Vansh Raje wasn’t hypocritical enough to see his life as anything but charmed. Handsome: Vogue had declared him the most gorgeous of his siblings, and even he wouldn’t argue populist opinions about beauty with Vogue. Smart: Not book-brilliant like his siblings, but cleverer than all of them put together, as his grandmother always assured everyone, and who would argue with a grandmother about the intelligence of her grandchildren? Rich: that, of course, was the most tangible of labels, so no reinforcements of proof were necessary.

Add to that a loving—fine, make that doting—family, and a contagiously sunny disposition that was his greatest asset, and Vansh had made it halfway into his twenties without ever facing anything to throw him off his admittedly spectacular game.

“Well, don’t you look all pleased with yourself, Baby Prince,” Naina Kohli said. She had known Vansh his whole life and had the only voice on earth that had this particular impact on him. A potent combination of reprimand and amusement that made Vansh want to wipe his face like a toddler caught eating dirt, while also making him feel like no one else ate dirt quite as impressively as he did.

“And don’t you look resplendent, Knightlina,” he said, raising his glass of celebratory bubbly at her.

A flash of anger slipped past her guarded brown eyes. She hated her given name—enough to have legally changed it at eighteen. Vansh was the only person on earth who got away with using it anymore. And he only used it when that tone of hers made the otherwise nonexistent orneriness bubble up inside him. Then she smiled and did a quick half turn showcasing her charcoal-gray silk pantsuit.

“Not bad for the spurned ex, ha?” she offered.

“Not at all bad for the spurned fake ex,” he countered.

She shrugged as though she cared not a bit for anything, least of all that distinction. They drank to that, and took in the night sky reflected in the pool on Vansh’s parents’ estate. Naina had chanced upon him here after Vansh had made his way to the private alcove behind the pool house to get away from the thousand-odd guests celebrating his brother’s historic election win.

Yash, Vansh’s oldest sibling, had just won California’s gubernatorial race in one of the closest elections in recent history, also known as a bloodbath. Or that’s how it had felt in that last week of campaigning when Yash’s opponent had dropped the gloves and every modicum of decency and gone after Yash as a liar, a cheat, and when nothing else worked, as a foreign-funded, idol-worshipping philanderer.

The only reason Yash had been able to pull off the win was because he’d convinced the people of California that he could make law and order work without compromising social justice. Yash had brought the leaders of the Black justice movement and the police union leaders to the negotiating table. A meeting Vansh had pulled together for Yash, thank you very much, because Vansh had been friends with the leader of the union from his Peace Corps days.

“Do you think they have something a little stronger? Or a lot stronger?” Naina asked, her always self-possessed voice slipping slightly as her eyes widened with disbelief.

Vansh followed her gaze to the couple who rounded the corner into the private alcove. It struck Vansh that Naina had probably also been looking for some privacy when she’d found her way here. Which was obviously precisely what his brother and his girlfriend were looking for as they came into view, hands all over each other, making out like horny teenagers, entirely unaware of Vansh and Naina tucked away out of their line of sight.

Desperate sounds of arousal escaped from them as they tugged at each other’s clothes and hair.

Vansh almost cleared his throat—he probably should have—but he was frozen at the sight of this new version of Yash. India said something, and laughter shivered through the two of them in a way so intimate Vansh stepped in front of Naina to protect her from it.

It had been barely a few months since Yash had, very publicly, left Naina for India Dashwood just weeks before the election, effectively risking his lifelong dream of becoming the governor of California to be with India instead of Naina. A fact that Naina seemed to be reliving with every cell in her being given how hard she was trying to appear nonchalant.

With another possessive moan, Yash pushed India into the wall and she arched her body against his. This uninhibited, reckless Yash couldn’t possibly be the tightlaced brother Vansh had grown up in the shadow of.

Taking care not to look at Naina, Vansh cleared his throat loudly enough to break through whatever pheromone-fueled idiocy had gripped the newly elected governor at this very well-attended party.

Yash and India jumped apart with all the force befitting two usually uptight people caught in the act of quasi-fornicating in public.

Pushing India behind him, Yash spun around to find Vansh trying to channel their mother and glare without glaring. If Naina had not been standing next to him, Vansh would have been rolling with laughter. This was the sort of thing comedic writers spent hours workshopping. Vansh had spent four months, years ago, working with a friend on his sitcom. It had sounded like much more fun than it had turned out to be, and they’d never come up with a situation nearly this ludicrous.

“Naina.” India was the first to break the mortified silence. Flaming cheeks notwithstanding, her voice was calm and filled with warmth. This was not a surprise. India had the sort of Buddha vibe Vansh had seen monks in Dharamshala aspire to with little success. “Vansh. I hope you’re both having a good time,” she added, doubling down on the yogic vibe.

That made Yash press a cough-laugh into his fist. God, was this really his brother?

India threw what could only be called the fondest glare at Yash, who seemed to be tearing up with the effort of containing his mirth. To be perfectly honest, if Vansh met his brother’s eyes they would both burst into laughter.

“Oh, we’re having a great time,” Naina said, with every bit of the elegant drollness Vansh associated with her.

“Although not nearly as much fun as we interrupted,” Vansh said before he could stop himself and gave up on holding his laughter back. “What the hell, Yash? This is literally a political party thrown by your political party.”

“We just needed a moment,” India said, her blush deepening. “It’s been a lot.”

Yash sobered and slid a protective arm around her. “The worst of the circus is over,” he said, his statesman shoulders widening with purpose. “Campaigns are the worst part. Now the press will shift its focus to my work. They’ll leave you alone. I’ll make sure of it.”

The relief on India’s face was palpable.

Naina’s body stiffened infinitesimally. She covered it up with more of that determined breeziness and smiled kindly at India.

Before anyone could say more, another intertwined couple turned the corner into the private alcove that was turning out not to be so private after all.

“I’ve been waiting for you to use your gavel all evening, Your Honor.”

God, please, no! Those were the last words on earth Vansh ever, ever, wanted to hear his oldest sister say to her judge husband. Ever.

Yash, who was generally not the sort of guy who snorted with laughter, snorted with laughter so violently that Nisha and Neel jumped apart like someone had fired a cannon.

Nisha’s hands pressed into her face. “No. No. Nononono. What the hell are you all doing here?”

“Not waiting for Neel to use his gavel, that’s for sure,” Yash said, still howling like a hyena. Which, to be fair, Vansh was doing as well.

Nisha charged at Yash. Neel grabbed her around her waist. As a circuit court judge (with a gavel), Neel obviously saw enough crazy shit on a daily basis that he was entirely unfazed by any Raje family shenanigans.

He held Nisha in check while laughing into her hair, and in the end she broke down and started laughing too, embarrassed though the laughter was.

“If either one of you tells anyone, I’m going to chop you into little pieces and pass you through a mulch shredder,” their sister threatened.

“Who let her watch Fargo?” Vansh asked, and Neel looked heavenward.

Ignoring the question, Nisha disengaged herself from her husband and threw her arms around India. “I’m so sorry you’re stuck with my evil brother,” she said with the kind of gleeful affection that indicated exactly how thrilled she actually was that India was stuck with their brother. Then she noticed that Naina was also there.

