The producers, including her traitorous friend, were being unsurprisingly tight-lipped about everything. China had officially crossed over to the evil side. As for DJ, he had swept in, shot the introductions, and taken off. All Ashna had gotten out of him was a quick hug and a promise to catch up soon. There was some sort of emergency with one of Yash’s fund-raising events in LA that Nisha couldn’t get to, and DJ had jumped in. All hands on deck, that was the Rajes. DJ had slipped effortlessly into the golden circle just the way Ashna had expected him to.

Ashna wished she’d been the one to help with Yash’s fund-raiser, coward that she was. But running away never solved problems. Having tried that strategy, she knew its success rate was zero.

It was past midnight and she was still at the restaurant taking inventory and getting things set up for the week. Mina Kaki was going to help her manage Curried Dreams when she had to shoot. Wilfrieda and Khalid were going to share sous chef duties. She had taken care of the things she had control over. The rest she couldn’t think about until she got there.

Just as she was ready to leave, her phone rang.

She answered because there were only so many problems she could push away for later.

“That knife didn’t touch you, did it?” Shobi said with uncharacteristic maternal worry.

She’d seen the clip. Fabulous!

“I thought you stayed off social media.” Shobi wasn’t a fan even though her foundation had a following of hundreds of thousands, which of course she would bring up soon enough.

“Hate the thing. For the most part I leave it to my social media director. But Flora chanced upon the video and sent it to me.”

Ashna loved Flora, her mother’s personal assistant, but she wanted to shake her for this. “It wasn’t how it looks. You know how TV is.” How Media Jumbles Reality was another one of Shobi’s favorite themes.

“It’s that restaurant. Look at what it’s done to you. By now you should have been in a committed relationship and not swooning like a teenager.” Ashna made her way to the holding area and started wrapping silverware in napkins. God forbid if Shoban Gaikwad Raje might say anything as conformist as by now you should be married the way any other Indian mother would. But no, the keeper of women’s rights had to say “committed relationship” instead. It would have been all fine and dandy had Shobi herself been capable of being in a committed relationship.

Ashna rolled a napkin with far more force than necessary. “Wow, I never thought I’d hear the ‘you’re thirty and not married off’ thing from you.”

Shobi made a horrified sound. “Oh please. I would never be quite so regressive. I just meant that I never saw you as the swooning sort.”