(Mahi's POV)
I started noticing the pattern at 2:17 a.m.
That exact time matters, because it was the moment exhaustion stopped being loud and became honest. When the mind, stripped of politeness and fear, finally begins to see what it has been avoiding all along.
The conference room lights were harsh at night. Too white. Too revealing. They made the stacks of contracts look endless, as if Aryavarta Collective had buried its crimes not in secrecy but in sheer volume. Paper as camouflage. Language as a weapon.
I had been reading for hours—highlighting, annotating, discarding. Most clauses were ordinary, almost boring in their legality. That was the most dangerous part. Nothing screams guilt when everything is written to look lawful.
I was halfway through another contract when my pen stopped mid-air.
The wording felt… familiar.
I flipped back three pages. Then five. Then another contract entirely.
Same sentence.
Not similar. Not inspired. Identical.
My pulse quickened, not dramatically, but enough to wake me fully. I pulled another file from the pile, then another. My fingers moved faster now, my fatigue dissolving into focus.
There it was again.
A clause about "voluntary resignation under mutual agreement," placed exactly three paragraphs below a section on workplace injury liability. Always the same distance. Always the same punctuation. Always the same quiet brutality.
This wasn't lazy drafting.
This was design.
I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes for a moment, letting the realization settle. Aryavarta hadn't been reacting to problems. They'd anticipated them. Built an exit long before the injuries, the layoffs, the desperation.
They had planned for people to get hurt.
"That's not negligence," a voice said behind me. "That's architecture."
I didn't flinch. I hadn't heard Nikhil walk in, but somehow his presence felt expected—like the thought had summoned him.
I turned the chair slightly. He was standing by the table, sleeves rolled up, tie loosened, eyes already scanning the pages I'd marked. He didn't ask what I'd found. He didn't need to.
"They repeated it across states," I said. "Different factories. Different years. Same clause. Same placement."
He picked up one contract, then another, comparing them with the kind of intensity that used to intimidate professors in college. His jaw tightened—not in anger, but concentration.
"They trained their legal teams to insert it subconsciously," he said. "So no one questions it. Even the lawyers."
I watched him quietly. It struck me then how familiar this felt. Not the case—the way we were working. The unspoken understanding. The way we built arguments together without stepping on each other's minds.
It scared me a little.
"Can we prove intent?" I asked.
He nodded slowly. "If we can show that the clause appears only after injury reports increase."
I felt a spark of something dangerously close to excitement. "I can cross-reference timelines."
"I'll map the corporate restructuring phases."
We looked at each other for half a second—just long enough to recognize what we were doing.
Working like we used to.
The hours that followed blurred into something almost sacred. We moved around the room in parallel silence, exchanging files, making notes, building a quiet case within the case. No small talk. No history. Just law.
At some point, chai appeared. I didn't ask who brought it. I only noticed when the warmth touched my hands.
"You still drink it without sugar," Nikhil said absently, eyes on his laptop.
I stiffened for a fraction of a second. "So do you."
He smiled, barely. "Habit."
The word lingered.
So much of our past had been built on habit—late nights, shared notes, mutual ambition. We'd mistaken familiarity for permanence back then. Paid for it later.
Around four, my eyes began to burn. I rubbed them, staring at the screen until the letters rearranged themselves into nonsense.
"You should rest," Nikhil said. Not as an order. As an observation.
"So should you."
He shrugged. "I will. After this."
I almost laughed. That had always been his answer.
I stood up, stretching, walking to the window. The city was asleep in fragments—streetlights, empty roads, a stray dog curled beside a tea stall. I wondered how many of the workers we were representing were awake at this hour too, worrying about rent, about injuries that never healed properly, about contracts they hadn't understood but had signed anyway.
"This case won't make us popular," I said quietly.
"It won't make us safe either," Nikhil replied. "But it'll make us honest."
I turned to look at him then. Really look. He seemed older than I remembered—not physically, but in the way responsibility sat on his shoulders. Less arrogance. More weight.
"We weren't honest with each other," I said before I could stop myself.
The room went still.
He didn't react immediately. Just closed his laptop, slowly, as if giving the moment its due.
"No," he said. "We weren't."
I waited for more—for an explanation, an apology, a reopening of wounds. None came.
Instead, he added, "But we're being honest with the work. Maybe that's a start."
I nodded, grateful he hadn't pushed further. Some conversations needed the right courtroom. This wasn't it.
By dawn, we had something solid. Not a complete argument—not yet—but a spine. Intent. Pattern. Proof waiting to be unearthed.
As we packed up, exhaustion finally caught up with me. My hands trembled slightly as I stacked the files back into order.
"Go home," Nikhil said. "I'll send you my notes."
"You trust me with them?" I asked, half-teasing, half-serious.
He met my gaze. "I trust you with the case."
It wasn't forgiveness. It wasn't reconciliation.
But it was something sturdier.
As I walked out of the firm that morning, the sun rising reluctantly behind the buildings, I realized something that both comforted and unsettled me:
Singhania's Law Firm wasn't rebuilding itself through public statements or damage control.
It was rebuilding itself in rooms like that conference hall—through quiet nights, shared integrity, and two lawyers learning how to work together again without pretending the past didn't exist.
The pattern wasn't just in the contracts.
It was in us too.
And for the first time in a long while, that didn't feel like a weakness.