Until this moment Vansh had believed that Nisha had inherited their mother’s talent for absolute discretion. Nisha had a veritable toolbox of expressions under which she hid anything she didn’t want others to see. But a blast of such extreme discomfort and confusion at Naina’s being here flitted across Nisha’s face that she couldn’t seem to identify exactly which mask-expression to use to cover it up.

Nonetheless, she made a valiant effort. “Naina,” she said only the slightest bit late, and Vansh hoped Naina hadn’t noticed.

Letting India go, Nisha turned to Naina, unable to decide how to get away with not hugging Naina now that she had greeted India so effusively. Nisha obviously did not feel the same way about their brother’s ex as she did about their brother’s current girlfriend. Most of the family blamed Naina for trapping Yash in a loveless relationship for ten years.

“Great to see you, Naina,” Neel said, saving the day with his signature warmth and circuit-judge equanimity, and gave Naina a friendly hug. “I heard you’ve moved back to town permanently.”

“Sure have.” Naina returned Neel’s hug and then let Nisha give her a quick, and hella awkward, one.

Before the awkwardness could settle on them in earnest, Vansh noticed a bottle in Neel’s hand.

“Is that scotch in your gavel-wielding hands, Your Honor?” Vansh asked, raising a brow at their stickler-about-these-things sister. Nisha was the one who’d given strict instructions for a California-wine-and-California-bubbly-only party.

Nisha was about to charge at Vansh when more sounds drifted in from the corner of horny doom that his siblings had evidently withheld from Vansh his entire life.

Ashna and her boyfriend entered the alcove already in a lip-lock, which at least made it impossible to say something incriminating that the others could use to embarrass them for the rest of their lives.

“Does anyone have a glass?” Neel asked as though they were at a bar watching a game.

In what was now starting to feel like an overdone off-Broadway comedy, Ashna jumped away from Rico, who had his hands halfway up her very prim dress.

Vansh dumped out his remaining overpriced yet not nearly strong enough bubbly into the bushes and offered his glass to Neel, who poured a healthy serving from the bottle.

Naina was the only other person with a glass, and she chugged her wine and held it out for a fill.

“Hey, everyone,” Rico said as though getting caught with his hands and his tongue all over his girlfriend with a large majority of her family watching was the most ordinary of things. This perfectly described Rico Silva.

Ashna was their cousin, but Vansh didn’t ever remember thinking of her as anything but his sister. After Ashna’s parents’ separation, she’d pretty much grown up here, on Vansh’s parents’ estate in Woodside. Sometimes Vansh thought Ashna was more one of the siblings than he was.

Face flaming red, Ashna snatched the glass from Vansh and took a mighty gulp. “Where’s Trisha?” she asked calmly enough.

Vansh’s other sister, Trisha, was the only one who was missing from the now crowded alcove. All eyes turned to the corner, as though everyone expected Trisha and her boyfriend, DJ, to appear.

“I’m calling her,” Nisha said. “She’s probably running around trying to find us to keep the aunties and uncles from cornering her and DJ and asking when they’re getting married and making babies.”

A phone started ringing and they all looked down at their pockets and purses. Then everyone seemed to register that the ringing was coming from inside the pool house. Just as that realization sank in, the door pushed open and out stepped Trisha and DJ.

Trisha had obviously been unable to pat down her always-wild hair after whatever DJ and she had been doing in there. Next to her DJ looked as cool as any man trying his damnedest to appear cool could. He took the glass of scotch that was circulating around the crowd and drained it.

“Macallan eighteen has a tad bit too much smoke, if you ask me,” DJ declared in his British-chef voice. He was one of those chefs who probably thought about flavors and hints of this and that in his sleep. Also, it was evidently what he fell back on when caught in a compromising situation with his girlfriend by her zero-boundaries family.

“So you’ve all been defiling the pool house all these years and no one bothered to tell me.” Vansh filled the glass up again, and yes, he sounded sulky as hell at being left out. Vansh was a good five years younger than Ashna, who was the closest to him in age. Between the age gap and the fact that he had gone off to boarding school in India at sixteen, he should have been used to the feeling by now.

“Eeew,” all his sisters said at once.

Nisha took the glass out of Vansh’s hand again. “It’s a good thing we let you drink when you’re underage.”

He was twenty-six and they all knew it.

“It’s illegal in the state of California for children to have sex,” Trisha said, ruffling Vansh’s hair with complete disregard for how much he hated his hair being ruffled. It took a lot of effort to get it to look this good. “And we’re the Rajes. You’re not allowed to get frisky until you’re thirty.”

“How are you allowed to be thirty-two and call it ‘getting frisky’?” Vansh said, patting his hair back in place. “And for the record, I could teach you a thing or two about getting frisky.”

Trisha made a gagging face and then smiled. “Of course, baby.” She wrapped her arms around Vansh. “You could teach most of us a thing or two about most things. You’re our worldly baby brother, the light of our lives.”

“The apple of our eyes,” Nisha said, joining the hug.

“Our pride and joy,” Ashna said, completing the group hug.

“But we are going to have to punch you if you mention sex around us again,” Trisha finished up.

As his sisters squeezed him and let him go, the sting of being left out of their nefarious pool house antics, and everything else they always thought he was too young for, died down.

Naina was standing a little apart from the circle, her cool smile daring anyone to question how little she cared that no one had noticed her. Taking Naina’s glass from her, Vansh took a long sip.

The casual glass sharing, unfortunately, drew attention to her presence. His sisters looked at one another and pretended not to look at one another, and Naina took the glass back and drained the little Vansh had left in there in one gulp.

The undercurrents of shade could have sunk ships.

Yash picked up the bottle from the patio table and filled Naina’s glass up again.

“It’s great to have you back, brat,” Yash-the-politician said, trying to distract from the rising tide of awkwardness. “Great job again on your help with the campaign. I couldn’t have done this without you. Any of you.”

They all hooted and clapped.

“You better save the speech for the stage, Mr. Governor,” Nisha said, staring down at her phone. “Ma just texted the family group chat. She’s freaking out because she can’t find any of us.”

“Duty calls.” Yash dropped a kiss on India’s head. “You ready to go back out there?”

“You bet,” India said.

“To Yash.” Neel raised the bottle.

“To Yash,” everyone repeated, and took sips straight from the bottle before dispersing.

Naina and Vansh watched them leave and Naina downed what was left in her glass then eyed the empty bottle in Vansh’s hand. It was hard to know how much scotch they’d consumed, except from the nice buzz Vansh had swimming between his ears.

“I believe you asked if there was anything stronger than the wine available,” he said.

Laughing with far too much relief, Naina dropped into the patio swing. The reflection of the full moon broke and scattered across the pool’s surface. “This is what I get for even suggesting there was a lack of booze on the Raje estate.”

Vansh sat down next to her.

You okay?he wanted to ask, but nothing about her allowed that question. Her jet-black hair fell in sleek layers to her proudly held shoulders. Her high porcelain cheekbones showed not a line of emotion. Her legs were neatly crossed at the ankles. Her manicured hands were folded in her lap. She presented as self-possessed and unbreakable a picture as there could ever be.

“I’m perfectly fine,” she answered anyway. “It’s not like what Yash and I had was real.” The glance she threw the moonlight dancing on the pool was almost bored.

“Your friendship was real.” Naina and Yash had been best friends since they were in grade school.

