Midnight came heavy and black over the abandoned quarry outside Jaipur. Wind howled through jagged rock cuts, carrying the smell of dust, old gunpowder, and something metallic—blood already spilled. She walked alone, barefoot on sharp stones that cut her soles, the pain a dull echo of what Vikram had taught her body to crave. She wore only a thin black saree, no blouse, no petticoat—breasts swaying free, nipples hard from cold and terror, the fabric clinging to sweat-slick skin. Karan’s note burned in her mind: come alone, or the sister dies slow.

She found them at the quarry’s edge. Karan waited under a single flickering lantern, flanked by three of his men—hard-eyed thugs with knives at their belts and leers on their faces. Vikram’s sister, a girl no older than eighteen, knelt bound and gagged between them, eyes wide with terror, cheek already bruised purple.