Steemit Challenge - Season 28 Week-5: Shadows Behind Stardom

Pixabay

The press release did not take long to send shock through the nation. Superstar Rajveer Singh the absolute peak of his career was retiring. Immediately. No farewell tour no final film.

For investigative journalist Khaled, it wasn’t news; it was a symptom. He knew Singh’s plans—a new production house, a trilogy. This wasn’t retirement; it was an evacuation. He called for weeks before a voice, stripped of all its famous resonance, finally agreed to see him.

The man who opened the farmhouse door was a ghost. The famous smile was gone. His eyes, once full of fire on screen, were haunted. They kept flicking to the window behind Khaled.

They sat in a vast, silent living room. Singh’s hands wouldn’t stay still. “You shouldn’t have come, Khaled.”

“Why did you do it?” Khaled asked, skipping pleasantries. “You were on top. The trade was calling you the ‘Guarantee.’”

Singh let out a sound that was meant to be a laugh. “A guarantee for what? For laundering money?” His voice dropped to a whisper. “You remember City of Dreams? The epic flop last Diwali?”

Khaled nodded. It was a legendary disaster, losing over a hundred crore.

“It was designed to fail,” Singh hissed, leaning forward. “The budget was a fiction. Fifty crores for ‘visual effects’ paid to a Cyprus-based firm that doesn’t exist. Twenty for ‘location fees’ to a shell company in Dubai. The money goes out black, comes back white, with a clean certificate from a hit film’s producers. My producers… they aren’t filmmakers. They are accountants for the Orion Syndicate.”

He confessed he’d seen a digital ledger on a producer’s screen by accident. Rows of international transfers next to line items like “costumes” and “set construction.” When he’d cautiously asked the director, Arjun Malhotra, the man had broken into a cold sweat. “Forget this, Rajveer. For your family’s sake.”

A week later, Singh’s beloved dog was found poisoned in his garden. The message was elegant, personal, and unmistakable.

“So I quit,” Singh finished, deflating into the sofa. “I traded the arc lights for this guarded shadow. They win.”

But Khaled’s mind was already clicking, assembling the puzzle. A flop film. Fake vendors. A syndicate. This was bigger than a star’s fear. He left with a mission and a name: Arjun Malhotra.

Finding Malhotra wasn’t journalism; it was detective work. Khaled used old contacts, tracing the director’s nervous sister to a monastery town in the hills. He found Malhotra there, not at a hotel, but renting a monk’s spare room. He was sober, pale, and constantly checking a burner phone.

“They killed the line producer, Suresh,” Malhotra said, his voice flat. “A sudden cardiac arrest at forty. The USB was his insurance. He gave it to me a day before he died.” He didn’t hand it over. Instead, he recited a 12-word cloud storage link and a password. “Memorize it. Now. It has everything. The invoices, the bank trails. Follow the money to ‘Polaris Holdings.’ Then to a luxury car dealership in Dubai. And then… see who the cars are gifted to.”

Khaled spent three sleepless nights in a cyber café, tracing the digital trail. Polaris Holdings led to the Dubai dealership. The dealership’s “client gift” logs showed half a dozen luxury vehicles sent to addresses in Delhi. One name stood out, not as a recipient, but as the one who authorized the gifts from the Indian side: MP Rajesh Varma, the head of the influential Cultural Development Committee.

This was the connection. The syndicate’s clean money wasn’t just for profit; it was political fuel. Varma greased the wheels for their productions, and in return, his foreign assets were padded.

Khaled’s story, “The Shadow Reels: How Box Office Flops Wash a Nation’s Sin,” didn’t just accuse. It mapped. It showed the journey of a single fake twenty-crore invoice from a Mumbai studio to a Cypriot shell, to a Dubai asset, to a London flat owned by a trust linked to Varma’s son-in-law.

The explosion was instantaneous. News channels scrambled. The Enforcement Directorate, armed with a ready-made map, registered a PMLA case within hours. Varma cried “conspiracy,” but the digital paper trail was a cold, irrefutable witness.

The call came to Khaled’s desk phone at midnight. A voice, mechanically distorted, stated: “The story has two endings. Choose the quiet one.”

Khaled’s throat tightened but his voice was steady. “It’s too late for endings. The story is public record now.”

A pause. “Every record can be erased.” The line went dead.

Khaled drove back to the farmhouse one last time. He told Singh about the cloud files, Varma’s name, the global map, and the threat.

Singh listened, staring at the darkening ridge line. Then, a slow, weary smile touched his lips. It was the first real expression Khaled had seen on him. “So my cowardice… it gave you the coordinates.”

“You weren’t a coward. You were a witness who survived,” Khaled corrected.

“And you were the scribe who fought back.” Singh stood up, walking to the porch. “What now?”

“Now,” Khaled said looking at the first stars entering the twilight, “we see if the world prefers the glitter, or the truth behind it.”

As Khaled drove away he glanced in the mirror. Singh was no longer a silhouette hiding in a doorway. He was standing tall on his porch facing the vast shadowed hills not as a fugitive but as a man who had finally passed the torch. The star had exited the stage, but his shadow had started a war.

The End

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