“And it still is.” She played absently with the whisper-thin gold chain hanging from her wrist. “But anyone can see that India is better for him than I would ever be. And, well”—looking up from the bracelet, she spun a hand around in a circle—“all this . . . Rajeness. It’s a lot. And it’s not really my cup of tea. Not having to deal with this level of drama on a day-to-day basis is a huge relief. Everyone is better off this way.”

Vansh didn’t agree. His family was perfect. This drama was what he missed when he was gone. But she was right, it wasn’t for everyone.

“What about you?” she said. “What’s the Baby Prince’s next project? Which part of the world are you jetting off to next?”

For so long it had been the question Vansh had lived for. Now, sitting in this alcove, where peace shimmered in the air despite the throngs celebrating on the other side of the pool house, Vansh found that he wasn’t sure. For the first time in his life the thought of leaving wasn’t an irresistible pull.

“Not quite sure,” he said.

“Really?” She studied him in that partly amused but fully focused way of hers.

“Maybe it has to do with being instrumental in Yash winning the election, but being here suddenly feels different. That success seems to have changed something inside me.” He touched his heart, where satisfaction and pride filled him up.

“You can’t be serious.” Was she laughing at him? Her tone slid from amusement to scolding, their familiar pattern dancing between them again. “Success?”

“I sense a question mark at the end of that word. Do you doubt it was a success?”

Her dramatic eyebrows arched over wide, amber-flecked eyes. “Success implies endeavor, Vansh.”

“How can you say that?” Sure, he sounded petulant, but only because he felt petulant. “The meeting between the police union and BLM leaders would never have happened without me.”

She made the effort to soften her tone but not her words. “That meeting happened because both parties trusted Yash.”

No one said she wasn’t entitled to her opinion. Vansh gave her his most charming smile, making sure his dimples dug into his cheeks in a way that usually made people melt. Not Naina, of course. Naina had been immune to his dimples since she’d caught him sneaking out his father’s car at fifteen when he’d backed it straight into hers. While mildly high.

Publicly she’d taken the blame, but privately she’d lectured him for days and then kept on him about safety for months. Her lectures always hit harder than he’d ever admit. He’d felt terrible. Two cars had been destroyed. The worst thing was that they’d ended up in landfills. As a punishment to himself, Vansh had never owned a car after that.

He’d been grateful that Naina had taken the blame and saved his ass. It hadn’t been the only time either. Ma and Dad never got upset with Naina about anything. Like Yash, she was beyond reproach with his family. Or she had been until the deception with Yash had come out. Now she seemed to be persona non grata, and the unfairness of that stuck in Vansh’s throat. But the patronizing look she was giving him helped him get over it.

“That meeting happened because I spent a year in Guatemala with the leader of the police union in the Peace Corps. I was the one he trusted.”

The smile she gave him was tolerant, but Vansh saw it for what it was: an eye roll disguised as a smile. In her eyes the credit Yash gave him was just another bone his family threw him.

She was not wrong about his family’s indulging him. Vansh enjoyed all the gifts of his older siblings without being encumbered by the weight of expectations they all dragged around.

Vansh had no interest in letting the weight of other people’s expectations and definitions of ambition hold him down. He traveled light, let the wind carry him where he was most needed.

“True success doesn’t need external validation,” he said as loud cheering rose from the jubilant crowd thronging the grounds of his childhood home.

Naina’s eyes narrowed, as though she saw something about him that he himself couldn’t see. The fact that she’d just dismissed his contribution to his brother’s victory meant she didn’t see him at all.

Naina’s approval, or anyone else’s for that matter, was immaterial. The only approval he needed was his own. And that he had in spades.

A thought that had been nudging at the back of his mind suddenly pushed forward. “I do need a new project. I just don’t think I need to go away to find it this time.” Helping Yash had shown him something. “I think my country and my family need me, and I’ve been ignoring them and chasing butterflies for far too long.”

Naina Kohli didn’t like too many people. Liking people and being liked in return was a childish and shortsighted endeavor. It worked for those interested in transient happiness induced by dopamine hits and instant gratification. It had little to do with real life, which was a long, weary road.

Her parents, for instance, pretty much loathed each other.

Her father’s loathing was more obvious, of course, because the patriarchy was a many-splendored thing. Men got to be honest. With their loathing for inferior spouses, with their disdain for their inferiorly gendered offspring. Men didn’t have to fear loss, especially not the men who carefully constructed and inculcated dependency on them in their loathed ones.

“Naina beta!” Naina’s mother threw a look over her shoulder, undoubtedly to make sure her husband wasn’t watching, before rushing over to her only child across the throng of guests celebrating Yash’s win on the Raje estate.

Naina and her father, the illustrious Dr. Kohli, were no longer on speaking terms after she’d told her parents that Yash was not interested in marrying her and that he was in love with someone else, who was not her.

So a yoga instructor with unknown parentage could trap himin a few months but you couldn’t keep him after having ten years to do it?

Yes, Dr. Kohli was a delight. Not having to deal with him any longer was the most fortuitous thing that had ever happened to Naina.

The sheer enormity of the relief Naina felt at the fact that Vansh had gone off to mingle and she was blessedly alone when her mother found her should have been embarrassing, but Naina no longer let embarrassment and her mother mix in her mind.

Despite Naina’s best efforts, her mother’s presence, her smell, her voice—it all fell like precision cuts on the ice that usually covered her like impenetrable armor.

“You good, Mummy?” she said with a casualness that made her mother’s hand tremble at her throat, where her string of solitaires caught every one of the million decorative lights brightening the Raje estate.

Naina had no doubt her father had ordered her mother to don the bling. Wear your biggest diamonds . . . That thing you had made in India to replicate Tiffany.

High-priced gems set to knock off even higher-priced gems was apparently the perfect way of announcing to the world that the Rajes had lost a precious alliance, while also making sure everyone knew that the Kohlis were just as good as the Rajes.

They weren’t.

But Dr. Kohli would never know why.

He was a medical inventor, and each of his inventions might have changed millions of lives, but he had never felt the need to change the regressive ideology that had been grown inside his head in the sprawling, entitlement-filled kothi in the village in India he’d grown up in.

“I’m all fine,” her mother said, eyes still darting around and taking note of who was watching her talking to her daughter while also making sure Dr. Kohli didn’t show up and catch her in the act of consorting with the enemy. “I was not expecting to find you here.”

If her mother had taught Naina anything, she’d taught her how to show up in uncomfortable situations. Every day.

“Whyever not?” The easy tone emerged from Naina’s lips with barely any effort. “Yash is still my friend.” He’d been her only friend, and if her being here months after her very public dumping made things easier for him by making him look a little less like a cheating jerk, then here she’d be.

“I don’t understand you children,” her mother said about her thirty-eight-year-old daughter who had never had a chance to be a child, and had spent her entire adult life trying to change the lives of women in the remotest, most neglected parts of the world.

“I know.” Those words landed on her mother like a blow and Naina kicked herself. Casual indifference was the only way to not end up saying something hurtful to her mother. Hurting her mother was like kicking a puppy. For all her reputation for hardness, Naina would never kick a puppy.

Ask me about my foundation,Naina wanted to say. Her foundation had just received a multimillion-dollar endowment from Jignesh Mehta, the sixth-richest entrepreneur in the world. They were going to be able to bring sustainable economic independence to millions of women.

