Meera's day

Adi finds her at the Bandra cafe before the second chai arrives, having tracked her through the now-deactivated studio Instagram tag. The boy she tipped two thousand rupees in July stands over her table and grabs her wrist hard enough to leave a thumb-shaped bruise, demanding she withdraw the screenshots from Heena's secondary number 'or things get messy.' She pulls free and the chair scrapes the floor loud enough that two college students turn around; Adi backs off, drops a folded Mehfil Events flyer with the fixer's contact number, and walks out. At Antop Hill, Kabir photographs the bruise for the file and writes a one-page witness note in his own hand. She adds the flyer screenshot to the evidence folder, then calls Ritu the Shah planner — who has one August referral pending — and hears Ritu quote Niharika's 20% undercut by way of warning. Decision crystallised: Adi's betrayal is on the record, and the bruise is on her wrist if she ever needs to show it.