow, missing pieces and all, he’d ended up happy.
He had his desk job, his apartment, and Avantika — the same girl he’d liked since they were kids in school uniforms, if he was honest about it.
He’d called Joy the night before, talking for almost an hour, mostly about her.
Asked, sounding more nervous than any of them had heard him in years, whether he should say something before winter break.
Sayan had laughed down the phone.
Sarthok had told him to stop overthinking it.
Joy had mostly just listened, and Goutam had sounded lighter than he had in a long time.
That memory sat heavy in the kitchen now.
“If he finds out those men are out—” Sayan started, and didn’t finish.
He didn’t need to.
None of them knew exactly what would happen if the wall in Goutam’s head came down along with the news.
Whatever was sitting behind that block wasn’t going to come out gently.
Joy looked down at his hands.
“We don’t tell him.”
“For how long?”
“Until we know where they are.”
“And after that?”
Joy didn’t answer right away.
Sayan looked between the two of them, his jaw setting.
“We find them first,” he said.
“Before they find us,” Sarthok said.
Joy nodded.
“Yeah.”
Nobody said anything for a while.
Then Sayan asked the thing none of them had wanted to say out loud.
“And if they go after the families before we get to them?”
Joy looked at him.
Whatever confusion had been on his face all evening was gone now.
“Then we stop them.”
Sarthok held his eyes.
“Whatever that takes?”
Joy didn’t answer in words.
He just looked back at the muted television, at the four faces still looping under the red banner.
“Whatever it takes.” Read this novel at g.com for the best experience.
Somewhere out there, four men who should still have been behind bars were walking around free, and the three of them had no idea where.
Not yet.
But sitting in this kitchen waiting for something to happen wasn’t an option anymore.
Goutam had no idea anything was wrong.
Nobody had pulled him aside to warn him.
He didn’t know about the phone call, the muted television, or what his friends had spent the night before talking about in low voices over cold food.
As far as he was concerned, his life had finally landed somewhere good.
He liked his job.
His friends were all still close by, even if their careers had gone in different directions.
And there was Avantika.
He glanced through the glass partition.
She was over by the coffee machine again, talking to Alok.
Alok said something, adjusting his collar, and Avantika laughed, her shoulders shaking a little.
Goutam’s jaw tightened around nothing in particular.
It was just a coffee break.
He couldn’t even hear what was being said from here, and whatever it was had apparently been good enough to get two laughs out of her in under five minutes.
He looked back at his screen.
The spreadsheet in front of him had stopped meaning anything about thirty seconds ago.
He clicked the same cell twice.
Nothing changed.
He sat back and exhaled.
“Shit.”
The guy at the next desk glanced over the partition, a folder tucked under one arm.
“You good?”
“Yeah.
Fine.”
“You’ve been staring at that same row for ten minutes.”
“I’m working through the logic.”
The colleague followed his line of sight toward the coffee machine and grinned.
“Right.
Intense logic.”
Goutam looked at him.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Say it, then.”
“You’re not thinking about the script, man.
You’re thinking about Avantika.”
Goutam’s face went warm.
“I wasn’t looking at her.”
“Sure.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Okay.”
He typed a stray character just to have something to erase.
“Finish your own log.”
The guy laughed under his breath and went back to typing.
Goutam looked over one more time.
Avantika was still there, turning her cup slowly while Alok talked.
The annoying part was that he didn’t even dislike the guy.
Alok did his job well, was decent to the interns, and somehow made half the floor laugh without trying too hard.
And Avantika looked completely at ease standing next to him.