“That jacket looks so much pretty on you,” her mother said instead, then, as though she couldn’t help herself, she cupped Naina’s cheek. The look she threw over her shoulder helped Naina keep the rush of warmth from sweeping her away. “You were always such beautiful girl,” she added with exactly the same expression she wore while trying to resolve an irreconcilable loss on her household expenses spreadsheet.

Suddenly she took Naina’s arm, and with another furtive glance combing the crowd, she dragged Naina to one of the powder rooms in the Raje mansion. Once they were inside, she locked them in. Despite all this caution, when she spoke her voice was a whisper, just in case someone had their ear pressed to the bathroom door in the middle of a party.

“It’s not too late, beta. If you make marriage before Yash does, everyone will forget how sad they feel for you. Your Navdeep Mamu in Cincinnati called me yesterday. Our family is being so much supportive. They’re all coming together with rishtas. Now that we’re in forties with age criteria, mostly it’s divorcés and widowers. But I put foot down. No men with children.” Naina’s mother never paused when she talked. It was as though she had to quickly deliver her speeches before she was interrupted and dismissed.

So, Naina had developed a mechanism for putting pauses in for her and tuning out the parts of the monologue that weren’t relevant. Her mother said a few more entirely ridiculous things about marriage criteria.

The only marriage criterion I have is to never be in one, Mummy. Thanks for helping me keep it simple.

“. . . Navdeep Mamu said there is surgeon who just joined his practice. Newly widowed. Very handsome. No children. Most dedicated to medicine and only medicine. No interest in politics and news and all those type things. Your mamu showed him your picture and he’s very much flipped for you.”

Oh, how Naina wished her mother had developed some skill for knowing what someone flipping for you actually involved. Then again, love was a figment of poets’ imaginations that they subjected the world to because they couldn’t stop dwelling in pain without making everyone else just as miserable as them.

An unwelcome montage of the Raje siblings climbing all over their significant others against a pool house wall did a dramatic dance in her head.

Well, no one said the Rajes weren’t burdened with enough glorious luck to make everyone else look like the losers they were. The Rajes weren’t the norm and Naina wasn’t stupid enough to believe that good fortune, or joy, rubbed off through contact. Spending a lifetime being friends with Yash had at least taught her that much.

“Remember how I always said I would only ever marry Yash? Just because he’s in love with someone else doesn’t mean I’ll suddenly settle for someone else too.” She squeezed her mother’s shoulder, because Mummy looked like she needed something to keep her from collapsing under the weight of this revelation, which Naina had made at least fifty times since Yash’s grand declaration of love for India Dashwood on national television. “I really appreciate how hard Navdeep Mamu and you have worked for me. I mean, a widowed doctor—with no children! How did your brother even find him?”

Her mother scowled. “Do you think I don’t have enough people in my life treating me like stupid? Do you think I need my own child to do it too?”

“I’m sorry.” She was. She was so deeply, deeply sorry for having hurt this woman. In ways that reached far beyond this conversation. “But I think that poor general surgeon deserves someone who knows how to do this.” How to be you. “I know only one way to be happy, and that is by being alone and focusing on my work. I will never ever get married. Not if every surgeon in the world is widowed without children and not one of them will move on unless I agree to marry him.” She met the abject disappointment in her mother’s beautiful, tired eyes. “Never, Mummy, ever.”

A sob escaped her mother, because sobs lived at her command. “What if Yash sees error of ways and takes you back?”

Naina had to laugh at that. Suddenly she saw how her mother had stayed with her father for forty years. It was this hope. This insatiable, entirely delusional ability to cheat herself into believing that the impossible could happen. That people could change how they saw things. That tomorrow was another day and all that crap.

She tried to enunciate the words without being rude, because Mummy had to understand this. “Yash is not going to do that. We never loved each other that way. We lied because my father wouldn’t let me go to Nepal unless I got married. And pretending to be with Yash was the only way to change his mind. Yash was just helping me get around Dr. Kohli’s ridiculous objections.”

This wasn’t the first time Naina was saying these words to her mother. She’d lost track of how many times she’d repeated them. Over and over and over. But there was that horrid hope that cut off her mother’s hearing, willfully, stubbornly. Hope that had made her mother unable to hear Naina or to see Naina her entire life.

Which is why Naina couldn’t say the other part. If you had ever stood up for me, I wouldn’t have had to turn to Yash.

The parts Naina could say, she would say a hundred times if she had to. “I don’t want to get married. To anyone. Not even if your Shivji himself came down from Mount Kailash. I am not made for marriage. I’m just not.” And she wasn’t going to apologize for it ever again.

With a shudder, her mother recoiled from her. “That is unnatural, beta. How you can say something so against nature, and society, and God? Your father is right. You are not normal.” She looked like the very sight of Naina made her queasy with the enormity of her own failings. “What did I do to deserve child so abnormal?”

With not a word more, she unlocked the door and left, but not before she had peeked out to make sure she wasn’t being watched.

Of all the questions her mother had asked today, Naina knew the answer to only that last one. She knew exactly what her mother had done to deserve a child so abnormal. She had created her, moment by moment, action by action, day by long day. It was a wonder that the question even needed to be asked.

Naina’s mother had been the captain of her college basketball team. A woman close to six feet tall is good for little else but sinking balls into baskets while barely seven people watch from the audience. Naina had heard this a thousand times from her grandmother. Words Naina’s father had repeated at least as many times over the years in one brilliant instance of gaslighting after another.

Needless to say, basketball was not something at the top of Dr. Kohli’s list of things that made this daughter more acceptable.

Naina had been one of the taller girls in sixth grade. After that she had mostly stopped growing and ended up favoring her father’s more average height genes. But until middle school she’d been tall enough that the basketball coach had asked her to come to tryouts.

She’d made the team with relative ease. But when she’d asked her father for the fifty dollars for team fees, he’d thrown one of his patented looks of utter disgust at her mother. The kind of look that had been responsible for teaching Naina the meaning of the word fear early in life. The kind of look that made her mother sob silently as she rolled rotis in the kitchen. The kind of look that had taught Naina exactly how useless tears were.

It was the look that had taught her she was not like the Raje children or like any of the other families in her parents’ friend group. It was the look that made it seem like the floors of their home were lined with eggshells, and they were laid out with such skill that those who didn’t live in their house never saw them.

Sometimes Naina saw the aunties study her for signs of something. Bruises? But her bruises were like the eggshells, invisible. Sometimes Naina thought people did see. But vision was like every other power: of no consequence unless you chose to use it.

When Naina had gone to her father with her request for the basketball fees, he’d asked her how her grades were. They’d been all As. She’d always been too afraid to let her grades slip.

“You have one job,” her father had once said to her mother. “To make sure your daughter does not end up stupid and uneducated like you. Luckily for you she has my genes.” Dr. Kohli always directed his disappointment in his daughter at his wife, almost as though he knew that hurting her mother was far more potent than directly hurting Naina.

Many years later, when Naina had told him she was not taking the MCATs or going to medical school, the expression on his face had brought her the kind of indescribable satisfaction she’d never until that day experienced. The man who had toyed with her helplessness for sport her whole life had looked entirely helpless. It had been a day she’d been waiting for since what she had labeled the Basketball Incident.

