His brain reminded him of her betrayal with a relentless frenzy, and yet he could not find it in his heart to refuse her request. Whether to blame it on the way she had phrased her request or the way honesty gleamed in her eyes, unchanged through all the years and so reminiscent of the woman he had fallen for, Aniket was not certain.

"Sure. You may accompany me," said Aniket, with a sigh, turning his gaze to the ground. Ashna nodded with a small morose smile playing on her lips.

Aniket and Ashna turned to their respective lawyers to inform that an emergency had knocked at their doors and they could not attend the court proceedings. They also instructed their managers to write an official letter to the court to convey their regret for not being able to make it to the hearing. Ashna called for her chartered plane to be ready as early as possible.

"Your car or mine?" she asked, making him look up at her once again.

"I don't think I am in the condition to drive," he answered, the conflict of myriads of emotions wreaking havoc on his senses and sanity. Ashna realized he did not want the drivers to drive them to the airport.

"I will drive. No problem at all," she said, turning to her manager for the keys to her Audi and guiding him towards the parking.

The journey to the airport was a quiet one, but both of them were aware the journey might be the last one as life-partners. The surrogacy contract's clause had not escaped Ashna's thoughts and the implications to the surrogate upon failure to secure divorce hung heavy over her chest. But she did not want to add to the agitation in Aniket's mind by mentioning the contract to him.

So lost was Aniket in his thoughts that he did not alight when they had reached their destination. Ashna turned towards him with a rueful smile and placed her palm over his hand to bring his attention to herself.

"Don't worry, it will be fine. The child and the mother will be in perfect health and we will reach in time."

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"Aunty, how is Kriti? What did the doctors say?" asked Aniket when he saw Swati waiting in the lobby outside the labor theatre. Ashna's eyes widened when the name registered in her mind. The surrogate was not Shipra as she had thought. It was the fierce physician, the one with no child of her own, the unwed Kriti.

Ashna's eyebrows furrowed and the root of her nose crinkled as tried to decipher how her husband had zeroed in the kind woman for the surrogacy. Neither did she meet the legal criteria to be a surrogate, nor were they thickest of friends like Shipra and Aniket were.

"The water has broken and contractions are strong. Doctor said she will deliver anytime now," said Swati, eying at Ashna for any signs of malice or fury, but Ashna had proved her wrong when she found genuine concern floating amongst confusion in her eyes.

"I didn't think that you will bring him here. It takes a lot of integrity to take your husband to someone who is delivering his child," mused Swati, eying Ashna, who stared at Aniket's retreating form as he entered the donning area of the labor theatre to rush to Kriti's side.

"Not will, Aunty. It takes love, and I have had it for years," she answered with a mist of melancholy, kissing her doe-shaped eyes.

"Thank you for not letting me down, Ashna. I had expected nothing less from you," said Swati, cupping Ashna's shoulder with an affectionate clasp.

The emotional upheaval inside the labour theatre was as high as it was outside.

"Aniket..." she whispered, when the door clicked open to reveal Aniket. Tears flowed out of her bloodshot eyes and added to the trails of tears left behind by the already shed tears.

"Sorry for being late, love. I am here now." He clutched her hand in between his rough ones and caressed her forehead with a tender touch of the bulb of his fingers after planting a kiss against her partition.

"I, uh, I wanted you to know that-that if this is the last thing I do, let our child know I loved the baby."

"No! Don't even speak of death! You will get to show your love to our child yourself. Don't let your hope waver," whispered Aniket, pressing assuring gentle kisses on the back of her palm.

A new, stronger and more painful wave of contractions took over Kriti's body before she clutched Aniket's hand in a vice-like grip. Her nails left half-moon marks on his skin through which blood gushed out, but he cared more about the pain in she was, feeling the waves of myriads of emotions tingling the base of spine.

Her screams resonated in his heart and pushed him to the emotion he was most acquainted with over the years - love. It took a person drowning in love to understand that it was the same feeling which reverberated in her to undergo such turmoil to fulfill his wish, and he felt his very soul shift and etch her name on the canvas of his heart.

Her screams stopped with an abrupt sigh, and it was the cries of a newborn which reverberated in the room. But instead of happiness at fulfilling his wish, fear knocked at his mind

"Doctor! What happened to Kriti? Why did she stop?" he asked, rubbing her palm like an obsessed man who had lost the very source of water he had found after eons of wait and penance.

"She just fainted out of fatigue, sir. Her vitals are stable. There is no reason to worry. Especially since you have been blessed with a girl. Congratulations!"

The doctor pointed towards the head nurse, cleaning and weighing the neonate. Aniket wiped the sweat which had poured from her temples. He freed his hand from Kriti's already loosened grip and walked towards the baby, forwarded towards him by the doctor.

The feeling of taking the life which one had created into one's arms was too ethereal to be put into words. The ecstatic burst of emotions which began at the heart and spread out to every cell, eliciting the fleeting and flattering bliss which only intensified when that life held one's fingers and the very soul awoke from its dormant state to welcome a part of it.

He walked out of the labor room to show his bundle of joy to the mother-figure in his life. "Look at her, Aunty! Isn't she beautiful?"

"She looks divine! I will go have a look at Kriti," said Swati, excusing herself to give some privacy to Ashna and Aniket.

"Congratulations, Aniket. I am thrilled for you," said Ashna, caressing the head of the infant with a gentle caress with the back of her hand and she bowed to place a kiss on her forehead when she felt Aniket move the child away from her.

"What did you say that night?" His voice was no longer the voice of an ecstatic man embracing fatherhood, but that of a scorned husband. "You said I could find myself a surrogate, but you won't be the mother, didn't you? How would you feel if I tell you that this child is conceived the natural way and is a symbol of Kriti's love for me, something which you never had? How do you feel right now? Shattered, cheated?"

Ashna's lower lip quivered when her worst fears turned into her reality. The need for vengeance had brought out shrewd heartlessness of her husband and how! "You know, I thought you would grovel knowing I had found a surrogate. I thought you would try making amends. That you would look beyond yourself and your ego. You wanted another chance, right? That clause subjecting the contract to our divorce was that chance, but you never deserved it. You-"

The sound of her palm connecting with his cheek resounded in the otherwise empty lobby, and Aniket stood stupefied by her choice of action. Ashna had never been the one for violence. Not when the school had presented the culprits behind the morphing of her pictures. Not when the court had declared the producer guilty of molesting her. But there she was, with a shaking form which had turned crimson and balled fists, moments after slapping him.

"You wanted revenge? Understandable, Aniket, but did you think of Kriti? Of your child, who will have to live without her mother? You wanted a way out, an easy way out, and you played with so many lives, Aniket. That's not even the worst part. The terrible part is where you don't realize what you have done," lashed Ashna, spitting fire from her eyes in a way Aniket had never witnessed.

"You are the one to speak..." he began, only to be stopped by her outstretched palm raising.

"Yes, Mr. Aniket Rawat, I am the one to speak. Since you hold such a low view of me, it should mean much more to you I am the one berating you. You had no right to play with her life. Let me take the responsibility for being your wife for one last time and correct your sin. I will divorce you, and I will ensure she does not have to run behind lawyers to meet her own child," she rebuked before turning around on her heels and walking out of the hospital, leaving him in the turbulence of his own thoughts.

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