The prayer room door was thin as paper. Anjali’s soft snores drifted through from the master bedroom just beyond it — steady, trusting, drugged by the sleeping pill she took every night since the last miscarriage.

She had kissed Rohan goodnight an hour earlier, whispering against his neck, “Thank you for giving us this chance… for doing what I can’t.” Her words were a knife twisting slowly in his chest.Priya stood in the flickering diya light, cream saree already half-unwrapped, trembling. At 24 she was untouched, soft, beautiful — the little sister Anjali had raised like her own. Now she believed every lie Rohan fed her about the “ancient natural transfer” tradition.