The night her father had refused to pay the team fees, her mother had found Naina sobbing silently in bed.

“Maybe it’s time for mother-daughter secret,” Mummy had said, and slipped an envelope into her backpack.

Never before had Naina ever felt hope like that. Searing and sharp enough to hurt.

“Really?” Her excitement had made her voice burst from her far too loudly.

“Shh!” Her mother’s smile had made her look like other mothers. “When you’re being brave you have to be very very afraid that no one find out.”

Naina had gone to bed smiling.

At her first practice, Mummy had shown up in a baby-pink tracksuit. One that made her look like one of the cool moms. Instead of the long braid hanging down her back, she had pinned her hair into a bun at her nape. When Naina had missed her shot, she’d come down from the bleachers and shown her how to make the perfect shot. Then she’d shown the other girls. She’d been firm and gentle, and magnificent. The girls on the team had followed her instructions like smitten fans. It was like having a whole different life.

After practice the coach had asked Mummy to be the team parent. Fear had flashed in Mummy’s eyes, turning her back into the mother Naina had grown up with. In that moment, Naina had realized that she would never be able to bear having her old mother back. Never.

Her mother had seen those thoughts in Naina’s eyes, because she’d agreed to become the team mom. Then she’d shown up for practice every day in her pink tracksuit with silver side stripes, and she’d worked the girls hard and made them laugh. The girls hadn’t noticed her thick accent or cared that she pinched their cheeks when they did well. The girls just looked at Naina like she was the luckiest girl in the world. She’d even stitched them matching scrunchies from the fabric she always brought home from India. Team colors of green and yellow.

On the eighth day of practice, Naina and her mother came home to find her father waiting.

“How was basketball practice, Knightlina?” There was not a trace of emotion in his voice.

“Go to your room, beta,” her mother said, a sob tearing her voice. “Now.” That last word was in her coach’s voice, and Naina knew that she would never hear that tone from her mother ever again.

The next morning, Naina came down to an empty kitchen and found a note on the island in her father’s doctor’s scrawl. “Disobedient girls go to school without breakfast.”

Naina didn’t care about breakfast. All she cared about was having her mother show up at practice. But, of course, she didn’t. Instead Naina was met by the coach’s sad eyes.

“Your mother was in an accident, Naina. You can be excused from practice today to go home early.”

J-Auntie, Yash’s housekeeper, had driven her home with Yash. Mina Auntie, Yash’s mom, always stepped in to help when Mummy felt badly. Yash had held her hand through the entire twenty-minute drive as tears streamed from Naina’s eyes. He’d known without her telling him that if he asked any questions she would die of shame.

“Do you think you can come help me with my chemistry project later?” he’d asked, his eyes so kind she’d felt like there was more to the world than what waited for her inside her house. “Ma will speak to your dad and J-Auntie will come get you.”

Naina had nodded yes and walked inside by herself. She had no idea what she expected but it hadn’t been her mother with her arm in a cast on a sling. One side of her face was swollen, and the skin squeezing her eye shut was dark purple.

Before that day Naina had been infuriated by her mother’s cowering, by her pandering, by her jumping to do his bidding even before her father spoke. Now she felt shame. Her mother had known something she hadn’t. Her mother had known and she’d made sure Naina never got to see this. Then Naina had put her in a position where the choice had been between something she wanted to show Naina and something she didn’t want her to see.

Naina, even at twelve, had known without a doubt that there was no right choice for her mother to make. That’s just what life was: a string of bad options to choose from.

God knew Naina had made her fair share of them. Sucking her best friend into a ten-year-long fake relationship was a pretty stellar example. Needing to give her father the finger at every available opportunity had been an irresistible and delicious motivator. She didn’t need a therapist to tell her that.

Now, here she was, sitting on a five-thousand-dollar Japanese commode that knew how to keep her butt warm even when she was using it as a chair with the top down. In a house her father had spent most of Naina’s life dreaming of her moving into as a daughter-in-law, because in his head that was how the world still worked. Your success lay in how well you married off your daughter. The fact that he’d never have that satisfaction made Naina positively light-headed.

At the ripe age of thirty-eight, Naina’s revenge was complete. After stringing her father along with the dream of a son-in-law who was going to be the governor of California, getting to yank that dream right from beneath his feet had been vastly more satisfying than Yash’s betrayal had been painful.

If the satisfaction of breaking her father’s heart was the full-bodied jolt of a lightning strike, the pain of Yash’s choosing someone else over her was a pinprick. One was the ocean, the other a raindrop.

So how could she be angry with Yash? And that girlfriend of his was just so hard to hate. Trying to hate India Dashwood was almost like peeing on a live wire. You’d burn yourself to a crisp and the darned thing wouldn’t even get wet.

Standing up from the warm Raje throne, Naina washed her hands and touched up her lipstick. Kissed by Frost. She’d bought the shade for the name alone. It could easily be the title of her memoir.

Truth was, being back in California, all grown up and flush with redemption, wasn’t a bad deal. The fact that her foundation had a gigantic endowment from a billionaire she had eating out of her hands wasn’t a bad deal at all.

As for Mummy and the Rajes, Naina knew exactly how to keep them all where they belonged, at a nice safe distance where they couldn’t hurt her.

Vansh watched Naina bestow one of her hard-to-win smiles on Jignesh Mehta. Like so many men before him, getting a laugh out of the untouchable Naina Kohli seemed to make the tech billionaire feel like the king of the world. Which he kind of was. Vansh wondered what they were talking about.

Clearly, Naina had her game face on. The one no one could see through. She caught Vansh watching them and he winked at her, making her narrow her eyes. But the tight edges of her mouth loosened ever so slightly in the smallest of smiles. A real one, not a carefully manufactured one like she’d just given Mehta.

Vansh was about to start toward them, but she widened her eyes, a warning to stay exactly where he was. Which only made Vansh want to join them even more. But before he could decide if he wanted to needle Naina quite that much, Mehta caught sight of him and waved him over with the kind of excitement that didn’t match up with the fact that Vansh had never met the man.

Vansh made his way over, ignoring the visual darts Naina shot his way. Mehta was a guest in his home, so there was no question of not going over to greet him when he’d been summoned so enthusiastically. Their mother had not raised someone that ill-mannered.

“You must be the younger Raje brother?” Mehta said excitedly. His voice was a little higher than Vansh had expected, and his tone was not exactly what Vansh would call entrepreneurial. He smiled perpetually but there was a restlessness in his eyes. The word pugilist came to mind—short and stocky with a clean-shaven head and a perfectly trimmed goatee.

Naina stood a head taller than Mehta in her heels. Which had to be a good five inches high because she almost matched up to Vansh’s five feet ten in them. Which meant she could treat Vansh to her plentiful condescension eye to eye.

“This is Vansh Raje, Yash’s brother,” Naina said in her Dr. Kohli’s Polite Daughter voice. “Vansh, this is Jignesh Mehta, CEO of Omnivore Systems.”

“An honor,” Vansh said.

“Cool!” Mehta said. “Cool,” he repeated, just in case someone had missed it the first time. His tone reminded Vansh of high school boys from the nineties teen movies his mother loved. “And it’s Jiggy. My friends call me Jiggy.”

Naina quirked a brow. Do not laugh.

“I hear you’re back from Zimbabwe, where you’ve been digging wells,” Jiggy said. “Sounds like a blast.”

