The first gray light of dawn crept through the curtains and found Vikram Malhotra already awake. He lay motionless between the two sleeping women, his body still and his mind racing. Twenty years of discipline had trained him to rise before the sun, but this morning was different. This morning he was not a retired colonel. This morning he was not a father, not a patriarch, not a guardian of tradition. This morning he was simply a man. A man who had been reborn in the darkness of his son's bedroom. A man who had tasted something sweeter than duty and far more intoxicating than honor.

He turned his head slowly. Priya was curled against his left shoulder, her black hair spread across the pillow like spilled ink. Meher was pressed against his right side, her leg still thrown possessively over his thigh. Both women were naked. Both women were marked by him, their skin bearing the faint red imprints of his fingers. Both women had called out his name in the night, not "Sasurji" but something more primal, something that shattered every boundary he had ever believed sacred.