Chapter 196 - Family?

"The artist's name is Ramya Trivedi. She is a small-time artist in B town. She is very normal in fact. And the only piece that she had ever sold for any value is this one that she sold to your dad. All else were sold to negligible amounts after and before that… But except for the anomaly of her having sold this painting to your dad, I really can't find anything suspicious…" Pritham said shoving the information he had just found to Shreya in a tablet.

Shreya skimmed through it quickly and then asked, "Family?"

"Everything is normal there too actually. Nothing pops up. It is going to take some time to run a deep background on everyone around her. But as far as I can see… they are just normal people with normal life." Pritham answered.

Shreya nodded absentmindedly. But then after a while, she mumbled, "Trivedi!" She felt the name to be slightly familiar. Something about that surname- she knew she read it somewhere before. She surfed through her memory to find out where she had seen that name before… But then suddenly her eyes lit up as she looked at Pritham and said, "Pull up the case file of Prime Minister's murder. There was a key witness in that case that led to the conviction of the accused eventually. They did not really have a case without him. The witness name was… if I am not wrong… it should be Abi Trivedi…" She recounted thoughtfully.

Shreya always had an excellent memory and on top of it, god knows how many times she had been through the old case files… she had spent hours and hours going through them over and over again to see what she might have missed that Adithya saw and what kind of evidence he could have gotten.

Pritham once again went back to focus on his screens. They had long before digitalized that file.

There was a solemn silence in the room which was broken by Srinivas as he asked, "What does Prime Minister's murder case have to do with your dad?"

He vaguely knew that Shreya's parents' death was not an accident and that Shreya was looking into the people who are responsible. But then, now they were talking about the PM's murder case… a case to his memory was shut down a long while ago. And the murderer was caught and convicted. Since it was such a high profile case, there is probably nobody in the whole country who did not know about it.

But he couldn't figure out what that has got to do with Shreya or her parents.

The guys looked at each other while Shreya just answered absentmindedly without taking her eyes off of the information she was skimming, "Girish- The Prime Minister, was my dad's friend. They were extremely close and my parents were killed because my dad was investigating his murder case… and he even got some key evidence back then. After the kidnapping last time, we know that the evidence was hidden by my dad before he died. Now we are searching for it."

Srinivas did not give away any surprised expression. He just nodded and went back to his calm self. Minutes ticked by before Pritham once again spoke, "Abi and Ramya are distant cousins. Both of them were close through university… But I have a death certificate in Abi's name right after Ramya received the money from your dad…"

Shreya once again walked to him and peered into his screens. Pritham was flushing Abi's social media pages…

"That's odd. That final post by his parents… it looks fake… something is not right… There is no emotional context to it. It's almost like a copy-paste of someone else's eulogy. And no parent will ever copy something like this…" She said as her eyes darted to other information.

A minute passed… Her mind raced with all kinds of possibilities. Why would someone with a normal family fake his own death certificate? After all, in order to do it, they would have needed resources that were beyond Abi Trivedi's means. And then things dawn on her.

"It's dad's handy work. He probably helped Abi disappear in exchange for whatever information he had… And the money is for the family he had to leave behind…"

"But that doesn't help us with anything. He is in the wind by now and with your dad's skill… we won't be able to find him any time soon… and he won't be coming back any time soon… not after knowing what happened to your dad…" Adam pitched in.

After all… Adithya was meticulous in anything he does. And since it involved life or death of a person… he should have put in his utmost… which would be a huge mountain to cross. With just the payment, Adithay had actually split it to smaller bits and routed through different accounts. If it was not for Shreya… they would have been surfing through the statements for weeks.

And to track down the 'disappearance' would be a whole lot harder since they did not even have a starting point at this stage. Abi could be in any corner of the world… for all they knew, Adithya could have shifted him to Antarctica…

Shreya's expression fell instantly. After all, she thought, at last, she had gotten a break but it leads to a dead-end all over again… that too to a dead-end put in by her own father.

If she wanted, she could always dig Abi out of the grave and bring him back to earth… She knew all of Adithya's tricks after all. She had learned all her tricks from Adithya. But she did not want to. Not when she knew bringing Abi back might get him killed just like that.

It did not seem worth it. Especially when it was a person her dad had tried to protect with all his might. Sacrificing a life to avenge a dead one… it was not something she could live with.

She can sacrifice a life to protect one… but the former was not something she agreed on.

"Okay, then… you guys can go back if that is the case," Shreya said resigned.