Vansh had heard the mission described several different ways, but “a blast” was a first.

“It was a very satisfying project.” Vansh refused to look at Naina, because not cracking a smile was now a matter of pride.

Jiggy turned to Naina. “All you rich kids running around the world trying to fix it.”

This time Naina’s brow rose less subtly. Vansh couldn’t tell if she was offended that Mehta had put Vansh’s work and hers in the same general category or if she was offended that he had dismissed them both as rich kids when he himself had a personal fortune of several billion dollars.

“Some rich kids run around the world doing the actual work, while some let others do the legwork and buy the credit with their riches,” Naina said, her tone so cold, Vansh didn’t know how Mehta didn’t freeze and crumble instantly.

Instead, getting a reaction out of Naina seemed to stoke Jiggy’s smugness.

Truth was, if he wanted to use his wealth to purchase credit for good work that could use his money, then who were they to argue?

“Your foundation has been doing some amazing work,” Vansh said. “And Naina’s work is certainly a great choice for a flagship project.”

“I know, right?” Mehta countered. “Glad you think so.” He had one of those thick Western Indian accents overlaid with rolled American Rs and lengthened As.

“I know so.” Vansh found himself getting into the nineties teen-movie banter.

“So, are you and Naina like close and all?”

That took Vansh by surprise. Naina too from the quick drawing together of her winged brows. Had the eyebrow game always been so strong with her?

“We’ve known each other our whole lives,” Vansh said. Tone placating, because Naina looked like she was about to tell the Jiggster here exactly how much she didn’t think any of this was his business.

“She was almost your sister-in-law,” the man said, gossipy excitement making his beady eyes beadier.

“That would be true if Yash and I had ever had any intention of marrying.” Naina grabbed a mimosa from a passing waiter and took a sip.

This fact-based rebuttal seemed to bore Mehta. He turned to Vansh. “You have a girlfriend, Vansh?”

Okay, so the man jumped topics like he was on a trampoline.

“Not currently.”

“So where to next?”

“Haven’t decided. I’m thinking about staying here for a while. Reconnecting with my roots and all that.”

Mehta brightened. “Family is important. Are you and your brother close?”

Okay.“As close as two brothers can be.”

This declaration seemed to make Jiggs happier than it should have made anyone who wasn’t Vansh’s brother. He bounced on his velvet Manolo Blahnik loafers.

“Will you be working with him?” So, they were in a full-fledged inquisition then.

“We’re always involved in each other’s work.”

Mehta’s face lit up like the gold embroidery on his thousand-dollar shoes. “Anything specific?”

“I’ve been traveling the globe looking to be useful,” Vansh said, “but our country has quite a few of its own problems, does it not?”

“This is what I told Naina when I convinced her to move back here. But she insists on putting her focus on foreigners.” This from a man who had famously scraped his way out of poverty on the streets of Mumbai before arriving in Silicon Valley with the proverbial six dollars in his pocket.

“Your money is very convincing, Jiggy,” Naina said indifferently. But her eyes were alert. Obviously, this wasn’t the gossip session Jiggy was selling it as.

“All I want is for it to be put to good use.”

“Oh, money can always be put to good use. That’s the general point of money,” Vansh said.

Jiggy’s bark of laughter was so loud that everyone within a ten-foot radius started. One of the aunties even pressed a hand to her chest.

Jignesh thumped Vansh’s shoulder, all delighted bonhomie. “If you have any ideas—pet causes, if you will”—he gave a knowing wink that made as much sense as his general behavior—“I’d love to hear them. Naina’s endowment is large enough that she could easily share it with another worthy cause.”

Naina, who had been making the effort to look bored, snapped to attention, her focus suddenly fully trained on the two of them. “I didn’t realize my endowment was available for the taking.”

“Well, it is my money, and young Mr. Raje seems like the kind of person who knows how to help people.” Something like anger flashed in Jiggy’s eyes, even as he went on smiling.

Before Naina could respond to that vote of confidence, the crowd started clinking their glasses and everyone’s focus shifted to Yash as he jogged up onto the stage that had been constructed on the back lawn.

Californicators, the college beatboxing band that had been performing as part of a long lineup of local bands, gave him an impressive vocal drumroll, and Yash shoulder-bumped each of the seven members and said something that made every one of them look like they had just kissed the Pope’s ring.

Love for his brother swelled inside Vansh.

Finally Yash took the mic and cleared his throat, and the sea of guests who had coalesced from around the estate grounds to circle the stage burst into cheers.

“What a perfect Northern California night,” Yash said, managing to sound victorious, earnest, and in awe of the very earth they lived on. “A night filled with hope.”

Vansh hooted gleefully and the crowd joined in.

“A night I’ve dreamed of from the day I first tied my own shoelaces in kindergarten and my mother said, ‘You did that like someone who will run a country someday.’” Deafening cheering. Yash’s eyes glistened with tears. “Thanks, Ma!”

“Your mother is never wrong,” their mother shouted from the front of the crowd, her voice strong and proud.

Yash gave her a smile that made every woman in the crowd melt into a puddle and press her hands into her womb.

“Yes, Ma, you are never wrong.” He touched a hand to his heart. “Another thing my mother taught me was that actions are more important than rhetoric, so I’ll keep this short. We just made something historic and important happen, and we did it without engaging in lies and slander. We did it by coming up with ideas. Ideas that will fix what we, not someone else, we, all of us together, have broken. Our state’s future is bright.”

More cheers.

“We do an amazing job generating wealth and keeping our job market buzzing enough to shore up our nation’s economy. But we cannot leave our citizens, too many of them, who are struggling, behind. We’re miles ahead of the rest of the country in protecting our natural resources, but we cannot let fires consume us and bring destruction closer and closer to our doorsteps. We need solutions. We are the land of innovation. I am counting on each and every one of you to put your heads together for solutions. My door is open, I’m still finalizing my team, and I will introduce them to you soon. But I assure you that every person who works for me will be hungry for your input and ideas. This is our shot, we’re going to make it good.”

After that he thanked their parents, their grandmother. Every one of the siblings and cousins. He waved up to the balcony, where their grandmother waved down to him. Their cousin Esha, who never left the suite on the top floor when strangers were present on the estate, might have been listening too, and he said a special thanks to her.

He thanked every person on his team by name, and finally he invited India onstage and kissed her. Which was so sweet that the hoots and cheers mixed with laughter and awws. By the time he and India left the stage hand in hand, gazes locked like they couldn’t believe the other existed, there wasn’t a dry eye in the crowd.

Well, maybe there was one. Naina was glowering at Jiggy as though she hadn’t heard a word of the speech. Bummer, because during his speech Yash had mentioned that he wouldn’t have won without Vansh’s help with the historic meeting.

Jiggy offered Vansh a handkerchief, which he politely declined given that the billionaire had sniffled into it wholeheartedly through the entire speech.

“You lost a good man,” Jiggy said to Naina. Either the man had no talent for reading his audience, or he didn’t care.

Naina smiled. A smile that said Screw you as clearly as those words could be said. “I did. And now you want to take away my funding too.” She was in no mood to pretend that she gave a shit about anything other than her funding. “Sharing the funding was not the deal, Jiggy.”

“It’s a huge endowment. And I want to know what Mr. Raje comes up with.”

