Leo grinned. “Chouette! We have a member of the British aristocracy here—Grey Emerson. Or Lord Northcliffe, to use his official title. Do you know him? Perhaps there is some kind of royal family network?” He laughed jovially.

A dozen responses flew into Jaya’s head. Know him? Not personally, but I’m no stranger to the tears and heartache his family caused mine. Or No, but my fist would love to make acquaintance with his jaw. Could you point me in the right direction? But, of course, she kept her thoughts to herself.

The thing was, refusing to return the ruby wasn’t the last of the Emersons’ transgressions. Far from it, actually. Perhaps as payback for the “curse” (British aristocrats tended to be as superstitious as Indian royal families, Jaya knew)—or perhaps because they were just cruel—the Emersons regularly released vitriol into the Indian tabloids about the Rao family. Not that the Raos just sat there and took it. Jaya remembered more than an occasion or two when they’d struck back at the Emersons in various business dealings and political connections—all warranted, of course. It was a seesawing, back-and-forth enmity that was second nature to both clans.

This time, though, the Emersons hadn’t gone after the adult Raos like they usually did. This time they’d gone after Isha. And, unfortunately, this time everything the tabloids had printed, everything the Emersons had leaked to them, was true.

Jaya remembered asking Kiran Hegde, fellow trusted royal from a different clan in the Indian state of Karnataka, why the Emersons had changed their modus operandi. “It doesn’t make sense,” she’d said to him on the phone. “Something feels off. Why now? Why Isha?”

“I don’t know,” Kiran had said. “Why don’t you call and speak with the journalist on staff? The man who wrote the article? He probably won’t reveal his source, but he might give you a hint about what the Emersons are up to.”

So Jaya had done just that. She’d called the tabloid, spoken to the reporter, and asked him who was behind the leaked picture of Isha. She remembered distinctly how that smug, greasy little man had paused before saying: “Would it come as a great surprise if I said it was the male heir of a family that finds you Raos particularly deplorable?”

“You mean a male Emerson heir,” Jaya had said, fuming, her hand clenched around her cell. “I suppose I knew that all along. Which one of them was it? And why did they come after my sister?”

“That I cannot say,” the reporter had said, practically cackling with glee. Jaya imagined him in his stuffy, crammed office, his feet jauntily up on the desk. “But can I get a quote about how you’re dealing with the story? Do you feel a lot of rage, Jaya? And what about Isha? Is she still ‘drowning in a bottomless well of mortification’?”