All Chapters of The Girl They Betrayed : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The first investor pitch almost never happened. Not because Aanya doubted herself. Not because her business wasn’t ready. It nearly fell apart because everyone had already decided who she was before she walked into the room. The venture capital firm had responded to her application only after recognizing her surname. Oberoi. In business circles, the name carried influence, wealth, and legacy. Unfortunately, it also carried assumptions. The partners believed she was another privileged heiress looking for funding for a passion project—a young woman with family money, impressive connections, and a startup that would survive regardless of whether it deserved to. The meeting, in their eyes, was little more than professional courtesy. Aanya knew that before she ever stepped inside the building. Dev had warned her after quietly speaking with someone who knew one of the partners. “They think they’re doing us a favor by hearing you out,” he had told her the previous evenin

The annual technology leadership gala was one of the most prestigious events on the corporate calendar, hosted in the grand ballroom of a five-star hotel overlooking the Arabian Sea. Crystal chandeliers reflected against polished marble floors, while floor-to-ceiling glass windows framed Mumbai’s glittering skyline. CEOs, venture capitalists, startup founders, government officials, and some of the country’s wealthiest industrialists filled the ballroom, every conversation carrying the subtle undertone of opportunity.Deals worth hundreds of crores often began over a handshake at this very event.For rising entrepreneurs, an invitation was considered a milestone.For established business leaders, it was simply another night of influence.For Aanya Oberoi, it was somewhere in between.She had accepted the invitation only after nearly an hour of persuasion from Dev.“You can’t build a company from behind a laptop forever,” he had reminded her over breakfast earlier that week. “Networking

Oberoi Technologies was no longer the small startup it had been just a few months earlier.What had begun with twelve determined employees working out of a converted office wing had grown into a team of forty in less than four months. Desks that once seemed too many were now occupied from morning until late at night, meeting rooms stayed booked for weeks, and the cheerful chaos of a fast-growing company echoed through every corridor.Eventually, even Aanya had to admit they had outgrown the space.Reluctantly, she approved the lease for an additional floor in the same building.It wasn’t because she wanted a bigger office.It was because the people building her dream deserved enough room to work.Even then, she refused every suggestion that leaned toward unnecessary luxury.Her operations manager proposed premium interiors.She declined.The HR team recommended designer furniture to impress visiting investors.She declined that too.“We’re building technology,” she reminded them with

Rhea’s downfall came differently from Kabir’s.Where his collapse had been swift and brutal, hers unfolded slowly, painfully, and in full view of the world. Every passing month brought a new setback, each one stripping away another layer of the confident, image-conscious woman who had once stood on a stage and confidently claimed someone else’s work as her own.The plagiarism allegations Aanya had never formally reported somehow began reaching the placement offices of the companies Rhea interviewed with.The source was eventually traced back to Professor Bhatt.After hearing quiet whispers from students in the newer batches, he had gone back and reviewed old project submissions. What he discovered filled him with genuine disappointment. The pattern of copied work was impossible to ignore—a truth he had hoped he would never have to face about a student he had once sincerely admired.“I have a responsibility to report academic misconduct when there’s clear evidence,” he told Rhea when s

Success, Aanya was beginning to realize, came with a price no magazine cover ever talked about. It wasn’t reflected in quarterly reports, investor presentations, or soaring company valuations. Those costs settled quietly into the body while the mind remained fixed on the next milestone, the next deadline, the next opportunity to prove she deserved everything she had built.The twenty-hour workdays were finally catching up with her.What began as occasional fatigue had slowly turned into something far more difficult to ignore. She experienced dizzy spells during board meetings that she dismissed as the result of skipped meals. A constant exhaustion lingered no matter how much black coffee she drank. Migraines arrived more frequently with each passing week, growing sharper as the pressure of scaling Oberoi Technologies intensified.At first, she kept a small bottle of painkillers in her desk drawer.Soon there was another in her handbag.Then another in nearly every blazer she owned.It