Oh. So the man was serious about hearing Vansh’s ideas.

Obviously, Naina had grasped this before Vansh had. She opened her mouth to answer, but Mehta raised a hand to cut her off. “Let’s give him a project so we can keep him around. Don’t you want to keep him around, Naina?”

She kept her eyes on Jiggy. Vansh might as well have been invisible. “Not if it means sharing the money I need to do my work.”

Why, thanks a lot, Knightlina!

“You did the work just fine without my money, now you’ll figure out how to do it with a little less of it. Stop being such a grouch. Let’s go get some cake.” Grabbing Naina’s arm, he dragged her away.

The glare she threw at Vansh over her shoulder as she mouthed, Don’t even think about it, should have burned him to ash. It probably did, because suddenly Vansh couldn’t feel his limbs, unless that was the adrenaline that was suddenly pumping through him.

Why would he not think about it? He didn’t even have a project in mind yet and he already had someone interested in funding him. He did have a talent for this, no matter what Ms. Kohli thought.

“That was the best speech I’ve ever heard,” someone said behind Vansh, voice cracking with emotion. “I would follow Yash to the ends of the earth. Is there anyone who wouldn’t?”

Vansh turned and found that it was the data guy from Yash’s campaign team. Vansh looked around to see who he was talking to, but he was sitting by himself and evidently talking to himself.

“Hi, Hari,” Vansh said. Remembering names was one of his talents.

There were five empty flutes of mimosas at the table, and instead of answering Vansh’s greeting, Hari downed the sixth, half-empty glass and dug into a gigantic slice of cake.

“Congratulations,” Vansh said to him. Hari had worked hard on Yash’s campaign. He was a genius with numbers and data, and he’d taken the information on demographics and voting behaviors and figured out exactly where to put campaign dollars and time, right down to neighborhoods and streets.

He’d worked mostly alone in one corner of the office by himself, just the way he was sitting by himself right now at a table tucked away from the crowd.

“Do you know what you’re going to do now?” Vansh asked. He understood only too well the emptiness one felt after a successful project. He made it a point never to linger too long on any project. Satisfaction, but also loss. Because the postvictory flush didn’t take up quite as much time as one would think.

Since the election, Nisha had accepted the position of communications director. She had managed Yash’s political campaigns for the past decade. This was her chosen career, unlike with the rest of the Rajes, for whom Yash’s ambitions were more of a pet pastime.

Rico, Ashna’s boyfriend, who had handled the media for Yash’s campaign, was moving on to work on a state senator’s campaign. One of the incumbent California senators was done with his term limit and the primary for that seat was going to be a bloodbath in two years. Maybe Hari could work with him.

Everyone seemed to be moving along, doing things, changing the world. Vansh had never had any interest in the rat race. He’d shrugged off that life years ago. He’d chosen to join the Peace Corps instead of going to college. He’d decided to see the world, work on real problems instead of toeing the expected path like everyone around him.

He had a gift, a gift for making positive change, and he had always been true to that. The trick was keeping his heart open. Also his eyes and ears.

Hari threw a shifty look at his cake and poked it with a fork. He wasn’t exactly comfortable with eye contact.

Yash hadn’t yet announced jobs in the administration, but there wasn’t much for someone with Hari’s skill set to do on a governor’s staff, at least not until he was up for reelection. From what Vansh remembered from their interactions, Hari was painfully shy, to the point where it was usually impossible to get him to talk.

The guy probably just wanted Vansh to leave him alone.

“No plans,” Hari said, his voice loud in the way of people who weren’t used to talking to other people. Or people who’d had one too many mimosas.

Vansh looked at the six empty glasses.

“I like orange juice,” Hari said.

Ah.

Vansh sat down next to him. “Was this the first time you worked on a political campaign? Are you interested in working on another campaign? I can talk to Rico Silva.”

Hari’s hands started shaking and he put the fork down with a clang. His mouth was full of cake that he chewed and gulped furiously. “No, no. That’s all right!” He stood; the chair toppled over behind him. “I have to go.” He tried to back away but stumbled over the chair.

Jumping to the rescue, Vansh grabbed his arm and kept him from going down with the chair. Then, setting the chair straight, he pushed Hari back into it. The man was shaking.

“I was just making conversation,” Vansh said gently. “It’s just that you did such a great job on the campaign I thought it might be something you might like working on. We don’t have to talk about your plans.”

Hari hiccupped and picked up a red carnation from the red, white, and blue floral centerpiece and smelled it. Then went on smelling it with great focus.

Vansh raised his chin at the empty glasses. “All these, um, glasses of orange juice. Did you—”

Hari burst into tears.

Okay.Vansh patted his shoulder. “It’s fine, I wasn’t  . . .”

Hari buried his head into his elbow on the table and started sobbing so hard his shoulders bounced.

Vansh looked around. There was no one close enough to notice. For a few minutes, Hari just cried and Vansh just patted his arm and made reassuring sounds, trying to calm him down without embarrassing him.

Without warning, Hari sat up and threw an accusatory glare at the empty champagne flutes. “It’s really good juice. I’ve never had juice this good ever. I think all that sugar is making me sick.”

“Actually that’s not . . . never mind, I’m glad you liked it. Did you drive here?”

Another sob spurted out of Hari. “I don’t have a car.” More hiccupping sobs. “Do you think they’ll care if I get another glass?”

He tried to stand.

Vansh tugged him back as gently as he could. “That’s probably not a great idea. And it’s okay. I don’t have a car either.” Maybe he shouldn’t have said that. Was that a terrible privileged-person thing to say, given that he had access to seven Teslas in his family alone? “I’m sorry,” he said.

Hari slipped him a quick sideways glance, then looked away again. “You’re so nice. You’re even nicer than your brother, and I don’t know anyone who’s nicer than Yash.”

“Same. I don’t know anyone nicer than Yash either. Listen. Do you have a friend who can drive you home? Or I can arrange for something. That orange juice, it was—”

Hari started weeping again. He pressed his face back into his elbow. “No one can drive me home. I don’t have a home.” As soon as the words left his mouth he sprang upright and pressed a hand to his mouth and jumped out of his chair again.

And teetered on his feet. Again.

“Here, let me help you.” Vansh grabbed his arm and walked him to the alcove behind the pool house, where he forced him to drink a bottle of water, which Hari promptly threw up into the bushes by the pool, hopefully also expelling some of the alcohol he had consumed.

“Am I sick?” the poor man asked miserably. “Am I going to die?”

“We’re all going to die someday,” Vansh mumbled, then said, “Actually, that orange juice . . . it wasn’t just orange juice.”

“But it tasted exactly like orange juice,” Hari said with equal parts confusion and conviction.

“That’s because there was orange juice in it. Along with champagne. Well, sparkling wine made in Sonoma.”

Hari looked horrified. “But I don’t drink.”

Not what the puke in my bushes says, buddy.

“If I drink. If I drink . . . I . . . I . . .” The sobs started again.

Okay, time to get him to a bed. Vansh pushed him into one of the patio chairs and brought him more water.

“You are so nice.” Hari sniffled as he drank.

Vansh patted his back. “You said you had no home. What did you mean by that?”

Hari did another jack-in-the-box jump and promptly face-dived toward the patio. Fortunately Vansh had the reflexes of someone who’d spent many an evening with drunken friends in various parts of the world. He caught the man before he hit the ground and put him back in the chair.

