All Chapters of The Girl They Betrayed : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

The farewell party was held on the last Friday before graduation. For weeks, it had been the only thing anyone talked about. Class groups overflowed with discussions about themes, playlists, dress codes, decorations, photography, and speeches. Juniors volunteered to organize every detail, determined to give the graduating batch a night they would remember for the rest of their lives. The college’s largest auditorium had been transformed beyond recognition. Gone were the rows of lecture chairs and presentation podiums. In their place stood round tables draped in white linen, strings of warm fairy lights hanging from the ceiling like tiny constellations, floral arrangements decorating every corner, and a stage where a live band tuned their instruments while students tested microphones for farewell speeches. Photographs from the last four years rotated across enormous LED screens. Freshers’ Day. Technical festivals. Sports week. Hackathons. Cultural nights. Laboratory sessions

It started small. Almost invisibly. The way mold begins inside a wall. The way rust spreads beneath polished metal. The way all truly cruel things begin—not with explosions, but with whispers so soft that no one thinks to question them. On Monday morning, a conversation ended abruptly when Aanya entered the college canteen. She barely noticed. People stopped talking all the time when someone new joined a table. It wasn’t unusual. Someone smiled at her a second too quickly. Another looked away. She dismissed both moments without a second thought. By lunchtime, another whisper had found its way across campus. “Did you hear?” “What?” “Aanya’s been sending Kabir’s assignments to companies under her own name.” “No…” “Apparently she took credit for a lot of their group work.” “Seriously?” “I don’t know. That’s just what I heard.” No one knew where the story had started. No one asked. Rumors rarely require evidence. Only curiosity. And people ar

The final humiliation came during the last department assembly of the year. It was supposed to be a celebration. A farewell. A final gathering before everyone scattered across different cities, different companies, different futures. For weeks, students had spoken excitedly about it. There would be speeches from professors, awards recognizing academic excellence, nostalgic videos capturing four years of memories, and an open-mic segment where anyone could come on stage to share stories, thank friends, or say goodbye. It was meant to be a day of closure. A day to remember the best parts of college. Instead, it became the day that shattered whatever remained of Aanya’s faith in the people around her. The auditorium was decorated with blue and silver ribbons. A slideshow of photographs played on the giant screen—freshers’ orientation, cultural festivals, hackathons, industrial visits, late-night project presentations, farewell rehearsals. Every photograph carried laughter.

The mansion’s interior stole the breath of anyone seeing it for the first time. Even people who had spent their lives surrounded by luxury often found themselves stopping just inside the entrance, instinctively looking upward. The ceilings rose nearly three stories high, every inch adorned with hand-painted murals commissioned decades earlier from an artist so celebrated that he had once refused royal patronage, insisting he would create only for families who valued art above prestige. Soft afternoon sunlight poured through towering stained-glass windows, washing the paintings in shifting shades of gold, sapphire, and crimson. The marble floors reflected the light like still water. Crystal chandeliers, each handcrafted in Europe nearly a century earlier, hung suspended above the grand foyer, scattering tiny fragments of light across polished stone. A curved staircase swept gracefully toward the upper floor, its design so elegant it seemed almost impossible that it rested on a

Three days after Aanya’s return home, Zayn Raizada received a report that made him set down his coffee without drinking it. For anyone else, it would have been an ordinary gesture. For the people who worked around him, it was extraordinary. Zayn Raizada never abandoned routines. He drank his coffee while reviewing reports. He signed documents in the same order every morning. Meetings began exactly on time. Decisions were made only after every relevant piece of information had been placed before him. Nothing interrupted that discipline. Nothing. Which was why Farhan, standing across the enormous office with a leather file in his hands, instinctively took half a step backward when the untouched coffee cup landed softly on the polished desk. He had worked beside Zayn for nine years. Long enough to understand that silence from his employer was rarely empty. It meant something important had shifted. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, Mumbai’s harbor stretched