The name sat in my palm like a small flame.

Diya.

The name sat in my palm like a small flame.

I turned the photograph over again, hoping the word would change, hoping the face would become someone else’s child, someone else’s buried crime.

But the girl looked back at me with Aarav’s eyes.

My eyes.

Same sharp chin. Same serious mouth. Same stubborn crease between the brows. And above her left eyebrow, a pale lightning-shaped scar, almost a mirror of Aarav’s.

Aarav came closer, dirt still under his fingernails from the rose bed.

“Who is she?” he asked.

No adult answered.

Because every adult there had suddenly become too afraid of truth.

Raghav Kaka took the photograph from my hand with trembling fingers. The moment he saw the child’s face, his knees weakened. Leela caught his arm.

“Kaka?” I said.

He did not look at me.

Instead, he pressed the photograph to his forehead and began to cry.

Not like before.

This was older grief.

Buried grief.

The kind that has waited years for permission to breathe.

“You know her,” I whispered.

Raghav Kaka closed his eyes.

“I saw her once.”

My heart began beating so hard it hurt.

“Where?”

“At the clinic,” he said. “The night Aarav was left.”

Aarav looked from him to me.

“Dadu?”

Raghav Kaka wiped his face quickly, as if ashamed of crying before the child.

“I went back,” he said. “After I found Aarav behind the clinic. He was blue from cold. Barely breathing. I wrapped him in my shawl and ran. But when I reached the gate, I heard another baby crying.”

Another baby.

The garden tilted beneath me.

“I tried to go back,” he whispered. “A guard stopped me. He said no one was there. He pushed me away. Aarav was dying in my arms, baba. I had to choose.”

He looked at Aarav as if still apologizing.

“I chose the child I could carry.”

Aarav slipped his small hand into Raghav Kaka’s.

The old man broke again.

I turned to Suri.

“Where is she?”

Suri opened the packet with the careful hands of a man who had spent his life letting paper speak for human sins.

“There is a transfer record,” he said. “Female embryo. Implanted through a separate surrogate arrangement. Birth registered under another family name.”

“What family?”

He hesitated.

I stepped closer.

“What family?”

“Khanna,” he said.

Leela inhaled sharply.

I knew the name.

Everyone in Delhi knew the name.

Vikram Khanna, hotel magnate, donor to hospitals, collector of orphan charities and newspaper praise. His wife, Nisha, had died three months ago. Their daughter had appeared in society pages once or twice beside birthday cakes too large for any child’s happiness.

Diya Khanna.

My daughter.

My stolen daughter.

Aarav touched the edge of the photograph.

“She looks angry,” he said.

I looked at her again.

“No,” I whispered. “She looks alone.”

Aarav considered that.

“Same thing sometimes.”

No one spoke after that.

By evening, the police were at the farmhouse.

By night, Meera’s lawyer stopped answering her calls.

And by morning, the Mehra name, which my father had protected with cruelty, began to rot in public daylight.

But none of that mattered to Aarav.

He did not care about forged documents, illegal surrogacy networks, hidden trusts, or the fact that men in expensive suits suddenly called me sir with fear instead of pride.

He cared only about one thing.

“Are we going to get her?” he asked.

We.

The word entered me softly.

I knelt before him.

“I am going to try.”

His face hardened.

“Try means maybe no.”

“Yes,” I said. “It does.”

“Then try harder.”

So I did.

For three days, I learned how helpless money becomes when a child has already been made into someone else’s secret.

Vikram Khanna refused to meet me.

His lawyers claimed Diya was his legally adopted daughter. The clinic denied wrongdoing. Records disappeared. Nurses forgot. Guards retired. Signatures became smudges. Dates became clerical errors.

But grief leaves witnesses greed cannot always buy.

A retired midwife came forward after seeing Ananya’s photograph in the investigation file. She remembered two babies born the same week, both transferred through “private instructions.” One boy rejected. One girl taken.

“She had a scar,” the midwife said. “Small cut near the eyebrow. Nursery glass broke during a storm.”

Not a fall.

Not an accident from childhood.

A mark from the same night.

Aarav listened from behind Raghav Kaka’s chair.

After the woman left, he touched his own scar.

“So we got matching lightning.”

I nodded, unable to speak.

He stood straighter.

“Then she will know.”

On the fourth day, the court allowed a supervised meeting.

Not because Vikram Khanna became merciful.

Because the DNA petition could no longer be buried.

We met Diya in a children’s counseling room with yellow walls and shelves full of toys no child had touched.

She wore a blue dress, white shoes, and suspicion like armor.

Vikram Khanna stood behind her, one hand on her shoulder.

Too tight.

“This is unnecessary,” he said.

Diya did not look at him.

She looked at me.

Then at Aarav.

Her eyes narrowed.

“Why does he have my face?”

Aarav stepped forward before anyone could stop him.

“Because maybe you have mine.”

Diya stared.

Then her gaze moved to the scar above his eyebrow.

Her hand went slowly to her own.

For one impossible second, both children stood touching the same old wound.

The counselor began to speak.

Diya interrupted her.

“Are you here to take me?”

Her voice was not afraid.

It was worse.

It was prepared.

As if she had already packed herself inside and locked the door.

I crouched down, keeping my hands visible.

“No.”

Her chin lifted.

“People always say that before taking.”

“I am here to tell you the truth,” I said. “And to ask what you want when you are ready.”

Vikram Khanna laughed coldly.

“She is six. She wants her home.”

Diya looked back at him.

“I am five.”

The room went silent.

Khanna’s face tightened.

Diya turned back to me.

“My birthday is wrong in their papers,” she said. “Nanny told me once. Then she got sent away.”

Aarav looked at me.

I felt something dark rise in my chest.

“Do you know a woman named Ananya?” I asked gently.

Diya’s face changed.

Not much.

But enough.

“She came once,” Diya whispered. “At my school gate.”

My breath stopped.

“She gave me a red ribbon.”

Aarav’s eyes widened.

“Ma had red ribbons.”

Diya reached into the pocket of her dress.

Khanna snapped, “Diya.”

She flinched.

Then she pulled out a faded red ribbon anyway.

It was old, frayed, tied into a careful knot.

“She said,” Diya continued, looking only at Aarav now, “if a boy with lightning on his face ever finds me, I should not be scared.”

Aarav swallowed.

“I am the boy.”

Diya studied him.

“You are small.”

“So are you.”

“I bite.”

“I have a dog.”

For the first time, Diya almost smiled.

Almost.

But Khanna pulled her back.

“This meeting is over.”

I stood.

“No,” I said.