“Let’s sit for a few minutes without jumping out of the chair, please. And keep drinking.” He handed him the bottle of water. If he thought the mimosas were orange juice, that meant they had gone down fast.

He needed some food to soak up all that alcohol, but Vansh couldn’t leave him alone. So he took him back to the corner table where he’d found him. “Don’t move until I get back.”

Then he went to the food tent and grabbed a couple of samosas and brought them back. Wasn’t Hari the guy who’d always taken the leftover donuts and pizza home from Yash’s campaign office? A faint memory of the rest of the team teasing him about it nudged at Vansh.

Thankfully, Hari hadn’t moved. He sat there slouched and felled by mimosas. Well, time to fix mimosas with samosas. Vansh handed him the plate.

“I grew up in a big house,” Hari said as though it hurt him to make the declaration. “In Bhopal. Now I live in a tent.”

As the words left his mouth his eyes widened to saucers and he shoved the entire, rather large samosa into his mouth. And promptly started choking.

Vansh slammed his palm into Hari’s back, making him expel the clump of potatoes and pastry congealing his mouth shut and cutting off his oxygen supply. Vansh was all set to perform the Heimlich, but Hari sucked in a huge slurp of air and color rushed back into his face.

“You saved my life,” Hari said. Tears streamed from his eyes, this time probably because he’d just been choking.

Everyone knew how very much Vansh enjoyed saving lives, but this situation was a little too absurd even for him. He handed Hari another bottle of water and looked around to see if he could find reinforcements to help with the situation, but everyone seemed otherwise engaged.

Naina and Mehta were deeply engrossed in their conversation, and they were the only other guests still left in this part of the yard. Everyone else seemed to be packed around the stage, mobbing Yash and listening to the band, which was really getting into it.

“It was just a very large bite of samosa. I didn’t really do anything,” Vansh said, making Hari let out another grateful sound.

“You followed me when I tried to leave. You cared. No one cares to follow someone like me.” The tears were flowing in earnest now and Vansh wished he could do something to make the poor guy feel better.

“Of course I followed you. And what do you mean someone like you? You’re every bit as worthy of being taken care of as anyone else.”

“I didn’t mean to say that,” Hari said on another sob.

Vansh made a face that he hoped showed his confusion.

“The tent.” Hari said the words the way one confesses to a crime.

“I don’t mean to pry. But are you saying you live in a tent on a campsite? Or are you saying something else?” Was he saying he was homeless?

Hari nodded, which was somewhat confusing. Vansh had enough experience with the South Asian head nod, but those had accents too, and Hari’s wasn’t clear.

Two thoughts struck Vansh at once. One, that homelessness had been the first thing to occur to him, and that said horrifying things about the city Vansh loved. Two, that he didn’t know what he would do if he found out that someone who’d worked on Yash’s campaign had been—was?—homeless.

“If my family ever found out, the shame would kill them,” Hari added through his tears.

Find what out? Vansh leaned forward. “Is your family in India or here?”

“In India,” Hari said. “My father is an imminent doctor.”

Vansh assumed the man meant eminent, unless he meant that his father was still in medical school. “My parents’ friends and relatives have property all over Bhopal. If they found out that Dr. Samarth’s son lives on the streets like a beggar, my parents would have nowhere to hide their faces.”

Holy hell, he was right about Hari’s being homeless.

Vansh must have looked horrified, because Hari looked horrified in response. “I’m sorry, I should never have told you. But you saved my life and I got emotional. It’s an emotional day.” Hari grabbed Vansh’s hand. “You won’t tell Yash, will you? Yash would be so disappointed in me if he found out. He would never have hired me if he’d known.”

“That’s not true. You should know that Yash wouldn’t judge you based on where you live.”

Instead of placating him, this just made Hari look even more distraught. “You cannot tell him. Please. Please! I couldn’t bear it if he found out.”

“Hari, it’s okay. Calm down. I won’t tell anyone anything you don’t want them to know. But what are you saying exactly? Have you been living on the street the entire time you’ve worked on the campaign?” Now that Vansh thought about it, the salaries Yash had been able to pay his team were nowhere near enough to live in the city. Most of the team commuted.

How had Hari not told this to anyone? How had the media not picked up on it? “Didn’t you give up your partnership in your social media marketing firm to work on Yash’s campaign?”

Hari looked around to make sure no one could overhear. “That’s what I had planned to do. I heard Yash speaking last year and I knew I had to work for him. I had to do everything I could to make his plans for California a reality. You know, my grandfather was a freedom fighter in India and he used to tell me the stories of marching with Gandhiji and being hit on the head with batons by the British troops.” He stopped and thought for a moment. “I’m not sure if my grandfather told me that or if I watched that in that Gandhi movie with that British guy playing Gandhi,” Hari added. “I was really young when my grandfather used to tell me his stories. But I do remember how hearing him talk about freedom and justice and the rights of people made me feel. And Yash made me feel like that too.

“When I came to America to go to grad school, I thought it would be the land of freedom and equality. And in many ways it was. But in so many ways it was not. Everyone was just running after things and fighting each other over politics and religion, and no one cared about the fact that old people had to work in Walmart and that the Tenderloin was covered in homeless tents.”

Vansh opened a bottle of water and took a sip. Why was drunk rambling always so damned insightful and true? “You’re absolutely right,” he said.

“I should never drink,” Hari said suddenly. “I had promised my mother that I would never drink after I told my cousin that she looked like a cross between a horse and a rat at her wedding. Drinking makes me tell the truth. Someone handed me a glass and I thought it was orange juice. Who puts alcohol in orange juice? Why would anyone do something that devious?”

Vansh gave his shoulder another pat. “Never mind all that. Where are you living right now?”

Hari stood, a little more steady now. “I think the invitation said six to ten and it’s already past eleven, so I have to leave. The Samarths never outstay their welcome.”

“Sit down, Hari. You can’t go back to the tent.” Now that Vansh knew, he couldn’t not do something. How was he not going to tell Yash this?

“But that’s my home.”

“No, it’s the pavement. Can you not afford a hotel room with your paycheck?”

“I had to pay off my debts. I’m still paying off my debts. And I can’t let my spot go. If I remove my tent, someone else will take it.”

How had Vansh never wondered how homelessness actually worked? “Okay, well, I’m going to check you into a hotel tonight. We will figure this out in the morning.” Pulling out his phone, Vansh started looking for availability at hotels in the area.

Hari’s hands started shaking. “That’s very kind of you, but they won’t let me stay in a hotel.”

God, he was afraid to ask. “Why?”

“Because they need ID.”

“You don’t have a driver’s license?”

“My backpack was stolen. My passport, my wallet, everything was in there.”

Of course the man hadn’t reported it.

How had Vansh never wondered how crime worked for the homeless? Did the cops cover the people who lived on the streets? Who protected them?

Vansh had so much to learn, but first he needed to figure out how to help Hari. Then he’d think about what all of this would mean to Yash if a journalist got their hands on this information.

No matter what, he could not let this poor man—who had made it possible for his brother to win the election—go back to living on the street. It was time to clean up the mess that was Hari’s life. Good thing Vansh was good at cleaning up messes. Good thing he was ready for a new project.