By the time Aanya made it back to her floor, her legs felt like someone had swapped them out for rubber bands.
The familiar buzz of her bay usually calmed her. Today, it felt like walking into the aftermath of a live telecast she didn't know she'd starred in.
Conversations dipped as she walked by. A few people tried to act casual, suddenly fascinated by their screens. Someone pretended to be very invested in a stapler.
Tiara rolled her chair over the moment Aanya sat down. "So," Tiara whispered, eyes gleaming, "are you fired or promoted?"
"Emotionally? Fired," Aanya muttered. "Officially? I have no idea."
Her monitor blinked awake. Outlook pinged. Teams pinged. Some evil corner of the internet pinged.
Zoya's face popped up on a video call request.
Aanya sighed and accepted. "If you're calling to laugh, I swear—"
Zoya's face filled the screen, eyes dramatic. "Excuse me, I am not laughing. I am observing history."
"Delete your account."
Zoya ignored her. "So. How is Mr. Famous CEO in real life? Does he smell like money or cologne?"
"He smells like stress and fabric softener," Aanya said before her brain could filter that.
Tiara choked on air.
Zoya grinned. "So you noticed how he smells?"
"I notice many things when I'm having a public meltdown," Aanya snapped softly. "Also, reminder: the stock dipped. Stock. Dipped. Because of a cup of coffee. I'm going to be a footnote in some finance article: 'the girl who destabilized intraday.'"
Tiara wheeled closer. "You saw the headlines?"
Aanya's stomach clenched. "PR showed some."
Tiara clicked rapidly. "No, I mean these ones."
Aanya reluctantly leaned in.
On Tiara's screen, an article banner read:
"The Coffee Collision: Is the Vardekar CEO Softening?"
Another showed a still of her and Riyan standing together in the cafeteria, his head slightly bent toward her. The caption:
"Power Meets Panic: Internet Reacts to Viral Moment."
Her face heated. "I look like a stunned squirrel."
"Cute stunned squirrel," Tiara corrected helpfully.
Zoya snorted in the video window. "People are posting edits. You and him with background music. There's one with slow zoom and piano."
"I hate everything," Aanya muttered.
She opened her own browser, fingers hesitant. Against her better judgment, she searched her name.
Instant regret.
Tweets. Reels. Short clips looping her horror-struck expression. Comments under them:
This girl is all of us on a Monday.
I'd also forget how to breathe if I spilled coffee on him tbh.
Plot twist: they're secretly dating.
New ship unlocked: #RiyanAanya.
Her brain stumbled. "They made a ship name?"
Tiara nodded eagerly. "#Riyaanya. #CoffeeCouple. #KalantriCrash."
"That last one is a hate crime."
Not all the comments were friendly. Some questioned her competence. Some wondered if this was staged for PR. A few were unnecessarily cruel, picking apart her hairstyle, her clothes, the way she stammered.
Her chest tightened.
Zoya's voice softened. "Hey. Don't read the bad ones."
"They're everywhere," Aanya said quietly.
"Then read selectively," Zoya replied. "Like how you selectively hear your mother's taunts but ignore her recipe tips."
"She doesn't give recipe tips."
"Exactly."
A notification popped up on Aanya's screen.
PR OFFICE – MEDIA GUIDELINES
She opened it.
Do not respond to any media directly.
Do not post personal opinions regarding the incident.
All queries to be routed via PR.
Please maintain professionalism at all times during upcoming appearances.
She groaned. "Upcoming appearances. Plural. They're serious about this."
Tiara tapped her pen. "You know this could actually be good for you, right? Visibility. Access. Networking."
"I didn't come to work to become clickbait," Aanya said.
Still, a tiny, treacherous part of her brain wondered: what would this look like on a portfolio years from now? "Handled crisis narrative with CEO" had a certain weight to it.
Her phone buzzed again.
This time it wasn't Zoya.
Mom.
Her stomach twisted.
She hesitated, then picked up, lowering her voice.
"Maa?"
Anisha sounded breathless. "Aanya… I saw you on TV."
Aanya's hand tightened around the phone. "TV?"
"Yes, some business channel replayed that video," her mother said, voice tight. "You spilled coffee on your boss?"
"He's not my direct boss," Aanya said weakly. "He's… several thousand levels above that."
"Aanya!"
The panic in her mother's voice pushed away any space for jokes. "Is this going to affect your job? Are you in trouble?"
"I don't know yet," Aanya admitted. "PR says it's… manageable."
Her mother was quiet for a beat too long. When she spoke again, her voice had changed—soft, but edged with something else.
"You should be careful."
"About spilling coffee?"
"About attention," her mother said quietly. "Sometimes the wrong people are watching."
A shiver ran down Aanya's spine. "What does that mean?"
"Nothing," Anisha replied hurriedly. "Just… don't do anything that makes people dig into your life. Keep your head down. Stay small. It's safer."
There it was again.
That familiar refrain from childhood: stay unnoticed, stay unremarkable, stay safe.
"Bit late for that, Maa," Aanya said gently. "The internet has already made me a character."
Her mother exhaled shakily. "We'll talk when you come home."
