Gautam Rathore's Mercedes plows into five pavement-dwellers sleeping on a Delhi street, killing them all.

Police find a drunk Ajay at the wheel of the wrecked Mercedes and arrest him for murder.

Village headman Kuldeep Singh beats Ajay's father to death after the family's goat strays into a neighbor's field.

Eight-year-old Ajay is handed over to a couple in Manali as a domestic slave after his father's death.

Ajay meets the wealthy Sunny Wadia at the Purple Haze café in Manali and accepts a job offer in Delhi.

Sunny Wadia begins a secret romance with Delhi Post journalist Neda Kapur.

Bunty Wadia discovers Sunny's relationship with Neda and kicks his son in the chest at the family farmhouse.

Ajay receives a photo of his sister Hema in a brothel with the words 'Do what you're told' on the back.

Sent to London by Bunty's associate, Neda discovers she is pregnant and is coerced into terminating the pregnancy.

Sunny photographs the unconscious Gautam at the wheel, frames Ajay for the crash, and punches Neda unconscious.

Sunny shows Bunty the incriminating Polaroid of Gautam; Bunty praises Sunny for finally being ruthless.

Sunny is kidnapped by Sunil Rastogi, beaten, and told that Vicky Wadia may be his biological father.

After learning about Neda's forced abortion, Sunny orders Dinesh Singh to remove Bunty and agrees to marry heiress Farah Dhillon.

Police arrive at Sunny's wedding reception and arrest both Ram Singh and Bunty Wadia on corruption charges.

Rastogi shoots Bunty dead from a motorbike; Ajay discards his gun and boards a bus to Manali.

The novel opens with Gautam Rathore's Mercedes crushing five pavement-dwellers to death, setting in motion a chain of exploitation and sacrifice. Ajay, Sunny Wadia's bodyguard, takes the fall for the crime and is imprisoned, his compliance rooted in a lifetime of poverty and trauma. As the story unfolds through flashbacks, Ajay's journey from Dalit child slave to Delhi bodyguard reveals the forces that made him compliant and expendable. Sunny's relationship with journalist Neda Kapur threatens Bunty Wadia's empire, leading Bunty to destroy the couple and exile Neda to London, where she terminates a pregnancy she was coerced into giving up. After Sunny proves his ruthlessness to his father by framing Ajay and discarding Neda, he is drawn into kidnapping, forced marriage, and a plot against Bunty himself. The novel ends with Vicky Wadia seizing control, Bunty shot dead, and Ajay fleeing Delhi — though the road ahead remains deeply uncertain.

The key betrayals and crimes that reshape three lives.

Prison gang members slash Ajay's face with razors; Ajay fights back and injures one man severely.

Moneylender Rajdeep Singh's men sexually assault Ajay's sister Hema as part of a brutal debt settlement.

'Daddy' dies in a car crash, his family evicts Ajay, and Ajay takes a job as a waiter at the Purple Haze café.

In Delhi, Ajay is promoted from butler to Sunny's bodyguard and trained in armed combat by ex-IDF soldier Eli.

Sunny takes Ajay to visit Vicky Wadia's sugar mills in Gorakhpur, triggering Ajay's suppressed childhood memories.

Sunny uses Vicky's network to locate Ajay's impoverished mother and grants Ajay four days off to visit her.

Ajay visits his mother Mary, who rejects him and reveals she sold him for cash rather than to repay a debt.

Bunty's associate Chandra informs a disoriented Gautam Rathore that Ajay is taking the fall for the killings and sends Gautam to Swiss rehab.

Ajay befriends the abused inmate Prem in Tihar Jail and tells Prem the full story of his life.

Neda witnesses a bulldozer crush and kill two infant siblings during the demolition of the Laxmi Camp slum.

Dean Saldanha is forced out of the Delhi Post and shares his explosive unpublished exposé on the Wadias with Neda.

In Goa, Sunny reveals to Neda the Kushinagar incident in which two abducted girls were found hanged near Vicky's property.

Bunty rewards Sunny's loyalty by granting him land for a real estate project near Delhi, overseen by Dinesh Singh.

