Anika Desphande

Anika Desphande, a character in the Crimes of Passion series, is an executive at Medicus, a pharmaceutical company. She is first seen in Book 1, Chapter 4.

Appearance
Anika has long brown wavy hair tied into an updo, brown eyes and tanned skin. She wears golden earrings, and a black and white dress.

Personality
Anika is polite, and according to you, she seems fun to party with. According to Nick, Anika is a control freak. She devised the blackmail scheme to keep the Hand of Mahra's cultists in line and made sure none of them went to the police.

Book 1

 * Chapter 4: The Royal Treatment
 * Chapter 5: Up In Flames
 * Chapter 8: Forging Ahead
 * Chapter 9: The Rite Track
 * Chapter 10: Behind the Mask
 * Chapter 11: Reasonable Doubt
 * Chapter 14: The Heat (Mentioned)
 * Chapter 16: The Heart of the Matter (Mentioned)
 * Chapter 17: The Long Goodbye (Mentioned; Determinant)

Your Character
You meet her for the first time when you infiltrate the Iverson Ball with Trystan. She says that her company Medicus deals with a lot of healthcare contracts in Drakovia. If you ask her about novogliterol, she tells you that she doesn't deal directly with drugs herself as she is part of management.

You stumble upon her again in Chapter 8 when you visit the spa where Luke traced the number you gave him. When you text that number, it is proven that it belongs to her, which means that she's part of the Hand of Mahra. At first she pretends that she doesn't recognise you and Trystan, but eventually remembers, and if you purchased the premium outfit, she says that you look good despite everything that happened. You then tell her that you should get better acquainted sometime, and you can persuade her to introduce you to the cult by either pretending to be easy marks, or by playing hard to get. Whichever way you choose you succeed, and Anika says that she'll be rooting for you.

Sonja Dormer
If you ask her if she heard about Sonja's murder, she says that while she was not her biggest fan, it's still very sad. When you then ask her why, she seems to be annoyed by the question and you feel that she said more than she meant to, but tells you that it's simply because she wasn't as innocent as people say she was.

Tony Kowalski
As "Devona", she is his contact with the Hand of Mahra. They have never met face to face and only communicate through text. When he is finished forging a batch, he texts a number on the back of their business card. An address is provided, he drops the box off, and later money shows up in the mail along with a new business card. The blades he creates for the cult are third-century recreations, Iron age, with hand-engraved runes. The masks he created are from video game designs and were only used to match the knives. Since his dealings with the cult, he suspects they want to kill him.

Miscellaneous

 * -|In Game=

Trivia

 * In Chapter 8, she is revealed to be part of the Hand of Mahra cult.
 * In Chapter 10, she is revealed to be the cult leader.
 * Her character model resembles Adriana Rys from The Crown & The Flame, Book 1.
 * Her crimes include aiding and abetting and blackmail.
 * According to her dossier, she made it into Forbes' Magazine 40 Under 40 in 2016 since becoming VP of Operations. She makes regular donations to fine arts museums in the Greater NYC area, including the Calloway where Sonja died.
 * Her surname is spelled in two different ways in the series:
 * Deshpande in all but one mentions in all chapters do far,
 * Desphande in her name tag, dossier, and a mention in Book 1, Chapter 11.