11:43 Project 09

By Ruchitha Reddy Akkati

When criminal lawyer Georgia K. Paul takes on the mysterious deaths of a family found lifeless in their own home. She expects another case of greed, revenge, or deceit. Instead, she enters a city that seems to move just out of sync — neighbors who don't answer, clocks that never change, and a house that feels eerily alive with memory.

Each clue she uncovers draws her deeper into a world where logic begins to fracture and every truth seems to echo back at her. As Georgia pieces together the evidence, she finds herself confronting not just the mystery of the family's deaths, but the strange, silent gaps within her own past cases.

A slow-burn psychological thriller that walks the fine edge between crime and consciousness, Project 09 is a chilling meditation on truth, time, and the price of knowing too much.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ruchitha Reddy Akkati
• Release date: Jan 24, 2026
• ISBN: 9798233559891

Book preview

​​Copyright Page

Copyright Notice

© 2025 by Ruchitha Reddy Akkati

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except for brief quotations used in reviews or scholarly works.

For permission requests, please contact the author at:

[e-mail]

Publisher’s Information

Published by: Ruchitha Reddy Akkati

Email: [e-mail]

All rights reserved.

Fiction Notice

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

Acknowledgments

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my family for their endless love and support throughout this journey. I also extend my heartfelt thanks to my readers—your time, interest, and feedback mean the world to me. Without you, this book would not have been possible.

Disclaimer

This book contains fictionalized elements. While inspired by real events, the characters, events, and dialogue are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. This work does not aim to depict real-life experiences or historical events in an entirely factual manner.

Catalog

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Copyright Page

Chapter 1 – The Rooftop

Chapter 2 – The House

Chapter 3 – The Neighborhood

Chapter 4 – The Father’s Business

11:43.

Chapter 5 – The Second Shareholder (D.S.)

Chapter 6 – The Relatives

Chapter 7 – The Son

Chapter 8 – The Stalker

Chapter 9 – The Medicine

Chapter 10 – The Old Cases

11:43.

Chapter 11 – The Doctor

One letter stood out, its tone formal but firm:

Chapter 12 – The Doctor’s House

Chapter 13 – The Truth

Closure

The Weight of Truth

​​Chapter 1 – The Rooftop

Georgia K. Paul stood still on the edge of a tall building, staring down at the busy streets below. The city stretched out before her, alive and buzzing, but wrapped in a misty fog that softened everything. The cars moved slowly along the wet roads, their headlights slicing through the haze. Streetlights flickered on and off, adding to the gloomy feel, like a scene from an old detective movie. People hurried by, their faces hidden under umbrellas that looked like dark flowers, all trying to stay dry.

It was one of those nights where nothing felt certain. The gray sky, the constant hum of the city, and the puddles of rainwater all seemed distant and muted, as if they belonged to a different world. Georgia didn’t notice the chill in the air or the rain hitting her skin. She felt nothing. It was as though the night had completely surrounded her, wrapping her in a kind of silence that let her focus entirely on her thoughts. There was no noise, no distractions, just her mind and the weight of what was coming next.

Her thoughts were fixed on a new case — a strange one. An unsolved case that had landed on her desk earlier that day. It was the kind of case she had learned to dread, but also the one that always seemed to pull her in, like a magnetic force. A family of three — a father, a mother, and their daughter — all dead in their own home. No break-in. No signs of struggle. No theft. No obvious cause of death. Nothing about the scene made sense.

Georgia K. Paul was a criminal lawyer known for her sharp mind, her ability to dissect cases with surgical precision, and her unrelenting drive to uncover the truth. The cold, methodical approach she had developed over the years had made her one of the best in her field. She didn’t get distracted by emotions. She didn’t get bogged down by the details that didn’t matter. She looked at facts, at evidence. Everything else was secondary.

The case file she had in front of her was thin, almost disturbingly so. There were a few photographs — grainy images of the family’s house, a small suburban home nestled between two others, its windows dark and its door partially opened. The police reports were sparse. The initial investigation had turned up nothing. No one had heard anything unusual. No one had seen anything. The only thing that was clear was that all three members of the family had been found dead, their bodies cold and lifeless in their own home. No signs of any external threat.

Georgia had read the file three times already. And each time she felt a growing unease. There was something about this case that didn’t sit right with her. It was too clean. Too perfect. It was as if someone had taken great care to erase all traces of their presence.

But why? And who?

She needed to know more. The answers would be buried somewhere in the details. In the lives of the victims. In the history of the house. In the people they had known, the people they had trusted.

She took a deep breath and stepped back from the ledge, turning toward the stairway that would take her back down to her office. The building around her was silent, its vastness