storm, swallowed by sand and distance. Perhaps the police feared the haveli now—rumors already spreading through Jaipur’s narrow lanes: a cursed house where blood soaked the marble, where a woman had been wed in fire and corpses. Or perhaps Karan’s remaining men had silenced the witnesses before fleeing into the desert.

Dawn broke bloody red over the rooftop. She lay naked on the stone, body a canvas of ruin: torn nipple piercings crusted black with dried blood, shallow knife cuts across her breasts and thighs weeping fresh red lines, the inked sun tattoo on her mound swollen and angry, cum from Vikram still leaking in slow, viscous trails down her inner thighs. Vikram knelt beside her, cleaning the wounds with rainwater and torn strips of his own kurta. His hands shook—not from fear, but from the effort of restraint.