It was supposed to be a normal day.
Ananya had just finished folding the tiny clothes in the nursery, humming the lullaby Rael had grown fond of hearing. The house was calm — almost too quiet — and for a moment, it felt like life had finally settled into something safe.
Then the scream came.
A housemaid. Outside.
By the time Ananya reached the front hall, chaos had already begun.
Blood on the marble floor.
A shattered window.
And in the center of it all, a cradle — overturned, broken.
Empty.
---
She didn't remember the moments that followed clearly.
Only that she screamed until her throat bled.
That she ran, barefoot, across the courtyard.
That her knees gave out by the rose bushes where she'd last taken a walk with her unborn child pressing gently inside her.
And that no one held her.
No one asked if she was okay.
---
The doctors confirmed it.
The baby was gone.
A rupture.
A trauma.
They didn't say the word. But Ananya knew it.
Murder.
---
Rael didn't meet her eyes when he entered the hospital room.
His jaw was tight. His posture too stiff.
His family followed.
They didn't hug her. They didn't ask what happened.
They asked only one thing:
"Why were you alone?"
---
"She must've fallen," his aunt whispered later.
"No signs of forced entry," his cousin added.
"She was always moody. Maybe she was overwhelmed."
"She probably didn't want the baby anymore."
The words built like a wall around her, one stone at a time.
Rael never stopped them.
---
Ananya sat on the hospital bed, a hollow shell.
She whispered once, "Someone did this."
Rael looked at her.
"Who?"
"Someone from your past. You've made enemies."
He didn't deny it.
But he didn't investigate.
He didn't call anyone.
He didn't comfort her.
---
When they returned home, the nursery had already been emptied.
By Rael's orders.
No warning.
Just silence where dreams once lived.
She found the lullaby book in the trash.
She didn't cry.
Not yet.
---
Days passed.
Then a week.
Then another.
Rael stopped sleeping in their bed. He stopped speaking more than three words to her.
She tried once to talk.
"There's still a part of me missing."
He said, "You did this."
The words didn't register at first.
Then they burned.
"You think I killed our baby?"
"You were the only one there."
"I was attacked!"
"By ghosts?" he snapped. "There was no evidence. Not even a witness."
"You didn't even check."
"I didn't have to."
That was the last time she spoke to him that month.
---
His family grew colder.
Servants stopped greeting her.
The mansion became a tomb.
And her heart — the one that had once learned to beat again — began to retreat into silence.
---
One night, as Rael stood in his office, staring at a photo of the nursery, he whispered, "Why would she do it?"
Not knowing — far away in the hallway — Ananya had heard him.
She didn't say a word.
She just walked to her room, closed the door, and for the first time since losing her baby—
planned to leave again.
---