Before Aanya could ask anything else, the line cut.
She stared at her phone.
"Everything okay?" Zoya asked.
Aanya forced a smile. "Maa is just being dramatic."
Tiara squinted. "You look weird."
"Thank you," Aanya replied. "That helps."
Her inbox chimed with another mail. This one from PR.
First appearance tomorrow. Charity event. Dress code: smart formal. You will receive talking points.
She felt the room tilt again. Tomorrow. With him. In front of cameras. On purpose.
She dropped her forehead onto her desk.
"Tiara," she mumbled into the wood, "if I never return, tell my plant I loved it."
"It's plastic," Tiara replied.
"Then it'll live longer without me."
Zoya laughed softly. "Just breathe. And don't overthink. If he didn't send you home already, you're fine."
"'Fine' is a very ambitious word for what I am right now," Aanya said.
She straightened slowly and clicked into one of the trending videos again, watching the clip this time with detached eyes. The way he leaned closer, the way his voice dropped when he said, 'Ms. Kalantri… we need to talk.'
She hadn't realized it then, but there was something in his gaze. Not just irritation or control.
Assessment.
As if his brain had started solving a puzzle the moment she spilled that coffee.
A new comment popped up live under the video.
@user473: She looks familiar. Like someone from… never mind.
Aanya frowned.
Familiar? To who?
She clicked the user profile. Newly made account. No posts. No details.
Her cursor hovered over the name.
Her chest tightened with a feeling she couldn't name.
She shut the window.
There were deadlines waiting. Layouts. Wireframes. Her real job.
She dragged the design software window to the front and got to work, trying to pretend the world wasn't currently dissecting her face in slow motion.
But even as she tried to lose herself in pixels and grids, the echo of her mother's words wouldn't quite fade.
Sometimes the wrong people are watching.
Riyan's POV -
On the other side of the building, two floors up, the boardroom looked like a storm had moved inside and politely taken a seat.
The screen on the wall showed a live dashboard: stock prices slowly recovering, social media sentiment charts, headlines auto-refreshing.
One of the older board members drummed his fingers on the table. "We cannot let this spiral into a circus," he said. "We are not an entertainment company."
"We're not collapsing either," another added. "The stock is already climbing back. People are amused, not outraged."
"Amused today," the first snapped. "Tomorrow they'll be digging into his personal life. And hers. We have enough shadows we don't want dug up."
Riyan sat at the head of the table, listening.
Not reacting.
Not yet.
Devin stood near the screen, flipping between analytics. "The engagement is high," he said. "Which isn't entirely bad. People are talking about the brand."
"We don't need this kind of talk," the older member snapped. "We need stability. We're not internet personalities."
Another board member turned to Riyan. "We suggest a very clear strategy. Either distance yourself entirely from this girl, or…" He hesitated. "Use it fully to your advantage."
Riyan's jaw clenched at the word "girl," but he kept his tone even. "She has a name."
A few people shifted in their seats.
"Ms. Kalantri," the man corrected. "Point is, her presence shifts attention. Some might weaponize that. Investors will start speculating. Rivals will start whispering."
"They already whisper," Riyan said. "This is noise. Not the first. Not the last."
Devin's phone buzzed on the table. He glanced at it, then at Riyan. "Sir."
Riyan's eyes met his.
Devin handed him the phone wordlessly.
An anonymous email. No subject. No sender name. Just text:
You're repeating your father's mistakes.
Some secrets don't stay buried.
Especially when someone like her walks into your life.
Riyan's fingers tightened slightly around the phone.
He set it down screen-down and looked up. "Our course remains the same. PR has prepared a plan. Ms. Kalantri will participate as required. We show control. We don't panic."
The older board member frowned. "You're entertaining this… narrative?"
"I'm managing the consequences of reality," Riyan replied calmly.
"And if this backfires?" another asked.
Riyan's gaze hardened. "Then it backfires under my responsibility. Not hers."
The room went quiet.
He rarely spoke like that. Rarely added weight to his sentences.
Devin watched him, a flicker of something like respect in his eyes.
The board shifted the conversation back to numbers, projections, upcoming mergers, risk tables. But somewhere beneath all that, a thread had been pulled.
Riyan felt it.
He didn't like chaos. He liked systems. Measurable variables.
This situation wasn't neat.
And neither was the email.
He picked up the phone again when the meeting ended, reading the line about his father one more time.
Some secrets don't stay buried.
His jaw set.
When he stepped out of the boardroom, he didn't head to his office immediately.
He stopped at the glass railing overlooking the lower floors and caught sight of someone moving through the bay with quick, restless energy.
Aanya.
Hair roughly pinned up, ID card askew, one hand holding a stylus, the other waving as she explained something animatedly to her teammate. She was clearly still shaken, but she was trying. Working. Existing like the world hadn't turned her into public property for the day.
He watched her for a few seconds longer than he strictly needed to.
Then he turned away.
There were emails to trace. Threats to examine. Meetings to plan.
And—whether he admitted it or not—a designer whose name he kept repeating in his mind, as if anchoring it to something before the rest of the world tried to claim it.
End of Chapter Three.