Dean publishes investigative pieces on the Shunya Futures land project; Dinesh Singh publicly joins protesting farmers against the scheme.

Bunty confronts Vicky at the wedding about his trafficking operations; Vicky reveals it was Bunty who killed a boy in childhood.

Beneath the headline crimes of the novel lies a dense web of secondary events that give the story its moral weight and texture. Ajay's path from abused child slave in Manali to Sunny's trained bodyguard is shaped by incremental losses and betrayals, including his mother's revelation that she sold him for cash rather than to repay a debt. Vicky Wadia's sinister influence over both Ajay and the larger crime network is established through a visit to his Gorakhpur sugar mills, while Neda's investigation of slum demolitions brings her dangerously close to the Wadia family's corruption. Dean Saldanha, Neda's principled editor, is forced out after his explosive exposé on the Wadias is suppressed, leaving Neda increasingly isolated and complicit. Sunny's reward for his loyalty to Bunty — land for a real estate dream — becomes a political catastrophe when Dinesh Singh turns against the project and joins farmer protests. The wedding day brings a final reckoning as Bunty and Vicky's lifelong partnership unravels in a confrontation that traces their violence all the way back to childhood.

The hidden worlds and secondary forces driving the story forward.

Eight-year-old Ajay flees when the moneylender's men arrive at the house and returns to find his sister Hema weeping.

Ajay realizes in Manali that his employer Daddy has been lying — no wages were ever sent to his mother.

Men run Neda's car off the road near the Wadia office; Ajay beats the attackers and drives Neda to safety.

Sensing a trap, Ajay kills three of Kuldeep Singh's henchmen in an alley in his hometown, crossing into murder for the first time.

Vicky Wadia stops Ajay from shooting Kuldeep Singh at a rally, promises to deliver the Singh brothers later, and reveals Hema is alive.

Ajay smashes Sikander's skull with a dumbbell to stop the senior inmate from brutalizing the young prisoner Prem.

A politician visiting Tihar delivers Vicky Wadia's order that Ajay must kill rival gang member Karan or Hema will suffer.

Neda drafts an email to Dean confessing she witnessed Ajay being framed for the crash but never gathers the courage to send it.

Ajay slits Karan's throat with a hidden razor while Karan and Prem are together; Prem takes the razor and slits his own wrists.

In Lucknow, Dinesh reveals to Sunny that Bunty has been stealing medicines for the poor and seizing farmlands for private profit.

Dinesh hands Sunny an envelope containing a sonogram and photos proving Bunty orchestrated Neda's forced abortion.

Rastogi tells Sunny his life story and reveals that Vicky, operating as the godman Himmatgiri, deliberately sent Rastogi to find Sunny.

Neda calls Sunny on his wedding day and tells him he — not his father — bears full responsibility for their lost child.

Ajay confronts Rastogi at a Christian commune; Rastogi lies that the woman in the brothel photo is not Ajay's sister Hema.

Vicky presents Sunny with an emerald ring belonging to Sunny's mother; Sunny recognizes the ring from Rastogi's story about Himmatgiri.

The third pool traces the novel's emotional turning points — the moments where characters discover hard truths about themselves and the world around them. Ajay's slow reckoning with complicity begins in childhood, when he runs from danger and returns to find his sister devastated, a guilt he will carry for years and that Vicky will later weaponize against him. His first murders in his hometown mark a threshold he cannot uncross, and prison forces him into ever-darker acts when Vicky holds Hema's safety as leverage. Neda's arc pivots on her witnessed silence — she knows Ajay was framed but cannot act, and her unsent confession to Dean crystallizes her moral paralysis before she finally finds her voice. Sunny's illusions are stripped away when Dinesh delivers proof that Bunty orchestrated Neda's forced abortion, and Rastogi's captive story plants the devastating suggestion that Vicky may be Sunny's true father. The pool ends with twin acts of deception and symbolic inheritance — Rastogi's lie about Hema's photo leaves Ajay unmoored, while Vicky's gift of an emerald ring draws Sunny deeper into a destiny he cannot escape.