Operation Stealth

Kabir squinted at the mansion Acair had told him to head to. It was dazzling against the night sky, lit with enough lamps for a little village.

Kabir parked the lorry away from the mansion, and then, carrying a basket full of the chrysanthemums he approached the back gate. It had drawn the attention of almost every person on the way here so might as well come in handy now.

He was stopped at the gate nevertheless, the guard raising one eyebrow at him.

"Choti memsaheba (the young madam) asked for them," Kabir said.

The guard looked him up and down, dressed in a black satin shirt and tan pants, he didn't quite look like he was doing deliveries.

Before he could call out to others, Kabir managed to add, "I'll go bring my phone with the order. Give me a minute."

And with that he speed walked around the corner and out of sight.

Acair had told him, through his secretary of course, about the general lay of the land. Acair's men knew the car well, it was Iftikhar Saheb's. And he was the biggest businessman of this region. His only daughter was Mareesha's age and went to her college. Wasn't a hard guess that they might've been friends.

From where he stood on the road he could see girls dancing on the balcony directly above the grounds. They seemed to be in a world of their own, and from the distance he was at he could not quite make out their faces. 

He kept thinking back to the phone call he had to make to Acair. He kept thinking about how if Acair wanted he could go in without all this hassle, but no. He had promised to never turn back and today he did. In a last bid to save himself and the business he had built out of nothing. No more. He would figure this out on his own, would not be the hardest place he has broken into by a long shot. 

Kabir lit a cigarette as he scanned the crowd surging in and out of the building. The guards seemed to either know the people by sight or they'd be shown a printed invite. The yellow lights that hung around the mansion gave it an ethereal glow that went well with the ghazals that came from it. The aroma of good food and faint laughter seeped over the walls.

A blue minivan drove past him with a sputtering engine seeing black smoke its wake. The obnoxious red writing on it made it look even worse than his lorry ever did. It stopped in the middle of the road and its back doors were thrown open. A young man in white took a careful step out, when the guard blew his whistle loudly startling him. 

He hurried back up and shut the door behind him as the van sped into the corner to park. The writing in red on the van read, 'Chuvadu Dance Studio'. 

Kabir seems to have found his way in.