There was no need to send the girl into a panic. “I have no doubt you do. But I didn’t send it. I have actually not been sick in years.”
Adil inched into his line of vision, clearly trying to eavesdrop.
“I’m so sorry, sir. I can assure you, if it hadn’t been your own brother, I would never give your information—”
He cut her off. “It’s okay.” How was she supposed to know that he and Rohan weren’t that close, that they’d regularly gone a year or two without seeing each other? “When did this happen? Do you remember the date?”
The date she gave him was a couple months before Rohan’s death and matched up with the date on the first message Jia had sent him.
Dev tapped his fingers on his chin. There was something else about that date, though . . .
“Next time, I will be sure to verify with you over the phone before I give your information to anyone, family or not,” she finished.
“Thank you,” he said woodenly. “Don’t worry about this. And don’t tell Chandu.”
“Yes, sir.” She sounded relieved, like she’d expected him to fly into a rage. The rage was there, for sure, but it was directed where it belonged. At his late brother.
He hung up and looked at Adil. “It must have been Rohan. They gave him my password, and the dates match up.”
“Why would he do this?”
Dev closed his eyes, remembering. “I saw him the night before.” It had been at an awards show. Dev didn’t go to many of those, but his friend had been honored that night.
The main times he did see Rohan were at industry events. That night, his brother had been holding court at his table, dressed in a bright peacock-blue sherwani.
Rohan had noticed him and waved him over. Dev had reluctantly gone.
His parents had raised them with love. They’d had a good relationship for thirteen years, him and his pesky little brother. But after their parents were gone, the industry and their grandfather’s favoritism and distance had driven them apart. Dev hated that he couldn’t be close with Rohan, and every time he saw him, it was like that icy longing pierced his heart anew.
He didn’t think he was a particularly haughty person, but his brother’s devil-may-care attitude and playboy lifestyle had never failed to prick his temper and annoyance. The louder his brother had gotten, the colder Dev had gotten. “We fought,” Dev murmured. Rohan had asked if he’d wanted to come to an after-party, and he’d told him that he needed to get up early for work.
You must live a little, Bhai. God, you’re boring.
You live too much. Don’t you have your own responsibilities?
Rohan had stomped off. Later, Dev had felt bad, holding Luna over Rohan’s head when he barely knew the child.
“So he did this as a prank?”
“Possibly.”
“But you said this woman’s been getting messages as of a week ago,” Adil said slowly. “Reincarnation doesn’t work that fast.”
“Right.”
“So what? Someone took over for him?”
Dev scratched his head. “They’d need Rohan’s phone, at least, right? Or access to his information. Luna has it, I believe. She wanted the photos off it.” Dev had scrolled through the photos first before giving it to her. He’d had to delete two folders full of nudes. At least Rohan had been organized in his porn collecting.
They locked eyes. Dev could tell the second the realization crashed into Adil because it hit him at the same time. “No,” Dev said, his voice low. “It couldn’t be.”
“She’s better with phones than we are.”
“You cannot possibly be saying our thirteen-year-old niece picked up the catfishing torch for her father.”
“If she did, Rohan should have named her Anjali,” Adil mused, referring to the famous Bollywood movie plot moppet who had matchmaked her widowed father and his childhood friend.
“Implausible.”
“But not impossible. You should speak to her.”
Dev did not want to do that. “Perhaps I should speak to her therapist first.”
The lines around Adil’s eyes crinkled. “You must learn to trust your own gut sometimes when it comes to parenting.” The man clapped his hand on Dev’s shoulder. “Your parents didn’t have therapists on speed dial when you were young. And look how you turned out.”
Right. He’d been kicked from his modest middle-class loving family to a too-rich famous extended family without any therapy and he’d turned out fine. If one could call an emotionally repressed and lonely man fine.
He was not a ringing endorsement for no therapy, that was for sure.
“Go talk to her, Dev. Or you’re going to be left with more questions than answers. Luna?” Adil yelled.
“Yes?” The faint voice came from the living room.
Adil gestured with his chin. “Go.”
Dev sighed. He found Luna ensconced in front of the TV, her ever-present phone in her hands. “What are you doing?”
Luna shrugged but didn’t look up. “Playing on my phone.”
He stiffened. “Mmm. Talking to your friends?” Or talking to strangers, pretending to be me?
Her short curls bobbed as she nodded.
Dev sat down on the coffee table in front of her. The therapist had told him it would help for him to get down to her level whenever possible. “Can we talk for a minute?”
She glanced up. “Okay. About school?”
“No.” He hesitated. “Luna, do you remember when I gave you your father’s phone?”
Now she looked wary, and Dev hoped it wasn’t for the reason he suspected. “Yeah. I thought it might have photos of me and him on it. Or maybe him and my mom.” She fiddled with her sweatshirt. “It didn’t.”
Damn it, Rohan. Dev didn’t know who Luna’s mother even was. Rohan had simply shown up with a baby one day and announced that he was a father and that he’d paid off the mother.
That was how the Dixit family handled things. When in doubt, pay them off. “And that’s all you did with the phone? Went through the photos?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know where the phone is now? Do you still have it?”
“Arjun Kaka said he wanted to look through the photos, too, so I gave it to him.”
Dev’s eyes slowly closed. Oh no.
Arjun was his first cousin. He was successful in his career, but he had nowhere near the star power of his late father, his grandparents . . . or Rohan.
Dev didn’t disbelieve that Arjun might have wanted to have a memento of Rohan’s. The two had been around the same age and close, partners in debauchery. It had been Arjun who had taught Rohan how to drink and do drugs and sneak women in.
Dev was about as close to his cousin as he’d been to his brother, which was to say, not very. They had nothing in common and tended to butt heads as soon as they were in each other’s vicinity.
He could very well imagine the man being delighted to find a way to mess with Dev from afar.
“I-I’m sorry. Was I not supposed to?” Luna’s hands clenched in her lap. “Am I in trouble? I don’t know what I did.”
“No, you’re not in trouble,” Dev said, hurrying to reassure her. “I’m having a problem, and I’m trying to figure out who could be behind it.”